It is obviously with the idea of preventing their adversaries from attacking them that they take up their quarters in our monuments; these are to serve them as artistic bucklers, just as our compatriots are employed as living bucklers.
The violations of Article 55 are past counting. We will confine ourselves to mentioning a few in Brussels; they will give us some idea of the diversity of the transformations which our property has suffered at German hands. The offices of the Ministries are transformed into bedrooms for officers. The Palais des Académies has become a military hospital; God knows in what condition we shall find its libraries. In the Parc Royal of Brussels, in the centre of the city, they have installed an automobile depôt, a riding-track, and a rifle range; on the 28th October a shot fired from this range wounded a lady through the windows of the Schlobach magasin in the Rue Royale.
Article 56.
The property of local authorities, as well as that of institutions dedicated to public worship, charity, education, and to science and art, even when State property, shall be treated as private property.
Any seizure or destruction of, or wilful damage to, institutions of this character, historic monuments and works of science and art, is forbidden, and should be made the subject of legal proceedings.
The first paragraph of this Article has been scrupulously observed; the property of the communes, etc., has indeed been treated as private property has been treated: the latter has everywhere been sacked and looted, and the Germans have done the same to collective property.
As to the intentional character of these acts of vandalism, it is indubitable. How otherwise explain the fact that in numerous villages the church has been the prey of the flames, in many cases even when the surrounding houses have remained intact? A few examples will suffice. The village of Haecht was occupied on the 19th and 20th August. On the 24th the Belgians in Antwerp made a sortie which was repulsed. The Germans, infuriated, shot 17 civilians and pillaged all the houses, particularly remembering the wine in the cellars. Then the inhabitants were expelled. A fresh sortie of the Belgians took place from the 9th to the 13th September; at noon on the last day our troops fell back; in the afternoon the Germans set fire to the church and 41 houses. The strong-box of the church was broken open after the fire. The destruction of the monument did not strike them as sufficient, and they dynamited the whole on the 16th (or 17th) September. In the neighbouring village of Werchter, after the battle of the 25th and 26th August, they shot 6 civilians and burned 267 houses out of the 513 which formed the village. After the second fight, on the 15th September, they burned the church. In both villages most of the houses round the churches were spared; it will therefore be difficult for the Germans to pretend, as at Louvain, that the burning of these churches was an accident (Brandunglück) due to burning fragments carried by the wind (p. [220]). We have already (p. [73]) noted another more significant case, that of the chapel of the Béguinage of Termonde, which was alone burned, in the centre of the Béguinage, not a dwelling of which was touched.
Conclusions—The Famine in Belgium.
Germany had need, in the conflict with France, of all the men who passed through Belgium; also she could leave in Belgium only weak garrisons of the Landsturm. To safeguard them against possible attack on the part of the Belgian population, it was necessary to terrorize the latter to such a point that it no longer dared to stir. Such was the object of the carnage and incendiarism which marked the beginning of the campaign, as was frankly admitted by Herr Walter Blöm, adjutant to the Governor-General in Belgium (p. [84]). No doubt the massacres of Louvain, Andenne, Tamines, and Dinant, committed to order between the 19th and the 26th August, appeared insufficient, for a new series was organized between the 4th and 13th September.
At the news of this butchery a resounding cry of horror and indignation went up from all the nations of the earth. That the Belgian Army, on the field of battle, should have paid large tribute to the war unloosed upon us by Germany—that was to be expected, but no one would have dared to suppose that Germany, after participating in the second Hague Conference, would display towards our civil population such an implacable cruelty, such exterminating fury, as history has never recorded since the Thirty Years' War. But facts are facts; one must needs submit to the evidence; the German Army has destroyed our treasures of art and science, has shot down in cold blood, often by machine-gun fire, hosts of men, women, even old people and children; it has ordered the burning of thousands of houses; it has turned whole districts into deserts.
Still, some semblance of motive was necessary; with a mathematical regularity the pretext of "francs-tireurs" was alleged. "Man hat geschossen"—that was enough; immediately the neighbourhood was given over to massacre, pillage, and fire. Never was any inquiry made, no matter how summary. Yet when it was desired to show a foreigner of note—for example, Dr. Sven Hedin—how they proceeded in the matter of punishing "francs-tireurs," a regular Council of War was constituted ... which brought in a verdict of non-lieu (p. [78]). We defy the Germans to cite a single case in which a tribunal of this kind has sat before reprisals. In the few rare cases when witnesses, etc., have been questioned the examination has taken place after the firing of houses and the shooting of inhabitants. This is why we declare without the slightest reservation that not one single attack by civilians has been established by any kind of proof.