So it happened that when the Berliner Tageblatt recorded acts of cruelty which it alleged had been committed by the Allies, a refutation of its charges came from Germany itself. This paper told that in France cigars and cigarettes filled with powder were given to German prisoners: Vorwaerts took up the task of replying to this piece of stupidity, showed that a great number of stories of the same kind had been admitted to be false, and that in particular the story of the cigarettes was a mere invention. The legend that German soldiers had had their eyes gouged out by francs-tireurs was also denounced as a mere imagination. On this point Vorwaerts wrote: “No proof has been made out on official authority that German soldiers have had their eyes gouged out by francs-tireurs. A certain well-known Berlin newspaper declared that there were at the Grosslichterfeld hospital ten slightly wounded soldiers, who had had their eyes gouged out by the enemy. When Herr Liebknecht asked the superintendent of the hospital if the report was correct, the latter replied, ‘Fortunately, these rumours are devoid of all foundation.’”
Vorwaerts recurred to this same question on the 6th December, 1914, when it published the results of an inquiry made of the management of the Hanover hospitals and the grand charity hospital at Berlin.
The management of the Hanover hospitals addressed the following reply to the Socialist journal. “As a result of inquiry made among the doctors of the different sections of hospital 3, we are able to inform you that we have not at present at the hospital a single wounded person whose eyes have been gouged out. We have never had one.”
Similarly, the management of the charity hospital at Berlin communicated the following note to Vorwaerts: “The charity hospital has admitted no wounded who have had their eyes gouged out.”
Finally, the great Catholic newspaper, the Kölnische Volkszeitung, having published in the month of November an article in which the same legend reappeared, Arch-presbyter Kaufmann had a conclusive document inserted in this paper.
A doctor, M. Saethre, who said he had visited the Cologne hospitals, had written, “There can be no doubt about the atrocities committed by francs-tireurs. I myself saw at Aix-la-Chapelle a Red Cross sister whose breast had been cut off by francs-tireurs, and a Major whose eyes had been gouged out whilst he lay on the field of battle.” He replied, under date 26th November, in a letter to the paper from which we make this extract: “You asked me to write to you what I thought about this report. I, therefore, applied to the competent military authorities to know if the statements made by Doctor Saethre were correct. The superintendent of the hospital writes me under date 25th November, ‘The atrocities of which you tell me have not been committed, at least as far as Aix-la-Chapelle is concerned. We have not seen the Red Cross sister referred to nor the Major either.’
“I do not know,” continued the Arch-presbyter, where the doctor of whom the Kölnische Volkszeitung speaks has got his information. “I think it necessary to state here again that in the hospitals of Aix-la-Chapelle there is not a single wounded man to be found whose eyes have been gouged out, and no Red Cross sister who has suffered the above-mentioned mutilation.”
In this way was the device foiled. The attempts made to disguise the German crimes as reprisals led to nothing.