Pillage.
Article 28.
The giving over to pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, is forbidden.
Article 46.
Family honour and rights, individual life, and private property as well as religious convictions and worship, must be respected.
Article 47
Pillage is expressly forbidden.
"Family honour and rights!" The cases of rape prove the respect of the German army for these prescriptions!
"Individual life!" By the end of September 1914 the Germans had killed more civilians than soldiers. This simple statement says more than could a long exposition.
"Private property!" Theft and pillage are phenomena so commonplace that the inhabitants no longer insist upon them; if they mention the subject it is to say: "The Germans behaved well here; they only took all we had." We shall therefore confine ourselves to citing a few cases particularly typical of the German mentality.
It is indisputable that the conflagrations started under the pretext of chastising "francs-tireurs" were in reality designed to conceal the pillage committed by the German army. This was certainly the case at Aerschot (4th Report) and at Louvain. The officers who gave orders to start these fires were therefore accomplices of the pillaging soldiery. For that matter, how could they have disavowed the thefts of their men, seeing that they themselves largely took part in the scramble? Whole trains left Brussels, Louvain, Malines, and Verviers for Germany, loaded with "war booty for officers." During their journey to Belgium, Herren Koester and Noske, on the 23rd September, at Hubesthal, saw numerous trains passing which were laden with war booty (Kriegsfahrten, p. 8); there were at that time no serious battles either in France or in Belgium, so that there was no capture of war booty in the Western sense of the term.[28] The trains observed by the Socialist authors could only have been carrying the fruits of pillage; they came probably from Malines, which the Germans at this time were scrupulously emptying, as well as the numerous châteaux of the neighbourhood.
Not a district has been visited by the Germans that has not been totally despoiled. Of course, the silver was taken first. One officer, after plundering the entire store of silver of a villa at Francorchamps, confided to a neighbour that he was going to have it melted down in Germany, with the exception of one spoon, which he would keep as a "souvenir." Is it not typical and delightful, this German cult of the "souvenir" as a veneer of sentimentality on a basis of rapacity? According to the definition given by the Kaiser, this officer displayed his civilization but not his Kultur.
Another "requisition" of plate. In the railway station of Mons, towards the middle of February 1915, a merchant unloading a truck-load of merchandise had his attention attracted by a coffin which was being removed from a neighbouring van; suddenly he heard a metallic clink: the bottom of the coffin had given way, and an avalanche of spoons, forks, napkin-rings, and other articles of silver tumbled out!
Nothing is sacred to the Huns. They smash the tabernacles, treasuries, and poor-boxes of the churches as readily as the coffers of the People's Banks (Maisons du Peuple). At Auvelois they seized upon 43,000 frs. in the Maison du Peuple, this being the entire capital of the Socialist Young Guard, the Freethinkers, the newspaper En Avant, the Miners' Union (syndicat), and other mutual aid societies.