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CHAPTER XIV
THE UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES OF “CIVILIZED” WARFARE
[DISCLOSURES MADE IN FRENCH OFFICIAL REPORTS AND NOTEBOOKS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS] — [NOTHING SACRED] — [HIDEOUS FACES OF THE DEAD] — [WOMEN FORCED TO DIG GRAVES] — [GETTING HARDENED] — [WHOLESALE PILLAGE] — [MUTILATIONS OF THE DEAD AND WOUNDED] — [THE FRENCH REPORT].
The French official report on German atrocities contained records of such horror that the whole civilized world stood aghast. Here at last was war with all its multitudinous attendant crimes, more horrible than the actual warfare itself because so causeless and so bestial. Many stories of atrocities had been told by travelers and war correspondents abroad; the official report from France verified these earlier accounts, though there was still a vestige of doubt because it was a French report of German atrocities; and then to back up this record and remove the last shadow of disbelief, came the testimony of the Germans against themselves, through the “War Diaries” of German soldiers, many of which naturally fell into the hands of the enemy. Paragraphs selected from these notebooks follow:
“In this way we destroyed eight dwellings and their inhabitants. In one of the houses we bayoneted two men, with their wives and a young girl eighteen years old. The young one almost unmanned me, her look was so innocent! But we could not master the excited troop, for at such times they are no longer men—they are beasts.”
NOTHING SACRED
“Unfortunately, I am forced to make note of a fact which should not have occurred, but there are to be found, even in our own army, creatures who are no longer men, but hogs, to whom nothing is sacred. One of these broke into a sacristy; it was locked, and there the Blessed Sacrament was kept. A Protestant, out of respect, had refused to sleep there. This man used it as a deposit for his excrements. How is it possible there should be such creatures? Last night one of the men of the landwehr, more than thirty-five years of age, married, tried to rape the daughter of the inhabitant where he had taken up his quarters—a mere girl—and when the father intervened he pressed his bayonet against his breast.”
“Langeviller, Aug. 22.—Village destroyed by the eleventh battalion of Pioneers. Three women hanged to trees; the first dead I have seen.”