THE FRENCH REPORT
Having been instructed to investigate atrocities said to have been committed by the Germans in portions of French territory which had been occupied by them, a commission composed of four representatives of the French Government repaired to these districts in order to make a thorough investigation. The commission was composed of M. Georges Payelle, First President of the Cour des Comptes; Armand Mollard, Minister Plenipotentiary; Georges Maringer, Counselor of State, and Edmond Paillot, Counselor of the Cour de Cassation.
They started on their mission late in September, 1914, and visited the Departments of Seine-et-Marne, Marne, Meuse, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Oise, and Aisne. According to the report, they made note only of those accusations against the invaders which were backed up by reliable testimony and discarded everything that might have been occasioned by the exigencies of war.
The statement, which extends over many pages and contains over 25,000 words, is a record of the most fiendish crimes imaginable. “On every side our eyes rested on ruin. Whole villages have been destroyed by bombardment or fire; towns formerly full of life are now nothing but deserts full of ruins; and, in visiting the scenes of desolation where the invader’s torch has done its work, one feels continually as though one were walking among the remains of one of those cities of antiquity which have been annihilated by the great cataclysms of nature.
“In truth it can be stated that never has a war carried on between civilized nations assumed the savage and ferocious character of the one which at this moment is being waged on our soil by an implacable adversary. Pillage, rape, arson, and murder are the common practice of our enemies; and the facts which have been revealed to us day by day at once constitute definite crimes against common rights, punished by the codes of every country with the most severe and the most dishonoring penalties, and which prove an astonishing degeneration in German habits of thought since 1870.
“Crimes against women and young girls have been of appalling frequency. We have proved a great number of them, but they only represent an infinitesimal proportion of those which we could have taken up. Owing to a sense of decency, which is deserving of every respect, the victims of these hateful acts usually refuse to disclose them. Doubtless fewer would have been committed if the leaders of an army whose discipline is most rigorous had taken any trouble to prevent them; yet, strictly speaking, they can only be considered as the individual and spontaneous acts of uncaged beasts. But with regard to arson, theft, and murder the case is very different; the officers, even those of the highest station, will bear before humanity the overwhelming responsibility for these crimes.
“In the greater part of the places where we carried on our inquiry we came to the conclusion that the German Army constantly professes the most complete contempt for human life, that its soldiers, and even its officers, do not hesitate to finish off the wounded, that they kill without pity the inoffensive inhabitants of the territories which they have invaded, and they do not spare in their murderous rage women, old men, or children. The wholesale shootings at Lunéville, Gerbéviller, Nomeny, and Senlis are terrible examples of this; and in the course of this report you will read the story of scenes of carnage in which officers themselves have not been ashamed to take part.”
HORRIBLE CASES OF RAPE
Of the criminal attempts on women cited in the report two of the most horrible occurred in the Department of Seine-et-Marne.
“Frightful scenes occurred at the Château de —— in the neighborhood of La Ferté-Gaucher. There lived there an old gentleman, M. X., with his servant, Mlle. Y., 54 years old. On Sept. 5 several Germans, among whom was a non-commissioned officer, were in occupation of this property. After they had been supplied with food, the non-commissioned officer proposed to a refugee, a Mme. Z., that she should sleep with him; she refused. M. X., to save her from the designs of which she was the object, sent her to his farm, which was in the neighborhood. The German ran there to fetch her, dragged her back to the château and led her to the attic; then, having completely undressed her, he tried to violate her. At this moment M. X., wishing to protect her, fired revolver shots on the staircase and was immediately shot.
The Bombardment of the East Coast of England.
This scene, painted in Hartlepool, shows the effect of a bursting German shell in the unfortified British town. Several women and many other civilians were killed by the German raiders.
Prussian Soldier Kidnapping a Red Cross Nurse.
In spite of her prayer he seized her roughly, tied her hands together and throwing her across his saddle rode away. Fortunately, a Cossack appeared, pierced the scoundrel with his lance and rescued the woman. (Graphic copr.)
“The non-commissioned officer then made Mme. X. come out of the attic, obliged her to step over the corpse of the old man, and led her to a closet, where he again made two unsuccessful attempts upon her. Leaving her at last, he threw himself upon Mlle. Y., having first handed Mme. Z. over to two soldiers, who, after having violated her, one once and the other twice, in the dead man’s room, made her pass the night in a barn near them, where one of them twice again had sexual connection with her.
“As for Mlle. Y., she was obliged by threats of being shot, to strip herself completely naked and lie on a mattress with the non-commissioned officer, who kept her there until morning.
“At Least They Only Drown Your Women.”
“It is generally believed at Coulommiers that criminal attempts have been made on many women of that town, but only one crime of this nature has been proved for certain. A charwoman, Mme. X., was the victim. A soldier came to her house on the 6th of September, toward 9.30 in the evening, and sent away her husband to go and search for one of his comrades in the street. Then, in spite of the fact that two small children were present, he tried to rape the young woman. X., when he heard his wife’s cries, rushed back, but was driven off with blows of the butt of the man’s rifle into a neighboring room, of which the door was left open, and his wife was forced to suffer the consummation of the outrage. The rape took place almost under the eyes of the husband, who, being terrorized, did not dare to intervene, and used his efforts only to calm the terror of his children.
ARSON AND MURDER RAMPANT
“Personal liberty, like human life, is the object of complete scorn on the part of the German military authorities. Almost everywhere citizens of every age have been dragged from their homes and led into captivity, many have died or been killed on the way.
“Arson, still more than murder, forms the usual procedure of our adversaries. It is employed by them either as a means of systematic devastation or as a means of terrorism. The German Army, in order to provide for it, possesses a complete outfit, which comprises torches, grenades, rockets, petrol pumps, fuse sticks, and little bags of pastilles made of compressed powder which are very inflammable. The lust for arson is manifested chiefly against churches and against monuments which have some special interest, either artistic or historical.
“Thousands of houses in the ground covered by the investigators had been completely destroyed by fire. In the Department of Marne a great many villages, as well as important country towns, were burned without any reason whatever. Without doubt these crimes were committed by order, as German detachments arrived in the neighborhood with their torches, their grenades, and their usual outfit for arson.
“At Lépine, a laborer named Caqué, in whose house two German cyclists were billeted, asked the latter if the grenades which he saw in their possession were destined for his house. They answered: ‘No. Lépine is finished with.’ At that moment nine houses in the village were burned out.
“At Marfaux nineteen private houses were burned.
“Of the commune of Glannes practically nothing remains. At Somme-Tourbe the entire village has been destroyed, with the exception of the mayoralty house, the church, and two private buildings.
“At Auve nearly the whole town has been destroyed. At Etrepy sixty-three families out of seventy are homeless. At Huiron all the houses, with the exception of five, have been burned. At Sermaize-les-Bains only about forty houses out of nine hundred remain. At Bignicourt-sur-Saultz thirty houses out of thirty-three are in ruins.
“At Suippes, the big market town which has been practically burned out, German soldiers carrying straw and cans of petrol have been seen in the streets. While the mayor’s house was burning, six sentinels with fixed bayonets were under orders to forbid any one to approach and to prevent any help being given.
“All this destruction by arson, which only represents a small proportion of the acts of the same kind in the Department of Seine-et-Marne, was accomplished without the least tendency to rebellion or the smallest act of resistance being recorded against the inhabitants of the localities which are today more or less completely destroyed. In some villages the Germans, before setting fire to them, made one of their soldiers fire a shot from his rifle so as to be able to pretend afterward that the civilian population had attacked them, an allegation which is all the more absurd since at the time when the enemy arrived the only inhabitants left were old men, sick persons, or people absolutely without any means of aggression.
UNCONTROLLED SAVAGERY
“On the 6th of September at Champguyon, Mme. Louvet was present at the martyrdom of her husband. She saw him in the hands of ten or fifteen soldiers, who were beating him to death before his own house, and ran up and kissed him through the bars of the gate. She was brutally pushed back and fell, while the murderers dragged along the unhappy man covered with blood, begging them to spare his life and protesting that he had done nothing to be treated thus. He was finished off at the end of the village. When his wife found his body it was horribly disfigured. His head was beaten in, one of his eyes hung from the socket, and one of his wrists was broken.
“At Montmirail a scene of real savagery was enacted. On the 5th of September a non-commissioned officer flung himself almost naked on the widow Naudé, on whom he was billeted, and carried her into his room. This woman’s father, François Fontaine, rushed up on hearing his daughter’s cry. At once fifteen or twenty Germans broke through the door of the house, pushed the old man into the street, and shot him without mercy. Little Juliette Naudé opened the window at this moment and was struck in the stomach by a bullet, which went through her body. The poor child died after twenty-four hours of most dreadful suffering.
CONSTANT EVIDENCE OF THEFT
“We have constantly found definite evidence of theft,” states the report further, “and we do not hesitate to state that where a body of the enemy has passed it has given itself up to a systematically organized pillage, in the presence of its leaders, who have even themselves often taken part in it. Cellars have been emptied to the last bottle, safes have been gutted, considerable sums of money have been stolen or extorted; a great quantity of plate and jewelry, as well as pictures, furniture, ‘objets d’art,’ linen, bicycles, women’s dresses, sewing machines, even down to children’s toys, after having been taken away, have been loaded on vehicles to be taken toward the frontier.”
Space forbids further quotation from the harrowing document, in which one frightful tale succeeds another, until with a wave of sickening horror the reader cries out, “Can such things really be?”
GERMANY DENIES ATROCITIES
“A chain of baseless fabrications” is the phrase used by Germany to characterize the charges brought against the German armies by the French government, claiming that “German army officers have, by every means and with full success, effected the maintenance of discipline and the strict observance of all the rules of war in each and all the spheres of operation.”
The demolished villages and pitiful victims must tell their own tale of terror. Doubtless many of the crimes committed have been without the sanction of the German government or even without the authority of a superior officer, but, even allowing for the partisanship that is natural on the part of afflicted inhabitants, the testimony of the French commission together with that of former Ambassador Bryce must deeply affect the attitude of all thinking people toward warfare.
CHAPTER XV
DESTROYING THE PRICELESS MONUMENTS OF CIVILIZATION
[THE INEXPIABLE GERMAN CRIME, LOUVAIN] — [ART TREASURES OF HISTORIC CITY] — [REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES] — [PITILESS DESTRUCTION AS TOLD BY TOWN TREASURER] — [A MODERN POMPEII] — [BURNING OF CITY SYSTEMATIC] — [INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST MODERN HUNS].
All through Belgium and all through the country of the Franco-German border line are towns and cities filled with treasures of art and history—some of the richest, indeed, that centuries of civilization have amassed. Under the guns of both sides of the mighty conflict these paintings and shrines and storied buildings have been exposed to destruction, and many of them have been wantonly sacrificed, shattered beyond hope of restoration.
Under the latest Hague proposals, Article XXVIII, historic monuments are supposed to be respected even by warring nations, yet both Germany and France have accused each other of violating this convention. The whole of civilized humanity rises in protest against such sacrilege.
Among all the black crimes of the German invasion of Belgium none is blacker than the sack and burning of Louvain, the fairest city of Belgium and the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries. According to a bitter statement of Frank Jewett Mather, the well-known American art critic, “Louvain contained more beautiful works of art than the Prussian nation has produced in its entire history.”