MUTE WITNESSES
The full extent of the German atrocities committed on a battle line six hundred miles in length, and extending from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier, can never be known. More than one hundred thousand people are simply reported as "missing," other multitudes were burned or thrown into pits. Only in towns from which the German armies hurriedly retreated were inquests possible, and in those towns affidavits were prepared and photographs of the mutilated bodies taken. After the German troops had passed out of the village or city, it became possible for the village school-teacher, priest or banker, the aged women and the children to creep out of pits, the caves in the fields, or the edge of the woods, where they had been hiding, and return to survey the scene of desolation behind them. The opposite page shows victims in the little town of Andenne, where more than 300 civilians were massacred.
