German Barbarism: A Neutral's Indictment

by Léon Maccas

In France, in the department of the Nord, at Saint Pol-en-Ternois, 350 civilians were taken prisoner. This was also the case at Douai, Cambrai, Caudry, Noyon, where the German authorities demanded that the young people of fifteen to seventeen years, a list of whom had been supplied by spies, should be returned. Those who failed to answer the summons were sought for, and they and their parents were shot. The inhabitants did as they were told, and the young people to the number of 4000 were made prisoner and brought to the Russian frontier to dig trenches or else to the German countryside to make hay.

At Marcheville, at Saint Mihiel, women and children met with the same fate. At Avillers, too, all the men of sixteen to sixty years were brought away to Germany, including the deputy mayor, M. Alcide Blaise.

As in the provinces of the Nord and Meuse, so also in the Ardennes, the Germans made a regular practice of putting the inhabitants in prison. In all the towns and villages of this region men who were liable to be mobilised were treated as prisoners of war. This was the case at Rethel, where Dr. Bourgeois and ten of his colleagues had the experience of being shut up in a spinning-mill with 400 men taken from the villages of the province. The prisoners were compelled to work for their enemies: they had to wash the soldiers’ linen, gather potatoes in the fields, and make earthworks. At Charleville, men whom the Germans had the assurance to call civil prisoners were employed in making entrenchments, while the women, as we have said above, were given sewing-work, which was to be used for the equipment of the troops. Their wage was half a loaf of bread.

In the province of Oise, about a hundred inhabitants of Creil, Nogent-sur-Oise and the adjoining districts were imprisoned, and had to submit to the disgrace and vexation of working against their country, cutting a field of maize, which might have been in the way of the German fire, and digging trenches which were to be used as shelters for the enemy. For the seven days they were kept without food being dealt out to them. Fortunately the women of the country were able to get some provisions through to them.

At Lamath (Meurthe-et-Moselle), three inhabitants, one of whom had chest complaint, were deported. At Amiens, in particular, the scandal of incidents of this kind was shocking. An order of the military authority, which the mayor thoughtlessly countersigned, required all citizens liable to be mobilised to go to the citadel and declare their position as regards military service. Relying on the mayor’s signature, about 1500 men, of whom nearly 800 were railway workers at the Amiens passenger and goods stations, went to the citadel. There the Germans made a selection. They sent back the men of the auxiliary services and kept the others as prisoners, to the number of more than 1000, whom they brought on foot to Personne. The wretched procession halted and slept at La Motte-en-Santerre. Some prisoners, with the assistance of the few residents in Santerre, managed to hide and make good their escape. The others were entrained and taken away to Germany.

The second official report of the French Commission of Inquiry is full of really shocking details of outrages suffered by the French, who were taken from their homes and interned in Germany (Journal Officiel, 11th March).

Ten thousand of these wretched people were reinstated in French territory in the month of March. The order for internment had included a very large number of old men, children and women, several of whom were pregnant. All of these people had to submit to long and painful marches, ill-treatment and wretched diet.

The Vareddes hostages especially went through a veritable Calvary. Several of them, all old people, were murdered, as we have already mentioned. Those of Sinceny, about 200 in number, were likewise shockingly ill-treated.

At Gravelines, 2000 conscripts were deported, and all the natives of Combres, after being exposed to the French fire, were transferred to the camp at Zurickau.

Life in the camps was intolerable. Several of these “civil prisoners” lay in tents: others were huddled together in prisons. At Landau, an old woman aged eighty-seven was undressed and drenched with petrol. She succumbed some time afterwards to the fearful burns which she sustained. Blows, ill-treatment and painful forced labour were the order of the day. We cannot, therefore, be surprised at the enormous number of cases of death and illness among them. The only medicine prescribed by the doctors was tincture of iodine. As one of the victims said, “We were like burnt-out candles, for we no longer had the strength to stand upright.” Those who went back to France had their health more or less permanently affected, and the mental depression to which they were subject was really an illness. The effects, therefore, of German activity continued after they were released.