German Atrocities: An Official Investigation

by J. H. Morgan

A visit to Senlis in the course of the same tour fully confirmed all that the French Commission has already reported as to the cruel devastation wrought by the Germans in that unhappy town. The main street was one silent quarry of ruined houses burnt by the hands of the German soldiers, and hardly a soul was to be seen. Even cottages and concierges’ lodges had been set on fire. I have seen few sights more pitiful and none more desolate. Towns further east, such as Sermaizes, Nomeny, Gerbevillers, were razed to the ground with fire and sword and are as the Cities of the Plain.

Bestiality of German Officers and Men.

Before I leave the subject of the treatment of private property by the German troops, I should like to draw the attention of the reader to some unpleasant facts which throw a baneful light on the temper of German officers and men. If one thing is more clearly established than another by my inquiries among the officers of our Staff and divisional commands, it is that châteaux or private houses used as the head-quarters of German officers were frequently found to have been left in a state of bestial pollution, which can only be explained by gross drunkenness or filthy malice. Whichever be the explanation, the fact remains that, while to use the beds and the upholstery of private houses as a latrine is not an atrocity, it indicates a state of mind sufficiently depraved to commit one. Many of these incidents, related to me by our own officers from their own observations, are so disgusting that they are unfit for publication. They point to deliberate defilement.

The public has been shocked by the evidence, accepted by the Committee as genuine, which tells of such mutilations of women and children as only the Kurds of Asia Minor had been thought capable of perpetrating. But the Committee were fully justified in accepting it—they could not do otherwise—and they have by no means published the whole. Pathologists can best supply the explanation of these crimes. I have been told by such that it is not at all uncommon in cases of rape or sexual excess to find that the criminal, when satiated by lust, attempts to murder or mutilate his victim. This is presumably the explanation—if one can talk of explanation—of outrages which would otherwise be incredible. The Committee hint darkly at perverted sexual instinct. Cases of sodomy and of the rape of little children did undoubtedly occur on a very large scale. Some of the worst things have never been published. This is not the time for mincing one’s words, but for plain speech. Disgusting though it is, I therefore do not hesitate to place on record an incident at Rebais related to me by the Mayor of Coulommiers in the presence of several of his fellow-townsmen with corroborative detail. A respectable woman in that town was seized by some Uhlans who intended to ravish her, but her condition made rape impossible. What followed is better described in French:

“Mme. H——, cafetière à Rebais, mise nue par une patrouille allemande, obligée de parcourir ainsi toute sa maison, chassée dans la rue et obligée de regarder les cadavres de soldats anglais. Les allemands lui barbouillent la figure avec le sang de ses regles.”

It is almost needless to say that the woman went mad. There is very strong reason to suspect that young girls were carried off to the trenches by licentious German soldiery, and there abused by hordes of savages and licentious men. People in hiding in the cellars of houses have heard the voices of women in the hands of German soldiers crying all night long until death or stupor ended their agonies. One of our officers, a subaltern in the sappers, heard a woman’s shrieks in the night coming from behind the German trenches near Richebourg l’Avoué; when we advanced in the morning and drove the Germans out, a girl was found lying naked on the ground “pegged out” in the form of a crucifix. I need not go on with this chapter of horrors. To the end of time it will be remembered, and from one generation to another, in the plains of Flanders, in the valleys of the Vosges, and on the rolling fields of the Marne, the oral tradition of men will perpetuate this story of infamy and wrong.

Conclusion.

I should say that in the above summary I have confined myself to the result of the inquiries I made at General Head-quarters and in the area of our occupation, and have not attempted to summarise the evidence I had previously taken from the British officers and soldiers at the base, as the latter may be left to speak for itself in the depositions already published by the Committee. The object of the summary is to show how far independent inquiries on the spot go to confirm it. The testimony of our soldiers as to the reign of terror which they found prevailing on their arrival in all the places from which they drove the enemy out was amply confirmed by these subsequent and local investigations.

It will, of course, be understood that these inquiries of mine were limited in scope and can by no means claim to be exhaustive. For one thing, I was the only representative of the Home Office sent to France for this purpose; for another, I did not become attached to General Head-quarters until the beginning of February, and before that time little or nothing had been done in the way of systematic inquiry by the Staff, whose officers had other and more pressing duties to perform. By that time the testimony to many grave incidents, especially in the field, had perished with those who witnessed them and they remained but a sombre memory. The hearsay evidence of these things which was sometimes all that was left made an impression on my mind as deep as it was painful, but it would have been contrary to the rules of evidence, to which I have striven to conform, for me to take notice of it.

Two things clearly emerge from this observation. One is that had there been from the beginning of the campaign a regular system of inquiry at General Head-quarters into these things, pari passu with their occurrence, the volume of evidence, great though it is, would have been infinitely greater; the other, that, as there is only too much reason to suppose that with the growing vindictiveness of the enemy things will be worse before they are better, the case for the establishment of such a system throughout the continuance of the War is one that calls for serious consideration.