It is useful to observe that these declarations have been made spontaneously, since it is obvious that we were powerless to exert any pressure on the Germans. They have, therefore, nothing in common with those which the Germans have forced the Belgian wounded or prisoners to sign.
The Pretended Massacres of German Civilians.
There remain the famous massacres of Germans in Brussels, Antwerp, Liége, etc. According to witnesses "worthy of credence," inoffensive Germans, even women and children, were killed and martyred in various Belgian cities. At Liége alone more than 150 persons, of whom three-fourths were women and children, were said to have lost their lives.
As to Liége, we have inquired of inhabitants of the city, several of whom are closely connected with the administration of justice; no one had any knowledge of any such occurrences. They have therefore been invented, lock, stock, and barrel, by the "witnesses worthy of credence," and we defy the Germans to mention the name of a single one of these 150 "victims."
At Antwerp we can oppose, to the testimony of those who were "present" on the occasion of murders and serious assaults upon German women, the official report, which admits that shops were broken into by the populace, but which at the same time attests that no German was wounded. Let us add that the German Weber was not assassinated, but is quietly living in Antwerp.
Let us proceed to the doings in Brussels; and let us quote, from Greueltaten, the most serious occurrences there mentioned. We have a story, based on hearsay, which tells, of course, of gouged-out eyes, as well as three reports of ocular witnesses. The first is that of a witness "worthy of credence" who saw a child thrown from a window and a woman dragged by the hair until she was insensible; he also witnessed the murder of a German druggist, one Frankenberg, who was betrayed by his own wife, a Belgian. The second witness is the correspondent of the Wolff Agency. He saw only what the people of Brussels themselves witnessed: that is, that the populace pillaged the German shops and cafés on the 4th and 5th August. But he had not been able to discover any acts of violence against the person; those he mentions, in a couple of words, without insisting on them, had been related to him; but he does not even add that the witnesses were "worthy of credence."
Finally we have a priest, who complains that he was arrested as a spy and beaten by the gendarmes. Perhaps he was a spy; in any case, not a few German spies disguised as priests have been discovered in Belgium.
If we confine ourselves to the really serious occurrences, to the cases in which Germans have been killed by the populace, we find that as against some 155 anonymous cases, which cannot be verified, there are only two in which names are mentioned. These names are Weber and Frankenberg. Now these two cases are apocryphal. Herr Weber has quietly reopened his hotel in Antwerp; Herr Frankenberg continues to breathe the air at Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels. Compare with these two cases the three names of places mentioned in Die Wahrheit (p. 101).
Preventive and Repressive Measures taken by the Belgian Authorities.