[A]. This quotation is second-hand; I have taken it from the Au-dessus[Au-dessus] de la Mélée of Romain Rolland. We know that he belongs to the small number of those men, if I may dare call them so, who at the moment when their family is massacred, their house set on fire, their old father shot, their sister violated, isolate themselves in a tower of ivory, from the top of which, looking on at these crimes, and striving to hold an even balance between the assassins and the victims, they proclaim themselves “Above the conflict.”... This state of mind is at least a guarantee to us of the accuracy of the expressions which he quotes from the profession of faith of his “brother” Thomas Mann.
And this criticism, addressed by Maximilian Harden to the German Government, after having treated as lies their distracted efforts to excuse the violation of Belgium neutrality:—
“What is the use of all this fuss?... Might creates right for us. Does a strong man ever submit to the foolish pretensions or the sentimentality of a band of weaklings?”
You know, my dear Campbell, the spirit in which we began this war—the same spirit as that of our English friends. For our part we were governed by respect for treaties, for international agreements, for the laws of war, for the rights of nations, for everything by which men, in their bloody struggles one against the other, had tried to raise themselves little by little above the level of wild beasts. Since the war had come, since it had been forced upon us by the enemy—who, after an elaborate preparation, had chosen his own time—we wished, while engaging in it and carrying it through, to minimize its calamities as much as possible, by strictly observing the articles of agreement by which the nations had mutually bound themselves to consider the wounded as res sacra, not to maltreat civilians, not to bombard open towns, and so on. We have paid dearly for the chivalrous illusions which we had at the outset.
Let me give you two examples of the state of mind which prevailed in France at that moment.
The Boches—I say it not to justify but to explain their acts of murder—pretended, as you remind us in the course of your book, that civilians had fired upon them. It is a cynical falsehood. Since the beginning of August, 1914, I have administered the Department of Meurthe et Moselle, and I have made a searching investigation in all my communes. I affirm that no non-combatant, no man not regularly classed in the ranks of the army, has ever fired on the enemy. Never? I exaggerate. There has been one case. One day, in 1914, a German aeroplane flew over the plains of Lorraine; it dropped murderous bombs at random on the peaceable population of certain rural communes. On seeing this, the Mayor of one of these communes, close to Nancy, lost his sangfroid, armed himself with an old fowling-piece, and began to fire at the aeroplane. There was certainly some excuse for him, was there not? But I considered that he was at fault. Assassins must not be killed by passers-by; it is the business of the gendarmes to arrest them. In war it is the army’s business—it is strong enough for the job—to punish the enemy. Consequently the action of this mayor called for censure. I did not hesitate to make an order against this honest but over-strung magistrate; in virtue of the powers conferred upon me by the law, I suspended him from his functions. This order was universally approved; it interpreted the unanimous wish of all civilians not to provide any pretext for German brutality.
I take another example of our standard of behaviour from the story of Badonviller. This Lorraine commune was one of the first that suffered the horrors of Kultur. It was entered by the Germans at the beginning of the month of August. Because our troops had met them with a stubborn resistance which cost them dear, they were mad with fury when they entered the little town; it was there that they first used the special implements with which their soldiers had been supplied for methodical and “scientific” house-burnings; they destroyed, with fire applied by hand, half the commune. That was not enough for them; they shot down the people in the streets like rabbits, they killed women and children on the threshold of their doors. The mayor, M. Benoit, a much-respected business man, saw his young wife assassinated before his eyes; he saw his house burnt, and was himself the object of the worst forms of violence. These scenes of outrage only lasted for a short time. On the next day the French troops retook Badonviller by a vigorous effort, and, after a hot pursuit, made a number of prisoners. These prisoners were brought to the square in front of the Mairie. They were some of the brute-beasts with human faces, who, a few hours before, had burnt the commune and bathed it in blood. The houses to which they had set fire were still smoking. The bodies of their innocent victims were not yet buried. A crowd of infuriated peasants gathered round them, shaking their fists at them, and abusing them with angry cries. The situation was becoming awkward, when the mayor arrived. M. Benoit had just seen his poor wife placed in her coffin. He had no longer a home. His house was a mass of smoking ashes. He was ruined. His heart was broken. He drew near the scene. The prisoners thought that their last hour had come, and turned livid with terror.
But M. Benoit is a Mayor of France. He knows the traditions of our country. He respects the law. He forced a way through the crowd. With a single gesture he called for silence. He reminded them that these men were prisoners, that prisoners were protected by international agreements, and that no one had a right to lay a finger on them—no, not even on them. He put himself in front of them. He made a rampart for them with his body. He declared that while he lived not a hair of the head of one of these prisoners of war should be touched. And the peasants, mastered by their sense of duty, stifled their cries of anger, unclenched their fists, and respectfully moved away and went into their houses.