SOME GERMAN ATROCITIES IN BELGIUM.
In December, 1914, a Committee was appointed by the British Government to inquire into the German outrages in Belgium and France. Under the Chairmanship of Lord Bryce, this Committee was composed of:—
The Rt. Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M. (Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, 1870; Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1886; Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster (with seat in Cabinet), 1892; President of Board of Trade, 1894; one of the British Members of the International Tribunal at The Hague; Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1905-6; His Majesty's Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Washington, 1907-12).
The Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, Bt., K.C., LL.D., D.C.L. (Judge of Admiralty Court of Cinque Ports since 1914; Editor of Law Reports since 1895; Chairman, Royal Commission on Public Records, 1910; Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence, Oxford, 1883-1903; Author of The Law of Torts, 1887; History of English Law, 1895.)
The Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C. (Solicitor-General, 1886-92).
Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C. (Professor of Law, Owen's College, Manchester (Principal, 1898-1904); Adviser to the Bombay University, 1913-14).
Mr. H. A. L. Fisher (Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University; Chichele Lecturer in Foreign History, 1911-12).
Mr. Harold Cox, M.A. (Editor, Edinburgh Review).
Sir Kenelm E. Digby, K.C., G.C.B. (Permanent Under-Secretary of State at Home Office, 1895-1903).
This eminent and impartial Tribunal, after carefully weighing the evidence (Cd. 7894 and Cd. 7895) came to the following grave conclusions:—
"(i) That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organised massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.
"(ii) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.
"(iii) That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being indeed part of a system of general terrorisation.
"(iv) That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White Flag.
"Sensible as they are of the gravity of these conclusions, the Committee conceive that they would be doing less than their duty if they failed to record them as fully established by the evidence. Murder, lust, and pillage prevailed over many parts of Belgium on a scale unparalleled in any war between civilised nations during the last three centuries."
The Report makes it plain that apart from the first outbreak of outrages intended to cow the Belgians into submission, fresh bursts of plunder and rapine took place on specific occasions when the Germans suffered defeat. Cowardly vengeance was thus wreaked on the innocent Belgian civilians for the defeat of German arms. For example, on August 25, 1914, the Belgian Army, sallying out from Antwerp, drove the enemy from Malines. The Germans promptly massacred and burnt at Louvain, "the signal for which was provided by shots exchanged between the German Army retreating after its repulse at Malines and some members of the German garrison of Louvain, who mistook their fellow-countrymen for Belgians."[109] Similarly when a successful sortie from Antwerp drove the Germans from Aerschot, they retaliated by a blood-vendetta upon the civil population.
The Germans have endeavoured to justify their brutal excesses by bringing counter-charges against Belgian civilians. For instance, the Chancellor of the German Empire, in a communication made to the press on September 2, 1914, and printed in the Nord Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, of September 21, said: "Belgian girls gouged out the eyes of the German wounded. Officials of Belgian cities have invited our officers to dinner, and shot and killed them across the table. Contrary to all international law, the whole civilian population of Belgium was called out, and after having at first shown friendliness carried on in the rear of our troops terrible warfare with concealed weapons. Belgian women cut the throats of soldiers whom they had quartered in their homes while they were sleeping."
Upon this Lord Bryce's Committee make the comment: "No evidence whatever seems to have been adduced to prove these tales."[110]
Of both individual and concerted acts of barbarity, the report teems—for example:—[111]
"It is clearly shown that many offences were committed against infants and quite young children. On one occasion children were even roped together and used as a military screen against the enemy, on another three soldiers went into action carrying small children to protect themselves from flank fire. A shocking case of the murder of a baby by a drunken soldier at Malines is thus recorded by one eye-witness and confirmed by another:—
"'One day when the Germans were not actually bombarding the town I left my house to go to my mother's house in High Street. My husband was with me. I saw eight German soldiers, and they were drunk. They were singing and making a lot of noise and dancing about. As the German soldiers came along the street I saw a small child, whether boy or girl I could not see, come out of a house. The child was about two years of age. The child came into the middle of the street so as to be in the way of the soldiers. The soldiers were walking in twos. The first line of two passed the child; one of the second line, the man on the left, stepped aside and drove his bayonet with both hands into the child's stomach, lifting the child into the air on his bayonet and carrying it away on his bayonet, he and his comrades still singing. The child screamed when the soldier struck it with his bayonet, but not afterwards.'"[112]