Another manifestation of the scatological mania: Many hundreds of German Army surgeons met in congress during the Easter holidays of 1915, in Brussels. On the last day of the congress, Wednesday, the 7th April, a banquet was held, on the premises of the Palais de Justice. On the Thursday morning it was discovered that the surgeons had left souvenirs behind them; they had evacuated the surplus of food and liquor consumed by the three natural orifices, and had chosen for their purpose the most beautiful halls of the Palais. Frankly, we should not have expected this from the doctors; it is true, however, that they were German military doctors.
A man amuses himself as he can—or, to put it more plainly, according to his mentality. After all, these beastly habits, disgusting as they are, are not those whose results are most disagreeable.
There are others who seek violent contrasts. Thus, at Houtem, while the church was burning, on the 13th September, 1914, a military band was playing its liveliest selections at a few yards' distance. At Monceau-sur-Sambre, on the 22nd August, officers were playing the piano in the château of the demoiselles Bourriez, on the Trazegnies road, when the soldiers had already lit the upper floors. At Louvain, on the 25th August, 1914, in a café near the railway-station, soldiers set fire to the upper floor without warning the proprietor, and remained below, where they kept a mechanical piano going. They were thus able to enjoy the despairing expressions of the inmates when they discovered that they could no longer hope to save anything.
2. Physical Tortures.
We shall not here refer to the innumerable cases of torture cited in the Reports of the Commission of Inquiry, nor those reported in Nothomb's La Belgique Martyre. We will confine ourselves to facts of which we have personal knowledge. The Germans will, of course, seek to deny them. So it is as well to begin by a declaration of their own. Vorwärts, on the 23rd August, 1914 (the very day on which the chief atrocities were committed in the Dinant district), protested against the proposal made by a German officer, not to kill francs-tireurs outright, but to wound them mortally and leave them to die slowly in agony, while forbidding any one to go to their assistance. What to our mind is even graver than the proposition itself is the fact that the Deutsches Offizierblatt accepted it as quite a natural thing.
It is clear that where they are proved, the cruelties committed by our enemies must be denounced, and that everything must be done to prevent their repetition. However, we must not allow the recital of these cruelties to force us to resort to a sort of policy of retaliation, or lead us to wash out what others have done with innocent blood.
What are we to say when we find an organ like the Deutsches Offizierblatt expressing its sympathy for the following proposition: The "brutes" captured as francs-tireurs should not be shot outright, but should be fired upon and left to their fate, all succour being prevented? What again are we to say when it is added that the destruction, in reprisal, of whole localities even does not represent "a sufficient vengeance for the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier assassinated"? These are the imaginings of bloodthirsty fanatics, and we are ashamed to perceive that men capable of speaking thus exist in our nation. Such expressions, even if they are not carried into action, are truly of a nature to place our struggle in an unfavourable light all the world over.
(Vorwärts, 23rd August, 1914.)
The Fate of the Valkenaers Family.