History of the World War

by Jr. Francis A. March; Richard J. Beamish

1. That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.

2. That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.

3. That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German army, that elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being, indeed, part of a system of general terrorization.

4. That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the white flag.

The Bryce Commission's report on the destruction of Dinant is an example of testimony laid before them. It follows:

"A clear statement of the outrages at Dinant, which many travelers will recall as a singularly picturesque town on the Meuse, is given by one witness, who says that the Germans began burning houses in the Rue St. Jacques on the 21st of August, and that every house in the street was burned. On the following day an engagement took place between the French and the Germans, and the witness spent the whole day in the cellar of a bank with his wife and children. On the morning of the 23d, about 5 o'clock, firing ceased, and almost immediately afterward a party of Germans came to the house. They rang the bell and began to batter at the door and windows. The witness' wife went to the door and two or three Germans came in. The family were ordered out into the street. There they found another family, and the two families were driven with their hands above their heads along the Rue Grande. All the houses in the street were burning.

"The party was eventually put into a forge where there were a number of other prisoners, about a hundred in all, and were kept there from 11 A. M. till 2 P. M. They were then taken to the prison. There they were assembled in a courtyard and searched. No arms were found. They were then passed through into the prison itself and put into cells. The witness and his wife were separated from each other. During the next hour the witness heard rifle shots continually and noticed in the corner of a courtyard leading off the row of cells the body of a young man with a mantle thrown over it. He recognized the mantle as having belonged to his wife. The witness' daughter was allowed to go out to see what had happened to her mother, and the witness himself was allowed to go across the courtyard half an hour afterward for the same purpose. He found his wife lying on the floor in a room. She had bullet wounds in four places but was alive and told her husband to return to the children and he did so.

"About 5 o'clock in the evening, he saw the Germans bringing out all the young and middle-aged men from the cells, and ranging their prisoners, to the number of forty, in three rows in the middle of the courtyard. About twenty Germans were drawn up opposite, but before anything was done there was a tremendous fusillade from some point near the prison and the civilians were hurried back to their cells. Half an hour later the same forty men were brought back into the courtyard. Almost immediately there was a second fusillade and they were driven back to the cells again.

"About 7 o'clock the witness and other prisoners were brought out of their cells and marched out of the prison. They went between two lines of troops to Roche Bayard, about a kilometer away. An hour later the women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant passing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison, the witness saw three lines of bodies which he recognized as being those of his neighbors. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. There were about one hundred and twenty bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top of a hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay there till 8 o'clock in the morning. On the following day they were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in Germany.

"Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the prison. About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass square opposite the convent. A witness asked a German officer why her husband had been shot, and he told her that it was because two of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at the Germans. As a matter of fact, one of her sons was at that time in Liege and the other in Brussels. It is stated that besides the ninety corpses referred to above, sixty corpses of civilians were recovered from a hole in the brewery yard and that forty-eight bodies of women and children were found in a garden. The town was systematically set on fire by hand grenades. Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one of whose legs was broken and the other injured by a bayonet. We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation, or that any other defense can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens."