IV.
Frequently when a German troop want to carry a position, they place before them civilians—men, women, and children—and find shelter behind these ramparts of living flesh. As such a stratagem is essentially playing upon the nobility of heart of the adversary, and saying to him "you won't fire upon these unfortunates, I know it, and I hold you at my mercy, unarmed, because you are not as craven as I am," as it implies a homage to the enemy and the self-degradation of the one employing it, it is almost inconceivable that soldiers should resort to it; it represents a new invention in the long story of human vileness, which even the dreadful Penitentiels of the Middle Ages had not discovered. In reading the stories from French, Belgian, and English sources, attributing such practices to the Germans, it has made me doubt, if not the truthfulness, at least the detailed exactness of the stories. It seemed to me that the tales must be of crimes by men who would be disavowed, individual lapses, which do not dishonor the nation, because the nation on ascertaining them would repudiate them. But how can we doubt that the German Nation has, on the contrary, accepted these acts as exploits worthy of herself, that in them she recognizes her own aptitudes, and finds pleasure in the contemplation; how, I ask, can we doubt this in reading the following narrative signed by a Bavarian officer, Lieut. A. Eberlein, spread out in the columns of one of the best known periodicals of Germany, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, in its issue of Wednesday, Oct. 7, 1914, Page 22, Lieut. Eberlein relates there the occupation of Saint-Dié at the end of August. He entered the town at the head of a column, and while waiting for reinforcements was compelled to barricade himself in a house, (Fig. 9:)
Figure 9.
We arrested three civilians, and a bright idea struck me. We furnished them with chairs and made them seat themselves in the middle of the street. There were supplications on one part, and some blows with the stocks of our guns on the other. One, little by little, gets terribly hardened. Finally, there they were sitting in the street. How many anguished prayers they may have muttered, I cannot say, but during the whole time their hands were joined in nervous contraction. I am sorry for them, but the stratagem was of immediate effect. The enfilading directed from the houses diminished at once; we were able then to take possession of the house opposite, and thus became masters of the principal street. From that moment every one that showed his face in the street was shot. And the artillery meanwhile kept up vigorous work, so that at about 7 o'clock in the evening, when the brigade advanced to rescue us, I could report "Saint-Dié has been emptied of all enemies."
As I learned later, the —— Regiment of Reserves, which came into Saint-Dié further north, had experiences entirely similar to our own. The four civilians whom they had placed on chairs in the middle of the street were killed by French bullets. I saw them myself stretched out in the street near the hospital.