Outrages on Priests
The crimes committed in Belgium and France against the priests deserve separate treatment.
The German newspapers and the Emperor alleged, in justification of these acts, that at the beginning of hostilities the curés and nuns of the invaded regions had abused their spiritual authority over the civil population by rousing them to frenzy and inciting them to act as francs-tireurs. But of such acts Germany has brought forward no proof. On the contrary, the German Catholic bureau Pax and the Kölnische Volkszeitung took the trouble personally to refute a great number of accusations against the clergy, amongst others the famous legend of eyes being gouged out, of which we spoke above and with which German newspapers had connected the names of several priests who had been carried away to Germany.
As for the general plea that they had encouraged the civil population to resist, far from justifying the German conduct, it only makes it more odious, for what finer praise could be given to a priest in time of war than to say that he tried to stimulate the love of country among the faithful, especially when it is traitorously attacked by people who violate their pledged word?
Besides, the very accounts of the outrages in question show that the plea of reprisals has no validity. In these stories the immorality and blasphemy of the torturers reveals itself without any disguise. The worst criminal feels a kind of fear and remorse as he stands in the presence of God’s representative. This fear is unknown to the German soldier. The German invaders have even shown that they are devoid of respect for the sacred or charitable occupations in the midst of which they almost everywhere found the priests whom they have been known to massacre. With them everything has given way to the deliberate desire to sow terror among the civil population. In many places it is certain that this end could not be better attained than by ill-treating and massacring their spiritual heads.