On the 4th of August, too, the Germans shot peaceful citizens at Visé, when the 2nd battalion of the 12th regiment of the line, under Major Collyns, had the audacity to resist them. Of course they pretended that the civilians took part in the fighting. A few days later they burned the church and the greater part of the town.
One sees plainly from these, and too many other examples, what was the object of our enemies: (a) They wished to terrorize the population, in order to make them more amenable to requisitions and demands of all kinds; (b) they wished to make their own troops believe that in fighting the Belgians—which they at first did with great unwillingness—they were merely defending themselves against treacherous attacks; (c) they wished to multiply opportunities of pillage; (d) finally, perhaps, they reckoned that by displaying to the Belgian Government the horrors to which its first refusal had exposed the country, they would induce it to reconsider its position and could obtain from it a free passage.
Were there any "Francs-tireurs"?
It would be impossible at this moment to state that the Belgians never, at any point of the frontier, fired upon the invaders. Let us remark, moreover, that if they did they would have been, from the purely human point of view, perfectly excusable.[14] What! here is Germany, who, pretending to be in a state of legitimate defence, falls unawares upon an inoffensive third party! And this third party had no right to oppose force to violence! In all logic, was it not Belgium that was in a state of legitimate defence; was it not for Belgium that all means were good? And notice, please, that it was not against an imagined and imaginary menace that we were defending ourselves: the Germans had most undeniably invaded Belgium. Would it have been astonishing if the Belgians, exasperated by this unspeakable aggression, had seized their rifles? In sane justice, one could not regard such action as a grievance; on the contrary. Does this mean that we believe in the story of civilians attacking the German army? Most certainly not; because we know from reliable sources that in every case where it has been possible to hold an inquiry, this inquiry has shown that the "francs-tireurs" were merely the pretext; the real motive for all the devastation and massacre was the desire to terrorize the population. It is, therefore, in a fashion entirely theoretical, and with the most express reserves, that we admit, in default of opportunity to investigate, in each case, the affirmations of our enemies, that in some cases, certainly extremely rare, isolated civilians, or small groups of civilians, may have been taken with arms in their hands. But our enemies will please admit also that the attitude of these civilians would have been amply excused by the more than brutal fashion in which the Germans behaved from the very first moments of the war. Let us add that when one erects terror into a system, as the Germans do, one should understand the defensive reflexes of the victims.
What were the rights of our enemies in these exceptional cases? They could, as they themselves proclaim, have shot the individual offenders, and, for once in a way, have burned their houses. But nothing in the world could justify the executions en masse and the wholesale burnings to which the Germans surrendered themselves.
The Obsession of the "Franc-tireur" in the German Army.
One point at first remained obscure to us in the German "reprisals": how did the German officers induce their men to commit this horrible carnage? Very simply: their minds were worked upon beforehand; they were crammed with legends of francs-tireurs dating from the war of 1870-71, and were made to believe that the Belgian population was revoltingly brutal. So as soon as they set foot on our territory they expected to be attacked by civilians, and, very naturally, prepared to sell their lives dearly.
Nothing is more typical in this respect than the collection of soldiers' letters published for the edification of the German nation in Der Deutsche Krieg in Feldpostbriefen.—I. Lüttich, Namur, Antwerpen. In more than half is there mention of "francs-tireurs"; but scarcely ever does the writer speak of having himself seen them. Read, for example, the first letter (that is No. 2 in the volume, for Letter No. 1 is not a soldier's letter). The writer, an officer, asserts that during the attack on the forts of Liége, on the night of the 6th of August, the night was so dark that it was impossible to distinguish friends from enemies, and that the Germans were firing on one another. Nevertheless, as they were fired on, and as they saw three men running, they immediately shot them as "francs-tireurs." During this same night their baggage-column having been surprised (he does not say by whom), a village was burned and the inhabitants were shot.
The whole mentality of the German soldier in respect of civilians is reflected in this letter; it is so dark that the Germans fire on one another, but that does not prevent them from recognizing that those attacking them are "francs-tireurs," even though their men are "falling en masse," which excludes all idea of francs-tireurs.