Plate 12.
VII
H. M. the German Emperor, in ratifying the Hague Convention of 1907 agreed (Article 23) “that it is forbidden ... (c) to kill or wound an enemy, who having laid down his arms and having no means of self-defence, gives himself up as a prisoner; (d) to declare that no quarter will be given”.
Has the German Army respected these conventions? In the French and Belgian reports, evidence is plentiful resembling the following which comes from a Frenchman captain in the 288th Infantry: “On the evening of the 22nd I learnt that in the wood a hundred and fifty metres from the cross-roads formed by the intersection of the great trench at Calonne and the road from Vaux-lès-Palameix to St Rémy there were some dead bodies of French soldiers who had been shot by the Germans.
I went there, and saw some thirty soldiers in a small space, for the most part lying down, some however on their knees and all having the same kind of wound, a gun-shot in the ear. Only one, very severely wounded was able to speak. He told me the Germans had, before leaving, ordered them to lie down, then had killed them by a shot through the head; that he had been spared on telling them he was the father of three small children. Their brainpans had been blown some distance away, the guns broken at the stock were scattered here and there, and the blood had so bespattered the bushes that as I came out of the wood the front of my cape was all smeared with blood; it was a real charnel-house.”
I have quoted this man’s testimony, not to rely on it as evidence but merely to make clear the nature of my indictment; as for justifying it I shall take care not to depart from the rule I have laid down to resort to German sources of information only.
Here is an order of the day given on the 26th August by General Stenger commanding the 58th German Brigade to his troops:
Von heute ab werden keine Gefangene mehr gemacht. Sämtliche Gefangene werden niedergemacht. Verwundete ob mit Waffen oder Wehrlos niedergemacht. Gefangene auch in grösseren 6 geschlossenen Formationen werden niedergemacht. Es bleibe kein Feind lebend hinter uns.