Some admissions are couched in the form of indignation. “They do not behave like soldiers,” writes a soldier of the 65th Landwehr infantry, “but like highway robbers, bandits, and brigands, and they are a disgrace to our regiment and to our army.” “No discipline,” writes another, (a lieutenant of the 77th reserve infantry); “the pioneers are not much good; as for the artillery they are a band of robbers.”
But if this particular lieutenant blames the conduct of his men, others, on the contrary, deliberately order them to pillage. Like the soldier who writes at Louvain that the officers set a good example, four other German soldiers, named Schrick and Weber (of the 39th Prussian infantry), Waberzech (of the 35th Brandenburg), and Brugmann (of the 15th Mecklenburg hussars), on whom were found a quantity of French paper money, watches and jewels, all taken from houses in Senlis and Chantilly, confessed before the French court-martial that it was their officers who should have been blamed. “If I had not taken the jewels” (said one of them) “one of my officers would have taken them.”… “We got from our leaders” (the others declared) “the order to pillage the houses.”
CHAPTER XVI
DEGREES OF RESPONSIBILITY. CONCLUSION
At this point we shall give our conclusions. We think it necessary to establish the degrees of responsibility for the above attested facts: and the reader will think it right for us to add some precise mention of the authors of the facts. The omission of such a chapter would have the effect of helping to keep our indignation in the air, and thus leaving for objects of the blame contained in it only some multitudes of persons, amongst whom our indictment would be diluted and dispersed. Not that we desire to take away from the German people as such the responsibility which attaches to them, but we desire to add some names thereto.
The first responsible party whom we must mention is the German nation, and explicitly the German army judged by its private soldiers. It is upon the German private soldier, indisputably, that the shame of what we have just read recoils. It was the private soldiers who committed the greater part of the crimes which we have noticed: they were the principal authors of these crimes. But it must be added that the leaders consistently encouraged them. In several instances they acted on explicit instructions from officers, and even from generals.
The Responsibility of the Leaders
At the beginning of this book we noted the fatal teachings of the most famous military writers of Germany, writers who formed the war-school in which was developed the military spirit of the officers of 1914. These teachings were theories of war carried on in defiance of international law. The putting to death of captured soldiers and defenceless civilians is latent in such doctrines.
If, then, we wish to sum up in a word the system practised by German officers, during the course of a war which is still in progress, we may describe it as the system of terrorising the enemy on the plea of military necessity.