It was in sign of homage, and also of gratitude, that on the 22nd February, 1915, on the anniversary of American Independence, the Belgians wore in their buttonholes a medallion of the Stars and Stripes, while thousands of the citizens of Brussels left their cards at the hotel of His Excellency Mr. Brand H. Whitlock. Baron von Bissing spoke of this as childishness; at Liége German officers even snatched the American colours from women and young girls. Massacre and arson are more familiar to Kultur than gratitude.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] And also justified by the laws of warfare as affecting invasion. Moreover: "The rules which affect a levée en masse (a general rising of the people to repel invaders, without organization) should be generously interpreted. The first duty of a citizen is to defend his country, and provided he does so loyally he should not be treated as a marauder or criminal." The Germans could not at the outset know that there was no levée en masse.—(Trans.)
[15] The Germans have tried to persuade Rome that these priests were not assassinated but killed in battle.
[16] To give an idea of these accusations, it was said that in the cellars of a Louvain convent the corpses of fifty German soldiers were discovered, murdered by the monks.
[17] If organized and disciplined, the civic guards and francs-tireurs would have formed part of the Belgian forces, provided they wore a recognizable sign and bore arms openly.—(Trans.)
[18] We shall see later (p. [221]) that at Louvain Dr. Hedin was shamefully deceived by the military authorities who were guiding him through the city. It is this which makes us fear that there may also have been deceit in the case of the villagers tried as "francs-tireurs."
[19] Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege. Professor J. H. Morgan has published a translation, with an introduction (John Murray). For a comparison between German, French, and English usages see Frightfulness in Theory and Practice, by Charles Andler, ed. Bernard Miall (T. Fisher Unwin).
[20] They are all, with a truly German lack of originality, with the genuine intellectual slavishness of the "blonde beast," simply repeating the words of Clausewitz, as all German military philosophers have done for the best part of a century.—(Trans.)
[21] A perusal of Clausewitz, von Hartmann, and the Kriegsbrauch would have dispelled all doubt. None of these theories is new: how often does a German develop a new theory? This peculiarly bloodless, mechanically ferocious barbarism is nearly a century old. The French had seen it in action before.—(Trans.)