After robbing and burning the towns of northern France and Belgium they turned around and demanded an indemnity, having picked the victim’s pocket, they asked for his money. They robbed the priceless libraries to preserve the books. They drove, the vanquished victims into slavery to protect them from laziness, and raped woman to save her virginity. The French, English or American who rapes a woman, desecrates a church, or murders innocent women and children, knows he commits a crime—the German lacks such consciousness.
So, unchecked, uncontrolled, responsible to no one, they are wild beasts at large. Backed by an army of 11,000,000 men, they tried to overwhelm peace-loving Europe. They overran[overran] Luxemburg. They turned the garden of France into a desert. They could see in Belgium only the nearest road to France. Subject to no restraint, responsible to no one, their passion for power, for money, for lust, recognized no authority, contract, nor law.
Their ungovernable tempers became inflamed at the slightest opposition and they do not scruple to commit the most odious crimes upon the unfortunate people in their power. Repression, terrorism, theft, rape and murder are elevated into virtues and rewarded with honors. By brute force they override[override] decency, freedom, arbitration and liberty. Murderers at bay, they fight to keep from being executed.
And, as the German people were compelled to work for them in time of peace, now they must die for them in time of war.
Such is the German Government.
At The Hague Convention, 1907, the following were agreed to and signed by Germany.
ARTICLE 24. “It is forbidden to kill or wound an enemy who has dropped his arms or has no means of defense, and who surrenders at discretion.”
ARTICLE 46. “The honor and the rights of the people, the lives of the family, the private property must be respected.”
“August 23, 1914, at Gomery, Belgium, a German patrol entered the ambulance, fired upon the wounded, killed the doctor and shot the stretcher bearers.” Part of a deposition of Dr. Simon, in Red Cross Service, 10th Region.
“The night of the 22d (August, 1914), I found in the woods at 150 yards to the north of the crossroads, formed by the meeting of the large trench of Colonne with the road of Vaux de Palaneix to St. Remy, the bodies of French prisoners shot by the Germans. I saw thirty soldiers who had been gathered together in a little space, for the most part lying down, a few on their knees, and all mutilated the same way by being shot in the eye.” Affidavit of a captain of the 288th Infantry.