4
It was better for women and children to be in Arras under continual shell-fire than in some of those villages along the valleys of the Marne and the Meuse and in the Department of the Seine, through which the Germans passed on their first march across the French frontier. It was a nicer thing to be killed by a clean piece of shell than to suffer the foulness of men whose passions had been unleashed by drink and the devil and the madness of the first experience of war, and by fear which made them cruel as beasts.
I think fear was at the heart of a good deal of those atrocious Bets by which the German troops stained the honour of their race in the first phases of the war. Advancing into a hostile country, among a people whom they knew to be reckless in courage and of a proud spirit, the generals and high officers were obsessed with the thought of peasant warfare, rifle-shots from windows, murders of soldiers billeted in farms, spies everywhere, and the peril of franc-tireurs, goading their troops on the march. Their text-books had told them that all this was to be expected from the French people and could only be stamped out by ruthlessness. The proclamations posted on the walls of invaded towns reveal fear as well as cruelty. The mayor and prominent citizens were to surrender themselves as hostages. If any German soldier were killed, terrible reprisals would be exacted. If there were any attempt on the part of the citizens to convey information to the French troops, or to disobey the regulations of the German commander, their houses would be burned and their property seized, and their lives would pay the forfeit. These bald- headed officers in pointed helmets, so scowling behind their spectacles, had fear in their hearts and concealed it by cruelty.
When such official proclamations were posted up on the walls of French villages, it is no wonder that the subordinate officers and their men were nervous of the dangers suggested in those documents, and found perhaps without any conscious dishonesty clear proof of civilian plots against them. A shot rang out down a village street. "The peasants are firing on us!" shouted a German soldier of neurotic temperament. "Shoot them at sight!" said an officer who had learnt his lesson of ruthlessness. "Burn these wasps out! Lieber Gott, we will teach them a pretty lesson!"
They had all the material for teaching the pretty lessons of war— inflammable tablets which would make a house blaze in less than five minutes after they had been strewn about the floors and touched by a lighted match (I have a few specimens of the stuff)—incendiary bombs which worked even more rapidly, torches for setting fire to old barns and thatched roofs. In the wonderful equipment of the German army in the field this material of destruction had not been forgotten and it was used in many little towns and villages where German soldiers heard real or imaginary shots, suspected betrayal from any toothless old peasant, and found themselves in the grip of fear because these Frenchwomen, these old men of the farm and the workshop, and even the children, stared at them as they passed with contemptuous eyes and kept an uncomfortable silence even when spoken to with cheerful Teuton greetings, and did not hide the loathing of their souls. All this silence of village people, all these black looks seemed to German soldiers like an evil spell about them. It got upon their nerves and made them angry. They had come to enjoy the fruits of victory in France, or at best the fruits of life before death came. So these women would not smile, eh? Nor give their kisses nor their love with amiability? Well, a German soldier would have his kisses even though he had to hold a shrieking woman to his lips. He would take his love even though he had to kill the creature who refused it. These Frenchwomen were not so austere as a rule in times of peace. If they would not be fondled they should be forced. Herr Gott! they should know their masters.
5
At the little town of Rebais in the department of Seine-et-Marne there was a pretty Frenchwoman who kept a grocer's shop and did not care for the way in which some German soldiers made free with her biscuits and sweetmeats. She was a proud and fearless young woman, and when the soldiers grinned at her and tried to put their arms about her she struck them and called them unpleasant names and drew an open knife. So she wanted her lesson? Well, she had a soft white neck, and if they could not put their arms about it they would put a rope round it and hang her with her pride. But she was strong and quick as well as proud. She cut their rope with her knife and fought like a wild thing. So they slashed at her with their fists and bruised all her beauty by the time one of their officers came in and ordered them away. No one would court her after the lesson they had given her.
At Saint-Denis-en-Rebais, on September 7, an Uhlan who was eager for a woman's love saw another pretty woman who tried to hide from him. There was a mother-in-law with her, and a little son, eight years of age. But in war-time one has to make haste to seize one's victim or one's loot. Death is waiting round the corner. Under the cover of his rifle—he had a restless finger on the trigger—the Uhlan bade the woman strip herself before him. She had not the pride or the courage of the other woman. She did not want to die, because of that small boy who stared with horror in his eyes. The mother-in-law clasped the child close and hid those wide staring eyes in her skirts, and turned her own face away from a scene of bestial violence, moaning to the sound of her daughter's cries.
6
At the town of Coulommiers on September 6 a German soldier came to the door of a small house where a woman and her husband were sitting with two children, trying to hide their fear of this invasion of German troops. It was half-past nine in the evening and almost dark, except for a glow in the sky. The soldier was like a shadow on the threshold until he came in, and they saw a queer light in his eyes. He was very courteous, though rather gruff in his speech. He asked the husband to go outside in the street to find one of his comrades. The man, afraid to refuse, left the room on this errand, but before he had gone far heard piercing cries. It was his wife's voice, screaming in terror. He rushed back again and saw the German soldier struggling with his wife. Hearing her husband's shout of rage, the soldier turned, seized his rifle, and clubbed the man into an adjoining room, where he stayed with the two little children who had fled there, trying to soothe them in their fright and listening, with madness in his brain, to his wife's agony through the open door a yard away. The husband was a coward, it seems. But supposing he had flung himself upon the soldier and strangled him, or cut his throat? We know what would have happened in the Village of Coulommiers.