"Your fellow countrymen are told that German troops have burned Belgian villages and towns, but you are not told that young Belgian girls have put out the eyes of the defenseless wounded on the field of battle. Belgian women have cut the throats of our soldiers as they slept, men to whom they had given hospitality."
The final consecration of the rumor was given by the Kaiser himself. On September 8, 1914, he sent a cable to President Wilson, in which he repeated these allegations against the Belgian people and clergy. Of course, he knew better, just as his Chancellor and General Staff and his officers knew better. It was all part of the play to charge the enemy with things akin to what the Germans themselves were doing. That makes it an open question, with "much to be said on both sides." That creates neutrality on the part of non-investigating nations, like the United States.
But what he and his military clique failed to see was that they had discharged a boomerang. The comeback was swift. The German Protestants began to "agitate" against the German Roman Catholics. The old religious hates revived; a new religious war was on. Now, this was the last thing desired by the military power. An internal strife would weaken war-making power abroad. Here was Germany filled with lies told by the military clique. Those lies were creating internal dissension. So the same military clique had to go to work and deny the very lies they had manufactured. They did not deny them out of any large love for the Belgian and French people. They denied them because of the anti-Catholic feeling inside Germany which the lies had stirred up. German official inquiries have established the falsity of the atrocity charges leveled against the Belgians.
A German priest, R. P. Bernhard Duhr, S. J., published a pamphlet-book, "Der Lügengeist im Völkekrieg. Kriegsmärchen gesammelt von Bernhard Duhr, S. J.," (München-Regensburg, Verlagsanstat, Vorm. G. J. Manz, Buch und Kunstdruckei, 1915). Its title means "The spirit of falsehood in a people's war. Legends that spring up in war-time." His book was written as a defense of Roman Catholic interests and for the sake of the internal peace of his own country. This book I have seen. It is a small pamphlet of 72 pages, with a red cover. The widest circulation through the German Empire was given to this proof of the falsity of the charges laid to the Allies. Powerful newspapers published the denials and ceased to publish the slanders. Generals issued orders that persons propagating the calumnies, whether orally, by picture or in writing, would be followed up without pity. So died the legend of atrocities by Belgians. The mighty power of the Roman Catholic Church had stretched out its arm and touched the Kaiser and his war lords to silence.
The charges are treachery, incitement to murder and battle, traitorous attacks, the hiding of machine guns in church towers, the murder, poisoning and mutilation of the wounded. The story ran that the civil population, incited by the clergy, entered actively into hostilities, attacking troops, signaling to the Allies the positions occupied by the Germans. The favorite and most popular allegation was that women, old people and children committed atrocities on wounded Germans, putting out their eyes, cutting off their fingers, ears and noses; and that priests urged them on to do these things and played an active part in perpetrating the crimes. Putting out the eyes became the prize story of all the collection.
The German priest, Duhr, runs down each lie to its source, and then prints the official denial. Thus, a soldier of the Landwehr sends the story to Oberhausen (in the Rhine provinces):
"At Libramont the Catholic priest and the burgomaster, after a sermon, have distributed bullets to the civil population, with which the inhabitants fire on German soldiers. A boy of thirteen years has put out the eyes of a wounded officer, and women, forty to fifty years old, have mutilated our wounded soldiers. The women, the priest and the burgomaster have been all together executed at Trèves. The boy has been condemned to a long term in the home of correction."
The German commander of the garrison at Trèves writes:
"Five Belgian francs-tireurs who had been condemned to death by the court martial were shot at Trèves. A sixth Belgian, still rather young, has been condemned to imprisonment for many years. Among the condemned there were neither women, nor priests nor burgomaster."