How the German Authorities behaved to Members of the Consular Service
Members of the Russian, French and English consular service in Germany were to have still less favour shown to them than ambassadors and ministers. The Consul-General of Russia at Leipzig was unexpectedly summoned to the police station. He was there allowed thirty-five minutes to go to the station and take the train. His vice-consul, who was of a lower rank, was allowed only ten minutes, and his pockets were searched to boot.
The Consul-General of France at Frankfurt got orders to go on the 4th August, and he immediately obeyed. The German authorities conducted him to the Belgian frontier, then on the way they changed their minds and conducted him to Constance. When he reached the station at Offensburg he was arrested by an officer. With the consular staff he remained shut up for five hours in the waiting-room, closely watched. Then he was conducted, with about one hundred French people, men, women and children, who had left Frankfurt at the same time as their consul-general, to Donaueschingen. There they were all led under escort in a pelting rain to the other end of the town into an open station, where their only opportunity of rest was upon some bundles of straw. On the next morning it was announced that the French, with their wives and children, would be detained by the local authorities. A protest by the consul-general was ineffective. The consul and his staff were unable to resume their journey to Constance until 5 o’clock.
On the 5th August the German authorities ordered the consuls of France, Russia and England to leave Danzig within an hour.
The three consuls and their families were brought to Bentheim, on the Dutch frontier, amid insults and ill-treatment and without being allowed to take any food. On the 8th August, at Bentheim, the three consuls were separated from their wives and families, and shut up in a prison cell, with the sons of the English consul and M. Vassel, of the French Consulate at Prague.
They were treated like criminals: they had bread and water for food, straw mattresses and a stone floor for bed; they were compelled to clean their cells, to take a regular walk of half an hour within the prison precincts, in the company of men who had been convicted at common law.
The French consul, M. Michel, being ill, asked for a doctor, but was unable to get one. The superintendent of the prison thought he had done all that was required by giving him some castor oil. This regimen lasted several days. Finally, on the 13th August, the English consul was released and met again his wife and his children, who, unknown to him, had been shut up in another cell. The other consuls were not set at liberty until some days afterwards.
M. de France de Tersant, Vice-Consul of France at Frankfurt on the Main, took thirty-three hours to traverse the 300 kilometres between Frankfurt and the frontier. He underwent the same annoyances: tedious confinement in railway stations, perpetual change of route; he was compelled to travel with blinds drawn and windows shut in a stifling heat, in the company of an armed official.
The wife of this consul, Mme. de France de Tersant, who left Germany on the 31st July—that is, before the declaration of war, was arrested at Metz and her luggage confiscated. In vain she made application to the military authorities. They refused to receive it and threatened to keep her in custody. However, she obtained permission to continue her journey by horse carriage to Novéant. As she was leaving the soldiers hooted her. At Novéant the driver refused to bring her any further. Then she had to go on foot as far as Pagny-on-the-Moselle, which is the first French village. A peasant at Novéant lent her a wheelbarrow, in which she could put her young child. The peasant consented to push the wheelbarrow.
M. Damier, Russian consul at Frankfurt, was brought by force from his house to a statue of Germania which he was compelled to salute. A howling mob kicked him and struck him with their fists. M. Alberic Néton, Consul-General of France at Düsseldorf, was ordered on the 2nd August by the Chief of Police to leave the town at once. Two officials were stationed before his door with orders not to leave it. On the next day, on his way to the consulate, he could not give them the slip. All the day they kept near him whether he went on foot or rode.
After interminable negotiations with regard to his departure, the Consul-General of France finally left Düsseldorf on the 5th August, bringing with him only a small portmanteau. The destination of the train was the Dutch frontier (Roermont). But at the first station, which is Neuss, an officer in a uniform trimmed with lace came and opened the compartment in which were the consul-general and many other passengers, and informed them that the Dutch line was cut and that they would have to go to Cologne and then to Switzerland.
He had to go to Cologne in a train full of soldiers and in a third-class carriage. During the whole journey the soldiers never ceased to make insulting remarks about France.
At Cologne, the consul-general’s journey was interrupted by the military authorities. He underwent a regular search and had to undress to allow these people to search every bit of his clothing. As he complained of having to submit to such treatment, the German officer said to him, “You will see many other people in the same case as yourself.”
And, in fact, when the search was completed he was brought, carefully escorted, to an hotel of the lowest class, an annexe of the Prefecture of Police, where police officers searched his luggage. M. Néton was kept there three days under police supervision. He was forbidden to communicate with any one outside or to read the newspapers.
“During the third night of our detention,” says the consul-general in his official report of the 10th August, “on Friday, 7th August, a little before midnight, there was a violent knocking at the door of my room. ‘Everybody get up,’ cried a voice; ‘you will be off to Holland in ten minutes.’ Everybody dressed in great haste. We were compelled to get into two military motors, which brought us with all speed to the station. There we were brought to a train which was standing ready, and pushed into a carriage where we were locked in and all the blinds lowered. The signal for departure was given, but none of us knew where we were going.
“At six o’clock in the morning the train stopped. We had just passed Clèves and we were a short distance from the Dutch frontier. To get us over the remaining thirty kilometres the mayor of the place, who had been notified of our arrival, offered to have us driven across in a light trap.
“When we got down from the carriage he demanded of us 14 marks, i.e. about 18 francs.
“We were at Vyler, the last Prussian station from which the boundary, marking the frontier, could be seen; we thought we were at the end of our troubles, but we had reckoned without the station officer. ‘Your papers,’ said he. Each of us showed what the official who searched us at Cologne had left us. ‘Not in order,’ he declared. ‘I shall have to report the matter. In the meantime you must be searched,’ and for a second time, men and women, we were obliged to undress completely and to undergo a more minute search than one could possibly imagine. They even looked between our toes. The brims of our hats were turned back. The insoles of our shoes were lifted up. My watch was opened and the glass of it broken.
“Once more I protested. Police officers, revolver in belt and rifle in hand, surrounded me and commanded me to keep silent. The official came towards me. My last papers and documents were seized and even my private letters were taken…
“The official took leave of me, saying, ‘I shall return all this to you at Düsseldorf when you come back.’
“After a few more minutes waiting we were allowed to cross the frontier. We were free. On my arrival in Holland I noticed that the soldiers who had searched me had taken 90 marks in gold which happened to be in my pocket.”
M. René d’Hennezel, French Vice-Consul at Mannheim, left his post under similar circumstances. At Immendigen a non-commissioned officer and four men burst into his carriage. He examined M. d’Hennezel’s passports and those of M. Lancial, diplomatic attaché, had their luggage carefully searched, and passed on to them the word to follow him to the captain. On the platform the crowd shouted angrily and the non-commissioned officer sneered at them.
The captain questioned them fiercely and declared that their passports were not in order. He prevented them leaving and had them brought back to the station-master’s office, where a fresh examination of their luggage was made in his presence. Finally, he consented to let them travel by Constance, saying, “Above all things, mind what you are about, and take very good care that I hear no complaint of you, or you will immediately be shot. You must get into the luggage van.”
M. Armez, French Consul at Stuttgart, during the last days of his stay received all his correspondence “unsealed as a military safeguard.”
On the 3rd August he was ordered to leave his post within three hours, and to bring only hand luggage. He was stopped at the first station as a spy, and threatened with death by the other passengers, in the presence of a menacing crowd. It was only after many anxieties of every kind and not without having received several blows and even having been wounded, that he succeeded in reaching Constance in Swiss territory.
CHAPTER IV
OUTRAGES COMMITTED BY GERMAN AUTHORITIES AND PRIVATE PERSONS AGAINST ENEMY SUBJECTS
The most celebrated German writers on international law, Heffter, Klueber, Geffcken, have taught that the State which declares war can neither keep enemy subjects who happen to be on its territory nor their property, for as they came into this territory in reliance upon public law and have received permission to stay there, they can avail themselves of the tacit promise made by the State that every freedom and safety are guaranteed them for their return. If the State wishes them to go, it must allow them a reasonable time to go away with their property; if not, enemy subjects, who are subject to the regulations of the police and of public safety have the right, so long as they respect these laws, to appeal for protection to them. In any case deliberate ill-treatment of enemy subjects cannot be permitted.
This principle, by the confession of the Germans themselves, condemns the methods to which Germany has resorted by empowering her officials to behave cruelly to French and Russian subjects who happened to be in Germany on the 3rd August, and by tacitly approving the behaviour of the mob to them.
The fear of spying, of which it appears that all these people were suspected, perhaps because of the audacity which the Germans themselves showed in resorting to it in foreign countries, was invoked by the Germans as the excuse for all these outrages and the justification for all these annoyances.