As for the deportation of civilians and the imprisonment with which they were threatened, when they were not carried off to Germany, two German soldiers volunteered the following admissions: “On the 6th September,” writes one of them, “we dispatched three hundred Belgians to Germany, including twenty-one curés.” “We shut up,” writes the other (Karl Bertram de Westeregein, near Magdeburg), “450 men in the church at Aerschot. I myself happened to be near the church at the moment.”
Conclusion
All this evidence and all these admissions are sufficient to prove the criminal nature of the German treatment of civilians whose territory had been invaded. The pretexts which they allege have no validity. They are only made for the sake of appearances, and, on the other hand, the acts which they committed are such as admit no kind of excuse and can in no case be justified. Nevertheless the German Government attempted to do so. The Berlin Cabinet undertook to prove that the inhabitants of Liège were guilty and deserved to suffer the fearful butchery which followed the entry of the Germans. To prove this the latter relied upon the evidence of a certain Hermann Costen, who was represented as a Swiss member of the Red Cross. But the chief of the Swiss police promptly published the following information—
(1) M. Hermann Costen never belonged to the Swiss Red Cross.
(2) M. Hermann Costen is not Swiss, as he was refused naturalisation.
(3) For two years M. Hermann Costen has been under the surveillance of the Swiss police. I maintain that since the declaration of war this person only left Switzerland from the 9th to the 14th August. It is absolutely impossible that he can have been at Liège at the period of the siege mentioned by you.
(4) M. Hermann Costen left Switzerland finally in consequence of a decree of expulsion on the 19th September.
(5) M. Hermann Costen’s moral and material credit is nil. He is an individual for whom there is little to be said.
After the picture of German atrocities which has been put before us, it is not without its uses to form from this reply some idea of the duplicity which endeavoured to cloak them.