What do you think of the additional suffering inflicted on ladies condemned to several weeks' imprisonment for having conveyed letters from Belgian soldiers to the parents of those soldiers, or for speaking a little too boldly before an officer, or for some other crime of a like nature? It is a delicate idea to shut them up in common with half a score of other prisoners, in a room containing no convenience but a pail furnished with a cover. They are lucky if the company does not include some very dubious characters.
We need not insist: these are aggravations, not serious at bottom, but their irritating nature can only be fully appreciated when one suffers them daily, or hears them described by friends or relatives who have been their victims.
After the examples of collective and impersonal malfeasance dictated by some high officer desirous of justifying the fair fame of Kultur, we will take those cases in which the personality of the author clearly reveals itself, and, let us say at once, in which this personality instantly excites the disgust and indignation of all merely civilized persons.
The Germans reached Capelle-au-Bois on the 30th August. But on the 31st they were repulsed by Belgian troops. On the 4th September they returned in force and forced back the Belgians; not without difficulty, however, for they had many killed, of whom nineteen were buried at Capelle-au-Bois. With the Belgian troops as they withdrew went all the inhabitants of the village, leaving behind them only a few helpless old people. In this all but empty village, where no one was left to offer them the least resistance, the Germans hastened to kill several inhabitants—four, it is believed. Then, under the orders of Captain von Puttkammer, the strong-boxes were broken open, the objects of value packed and sent to Germany, and the wines carried to the bank of the canal and into the houses occupied by the officers. On the evening of the 4th September the troops set fire to the village. Thanks to incendiary pastilles and benzine pumps, the fire spread rapidly; 235 houses were burned of the three hundred which formed the heart of the village. So far all was as usual; but here is the characteristic fact. The better to enjoy the spectacle the troops spent the evening on the bank of the canal; there they organized a little orgie, over eight hundred empty bottles being afterwards discovered.
At the same period the Germans established a few miles further to the west, at Londerzeel, pillaged and then burned the house of the notary, M. Van Hover. They had tried in vain to open the safe, so, furious at their failure, they poured benzine into it and set fire to it, procuring at least the satisfaction of knowing that all the papers would be reduced to ashes.
What are we to think of the officer who, lodging in the house of a curé in the province of Antwerp, found it amusing to tear pages from the books which formed his host's library, or to gum them together, so that in seeking to separate them the owner himself would tear them? Note that it was no clown who devised this kindly pastime, for he took care to choose, in the Latin books, the pages bearing the most important passages.[48]
Filthy Amusements.
Others preferred to defile things. When in August and September 1914 we were told that the Germans were amusing themselves by depositing ordure in their beds we refused to believe in such perversion. But a walk through Eppeghem, Sempst, and Weerde was enough to enlighten us. Not only had they emptied all the houses, rich or poor; not only had they taken the trouble to smash into quite small pieces all the glass and crockery they could not carry away; not only, in the grocers' shops, had they delighted themselves by mixing snuff with the butter, and tacks with the cloves, and pepper with the flour, but all the bedding bore the malodorous traces of their visit.
Let it not be imagined that this mania of beastliness is peculiar to the common soldiers. The officers who spent the night of the 19th August, 1915, at Cortenburg, between Louvain and Brussels, were infected by the same Kultur. In a certain house they carefully laid the table in the dining-room, without forgetting the serviettes, and then deposited a souvenir on every plate. In another house in Cortenburg they chose, as a receptacle, the tall hat of the householder. In the château of Malderen (Brabant), having taken all that pleased them and broken the rest into small pieces, they opened a card-table, deposited their excrement there, and carefully closed it again.