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It was to the discipline rather than the want of discipline in the Army that these outrages, which we are obliged to describe as systematic, were due, and the special official notices posted on certain houses that they were not to be destroyed show the fate which had been decreed for the others which were not so marked.
A few German Officers showed Feelings of Humanity.
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The Committee gladly record the instances where the evidence shows that humanity had not wholly disappeared from some members of the German Army, and that they realised that the responsible heads of that organisation were employing them, not in war, but in butchery. "I am merely executing orders, and I should be shot if I did not execute them," said an officer to a witness at Louvain. At Brussels another officer said: "I have not done one hundredth part of what we have been ordered to do by the High German military authorities."
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A humane German officer, witnessing the ruin of Aerschot, exclaimed in disgust: "I am a father myself, and I cannot bear this. It is not war, but butchery."
Drink Responsible for many of the Worst Outrages.
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