HOW THE GERMANS MAKE WAR.
It has often been asked what would happen if savages were armed with the products of modern science and with the intelligence to use them. Germany has answered the question. Every resource of science lies at the German command; the chemist, the physicist, the metallurgist, have all worked in this war to place the most effective tools of destruction in the Germans' hands, and to satisfy their ambitions they have shut the gates of mercy on mankind. The Official Handbook of Instructions issued to Officers of the German Army by the German General Staff urges the "exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery and the like) to the prejudice of the enemy." This Official Handbook says:—
"A war conducted with energy cannot be directed merely against the combatants of the Enemy State and the positions they occupy, but it will and must in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material resources of the latter."[64]
The German Emperor, addressing the troops which he sent to take part in the International Expedition in China in 1900, said:—
"When you come into contact with the enemy strike him down. Quarter is not to be given. Prisoners are not to be made. Whoever falls into your hands is into your hands delivered. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns, under their King Attila, made for themselves a name which still appears imposing in tradition, so may the name of German become known in China in such a way that never again will a Chinaman dare to look askance at a German. The blessing of the Lord be with you. Give proof of your courage and the Divine blessing will be attached to your colours."
At midnight on August 4, Great Britain declared war on Germany for violating the neutrality of Belgium, and it will be remembered that earlier in the day the German Imperial Chancellor had stated that German troops "perhaps are already on Belgian soil," and that Germany could only have one thought—how she was to "hack her way through." Simultaneously with the thought, came action. What was actually taking place is described, by Lord Bryce's Committee of Inquiry, in the following words[65]:—
"On August 4th the roads converging upon Liège from north-east, east, and south were covered with German Death's Head Hussars and Uhlans pressing forward to seize the passage over the Meuse. From the very beginning of the operations the civilian population of the villages lying upon the line of the German advance were made to experience the extreme horrors of war. 'On the 4th of August,' says one witness, 'at Herve' (a village not far from the frontier), 'I saw at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans, these were the first German troops I had seen. They were followed by a German officer and some soldiers in a motor car. The men in the car called out to a couple of young fellows who were standing about 30 yards away. The young men, being afraid, ran off, and then the Germans fired and killed one of them named D——.'
"The murder of this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighbourhood, to the indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the organised military execution of batches of selected males. Thus at Herve some 50 men escaping from the burning houses were seized, taken outside the town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet west of Herve, 40 men were shot. In one household alone the father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt....
"The burning of the villages in this neighbourhood and the wholesale slaughter of civilians, such as occurred at Herve, Micheroux, and Soumagne, appear to be connected with the exasperation caused by the resistance of Fort Fléron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la Chapelle to Liège. Enraged by the losses which they had sustained, suspicious of the temper of the civilian population, and probably thinking that by exceptional severities at the outset they could cow the spirit of the Belgian nation, the German officers and men speedily accustomed themselves to the slaughter of civilians."
As a German soldier's diary, examined by Lord Bryce's Committee, says:—"The inhabitants without exception were brought out and shot. This shooting was heart-breaking as they all knelt down and prayed, but that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the green grass and slept for ever."[66]
During the invasion of Belgium and France, German procedure was almost the same in all cases. "They advance along a road, shooting inoffensive passers-by—particularly bicyclists—as well as peasants working in the fields. In the towns or villages where they stop, they begin by requisitioning food and drink, which they consume till intoxicated. Sometimes from the interior of deserted houses they let off their rifles at random, and declare that it was the inhabitants who fired. Then the scenes of fire, murder, and especially pillage, begin, accompanied by acts of deliberate cruelty, without respect to sex or age. Even where they pretend to know the actual person guilty of the acts they allege, they do not content themselves with executing him summarily, but they seize the opportunity to decimate the population, pillage the houses, and then set them on fire. After a preliminary attack and massacre they shut up the men in the church, and then order the women to return to their houses and to leave their doors open all night."[67]