VII.
H.M. the Emperor of Germany, by ratifying The Hague Convention of 1907, covenanted (Article 24) that "it is forbidden (c) to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or being without means of defense, has surrendered unconditionally. (d) To declare that no quarter shall be given."
Have the German armies respected these covenants? Throughout Belgian and French reports depositions such as the following abound. This is taken from a French Captain of the 288th Infantry:
On the 22d, in the evening, I learned that in the woods, about one hundred and fifty meters north of the square formed by the intersection of the great Calonne trench with the road from Vaux-les-Palameis to Saint-Rémy, there were corpses of French soldiers shot by the Germans. I went to the spot and found the bodies of about thirty soldiers within a small space, most of them prone, but several still kneeling, and all having a precisely similar wound—a bullet through the ear. One only, seriously wounded in his lower parts, could still speak, and told me that the Germans before leaving had ordered them to lie down and that then had them shot through the head; that he, already wounded had secured indulgence by stating that he was the father of three small children. The skulls of these unfortunates were scattered; the guns, broken at the stock, were scattered here and there; and the blood had besprinkled the bushes to such an extent that in coming out of the woods my cape was spattered with it; it was a veritable shambles.
I quote this testimony, not to base any accusations upon it, but simply to give precision to our indictment. I will not lay stress upon it as evidence, for I wish to keep to the rule which I have laid down—to have records of nothing but German sources of information.
I will quote here the text of an order of the day addressed by General Stenger, in command of the Fifty-eighth German Brigade, on the 26th of August, to the troops under his orders:
From this day forward no further prisoners will be taken. All prisoners will be massacred. The wounded, whether in arms or not in arms, shall be massacred. Even the prisoners already gathered in convoys will be massacred. No living enemy must remain behind us.
Signed—First Lieutenant in Command of the Company, Stoy; Colonel Commanding the Regiment, Neubauer; General in Command of the Brigade, Stenger.
About thirty soldiers of Stenger's Brigade (112th and 142d Regiments of Baden Infantry) were questioned. I have read their depositions, taken under oath and signed with their own names; all confirming the fact that this order of the day was given to them on the 26th of August. In one place by the Major Mosebach, in another by Lieut. Curtius, &c. Most of these witnesses said that they were ignorant whether the order was carried out, but three among them testified that it was carried out under their own eyes in the Forest of Thiaville, where ten or twelve wounded French, already made prisoners by a battalion, were done away with; two others of the witnesses saw the order carried out along the road of Thiaville, where several wounded, found in the ditches by the company as it marched past, were killed.
Figure 13.
Of course, I cannot here produce the original autograph of General Stenger, nor am I here called upon to furnish the names of the German prisoners who gave this testimony. But I shall have no trouble to establish entirely similar crimes on the faith of German autographs.
For instance, we find in the notebook of Private Albert Delfosse (111th Infantry of Reserves, Fourteenth Reserve Corps,) (Fig. 13:)
In the woods (near Saint-Rémy, 4th or 5th of September)—Found a very fine cow and a calf killed; and again the corpses of Frenchmen horribly mutilated.
Must we understand that these bodies were mutilated by loyal weapons, torn perhaps by shells? This may be, but it would be a charitable interpretation, which is belied by this newspaper heading, (Figs. 14 and 15:)
JAUERSCHES TAGEBLATT Amtlicher Anzeiger Für Stadt und Kreis Jauer Jauer, Sonntag, Den 18, Oktober, 1914. Nr. 245. 106, Jahrgang.
This is a heading of a newspaper picked up in a German trench. Jauer is a city of Silesia, about fifty kilometers west of Breslau, where two battalions of the 154th Regiment of Saxon Infantry are garrisoned. One Sunday morning, Oct. 18, doubtless at the hour when the inhabitants—women and children—were wending their way to church, there was distributed throughout the quiet little town, and through the hamlets and villages of the district, the issue of this local paper with the following inscription: "A day of honor for our regiment, Sept. 24, 1914," as the title of an article of some two hundred lines, sent from the front by a member of the regiment—the sub-officer Klemt of the First Company, 154th Infantry Regiment.
GENERAL VON KUSMANEK—
Whose stubborn defense of Przemysl made it one of the most notable
sieges of history.—(Photo from Underwood & Underwood.)
CAPT.-LIEUT. OTTO WEDDIGEN—
Whose submarine exploits have done more damage to England's navy
than all Germany's gunners.—(Photo from The Photo News.)
Figure 14.
Figure 15.
The sub-officer Klemt relates how, on the 24th of September, his regiment having left Hannonville in the morning, accompanied by Austrian batteries, suddenly came up against a double fire of infantry and artillery. Their losses were terrible, and yet the enemy was still invisible. Finally, says this officer, it was found that the bullets came from above, from trees which the French soldiers had climbed. From this point let me quote verbatim, (Fig. 16:)
Figure 16.
They're brought down from the trees like squirrels, to get a hot reception with bayoneted stock; they'll need no more doctors' care. We are not fighting loyal enemies, but treacherous brigands. [Note—It is scarcely necessary to point out that it is no more "treacherous," but quite as lawful, to fire from the branches of a tree as from a window, or from a trench, and that, on the contrary, it is rather more venturesome and more courageous, as the sequel of this story will show.] We crossed the clearing at a bound. The foe is hidden here and there among the bushes, and now we are upon them. No quarter will be given. We fire standing, at will; very few fire kneeling; nobody dreams of shelter. We finally reach a slight depression in the ground, and there the red trousers are lying in masses, here and there—dead or wounded. We club or stab the wounded, for we know that these rascals, as soon as we are gone by, will fire from behind. We find one Frenchman lying at full length upon his face, but he is counterfeiting death. A kick from a robust fusilier gives him notice that we are there. Turning over he asks for quarter, but he gets the reply—"Oh! is that the way, blackguard, that your tools work?" and he is pinned to the ground. On one side of me I hear curious cracklings. They're the blows which a soldier of the 154th is vigorously showering upon the bald pate of a Frenchman with the stock of his gun; he very wisely chose for this work a French gun, for fear of breaking his own. Some men of particularly sensitive soul grant the French wounded the grace to finish them with a bullet, but others scatter here and there, wherever they can, their clubbings and stabbings. Our adversaries have fought bravely. They were élite troops that we had before us. They had allowed us to come within thirty, and even within ten, meters—too close. Their arms and knapsacks thrown down in heaps showed that they wanted to fly, but upon the appearance of our "gray phantoms" terror paralyzed them, and, on the narrow path in which they crowded, the German bullets brought them the order to halt! There they are at the very entrance of their leafy hiding places, lying down moaning and asking for quarter, but whether their wounds are light or grievous, the brave fusiliers saved their country the expensive care which would have to be given to such a number of enemies.
Now the recital continues very ornate, very literary, and the writer relates how his Imperial Highness Prince Oscar of Prussia, being advised of the exploits (perhaps, indeed, other exploits than these) of the 154th and of the Regiment of Grenadiers, which forms the Brigade with the 154th, declared them both worthy of the name of "King's Brigade," and the recital closes with this phrase: "When night came on, with a prayer of thankfulness on our lips we fell asleep to await the coming day." Then adding, by way of postscript, a little phrase "Heimkehr vom Kampf." He carries the notebook—prose and verse together—to his Lieutenant, who countersigns it: "Certified as correct, De Niem, Lieutenant Commanding the Company," and then he sends his paper to his town of Jauer, where he is quite confident that he will find some newspaper publisher to accept it, printers to set it up, and a whole population to enjoy it. Now, let me ask any reader—whatever be his country—if he can imagine it possible for such a tale to be spread abroad in any paper in his language, in his native town, for the edification of his wife and his children. In what other country than in Germany is such a thing conceivable? Not in France, at all events. Now, if my readers want another document to show how customary it is in the German Army to mutilate the wounded, well, I will borrow one from the notebook of Private Paul Glöde of the Ninth Battalion of Pioneers, Ninth Corps, (Figs. 17 and 18:)
Aug. 12, 1914, in Belgium.—One can get an idea of the fury of our soldiers in seeing the destroyed villages. Not one house left untouched. Everything eatable is requisitioned by the unofficered soldiers. Several heaps of men and women put to execution. Young pigs are running about looking for their mothers. Dogs chained, without food or drink. And the houses about them on fire. But the just anger of our soldiers is accompanied also by pure vandalism. In the villages, already emptied of their inhabitants, the houses are set on fire. I feel sorry for this population. If they have made use of disloyal weapons, after all, they are only defending their own country. The atrocities which these non-combatants are still committing are revenged after a savage fashion. Mutilations of the wounded are the order of the day.
This was written as early as the 12th of August—the tenth day after the invasion of innocent Belgium—and these wounded creatures that were tortured had done nothing more than defend their land against Germany—their native land—which Germany had sworn, not only to respect but, if need be, to defend. And yet, in many countries pharisees reading these lines will go forward tranquilly to their churches, or their temples, or their banking houses, or their foreign offices, saying: "In what do these things concern us?" "Ja, ja, this is war." Yes, it is war, but war such as was never made by the soldiers of Marceau, such as never will be made by the soldiers of Joffre, such as never has been made and never will be made by France—"Mother of Arts, of Arms, and of Laws." Yes, it is war, but war such as Attila would not have carried on if he had subscribed to certain stipulations; for, in subscribing them, he would have awakened to the notion, which alone distinguishes the civilized man from the barbarian, distinguishes a nation from a horde—respect for the word once given. Yes, it is war, but war the theory of which could only be made up by such pedant megalomaniacs as the Julius von Hartmanns, the Bernhardis, and the Treitschkes; the theory which accords to the elect people the right to uproot from the laws and customs of war what centuries of humanity, of Christianity, and chivalry have at great pains injected into it; the theory of systematic and organized ferocity; today exposed to public reprobation, not only as an odious thing, but no less silly and absurd. For have we not reached the ridiculous when the incendiaries of Louvain, and Malines, and Rheims, the assassins of women and children, and of the wounded, already find it necessary to repudiate their actions, at least in words, and to impose upon the servility of their ninety-three Kulturträger such denials as this: "It is not true that we are making war in contempt of the law of nations, nor that our soldiers are committing acts of cruelty, or of insubordination, or indiscipline.... We will carry this conflict through to the end as a civilized people, and we answer for this upon our good name and upon our honor!" Why this humble and pitiful repudiation? Perhaps because their theory of war rested upon the postulate of their invincibility, and that, in the first shiver of their defeat upon the Marne, it collapsed, and now their repudiation quickly follows—in dread of the lex talionis.
Figure 17.
Figure 18. [Continuation of Figure 17.
I will stop here. I leave the conclusion to the allied armies, already in sight of victory.
NOTE.—General Stenger's order of the day, mentioned on page [Transcriber's Note: blank in original], was communicated orally by various officers in various units of the brigade. Consequently, the form in which we have received it may possibly be incomplete or altered. In face of any doubt, the French Government has ordered an inquiry to be made into the prisoners' camps. Not one of the prisoners to whom our magistrates presented the order of the day in the above-mentioned form found a word to alter. They one and all declared that this was the order of the day which had been orally given in the ranks, repeated from man to man; many added the names of the officers who had communicated the order to them; some related in what a vile way it had been carried out under their eyes. All the evidence of these German soldiers was collected in a legal manner, under the sanction of an oath, and it is after reading their depositions that I wrote the order of the day.
The text of all this evidence was transmitted to all the French Embassies and Legations in foreign countries on the 24th of October, 1914. Every neutral wishing to clear his conscience is at liberty to obtain it from the representatives of the French Republic, who will certainly respond willingly.