German officers showed themselves liberal in their estimate of the urgency, extent, and oftener still of the bare existence of such necessity. Therein we find the source of so many cowardly cruelties and crimes. “War! it is war,” they say. As the French Commission of Inquiry observes, for all their exactions, even for all their crimes, there was no redress; and if any unfortunate dared to beg an officer to deign to intervene and spare his life, or protect his property, he received no other reply, if he was not met with threats, than this invariable formula, accompanied by a smile and ascribing to the inevitable disasters of war the most cruel atrocities.
The German officer, therefore, has made himself responsible for the cruelties that have been committed: (1) either by ordering them or suggesting them to his subalterns or his men; (2) or by himself performing them: (3) or, finally, by tolerating them when they were committed under his eyes, or by not punishing the guilty when he was informed about their crime. By acting in one of these three ways the German officer has justified the English writer who uttered the following judgment of the conduct of the Germans in 1870: “The world at least is indebted to the Germans for having thrown light upon war … in which the soldier, the thief and the assassin can hardly be distinguished” (J. A. Farrer, Military Manners and Customs, chap. iv., p. 119). It is true, and we cannot avoid saying so, that in the present war the German officer has shown an essentially criminal mind. And we now make this accusation, which we have established by facts; our investigations, and the profound study which we have made of the subject, allow us completely to justify the declaration of the French Commission of Inquiry, “the higher command, up to its most exalted personalities, will bear before the world the crushing responsibility of crimes committed by the German army.”
The Names of the Officers
We shall mention here the names of the officers in question. But we must, above all, begin with the princes in whose name so many outrages have been committed.
1. The Emperor William II. In a speech addressed to his troops, on the eve of the battle of the Vistula, the Emperor William himself uttered these words, which form as it were the savage programme of all the atrocities that have been committed: “Woe to the conquered. The conqueror knows no mercy.”
2. The Emperor Franz Joseph. In an Imperial order, which includes instructions to the Austrian soldiers in the war against the Serbs, the Emperor Franz Joseph depicts the latter as “moved by a savage hatred against the Austrians. They deserve,” (he said) “no consideration either of humanity or of chivalry.” By the terms of this order all francs-tireurs who were captured were to be put to death.
3. Prince Eitel-Frederic, son of the Emperor of Germany. The Prince stayed for eight days in a château near Liège. The owner was present. Under the eyes of his hosts the Prince had all the dresses packed up which he found in the chests of the mistress of the house and her daughters.
4. The Duke of Brunswick. The Prince took part in the pillage of the same château, near Liège.
5. Marshal von Hindenburg, commander-in-chief of the Imperial troops in East Prussia. This marshal ordered that the bread found in this province, which had been soaked with petrol, should serve as food for Russian prisoners.