K. Bartel—on crimes he had witnessed—as they were committed by his own officers and fellow privates. "Our men have shrunk morally below zero. Oct. 7th."
Yager Otto Clepp, August 22nd, in Liège makes this entry: "Two of our regiments shot at each other; nine dead and fifty wounded. Reason for mistake not yet ascertained."
There is a striking commentary on the German War Staff's Commission's statement that they shot the old men and women in Liège because of an attack by the people. This German officer's entry illustrates what doubtless happened many times. When the Germans were drunk, terrified by the sense of their own crimes and expecting the people to resist the cruelties, one German company turned and fired upon another.
H. W. Heller. August 6th. "Friday at 8:30 came the news that the English had landed in Belgium. We smashed everything immediately. One sees only burning houses and heaps of dead people and dead horses every three steps."
Fritz Holman writes: "We are never thirsty here in France. We drink five and six bottles of champagne a day, and as to under linen, we simply loot a house and change. God only knows what will happen unto us later on."
Stephen Luther's diary. "Monday the 10th. Marching via Laden. Villages friendly disposed, one of them bombarded in error. Misunderstandings occurred because our officers understand no French. There was terrible destruction; in a farmhouse saw a woman who had been completely stripped and who lay on burnt beams. How savage! Terrible conditions in the destroyed houses." "August 24, 1914. In Ermiton we took about a thousand prisoners. At least five hundred were shot."
Let this series be closed by a few trenchant words from two of Germany's most famous poets, characterizing the Prussian nature that to-day controls all Germany (and neighbour Austria besides). The great Goethe was from Weimar, but the satiric Heine, from Düsseldorf—a Prussian, born.
Prussianism
"The Prussians are cruel by nature; civilization will make them ferocious."—Goethe.