Whether the property owners are subjects of the occupied territory or of a Foreign State is a matter of complete indifference; also the property of the Sovereign and his family is subject to no exception, although to-day it is usually treated with courtesy.
Of German behavior.
The conception of the inviolability of private property here depicted was shared by the Germans in 1870 and was observed. If on the French side statements to the contrary are even to-day given expression, they rest either on untruth or exaggeration. It certainly cannot be maintained that no illegitimate violations of private property by individuals ever occurred. But that kind of thing can never be entirely avoided even among the most highly cultivated nations, and the best disciplined armies. In every case the strictest respect for private property was enjoined[94] upon the soldiers by the German Military Authorities after crossing the frontier, and strong measures were taken in order to make this injunction effective; the property of the French was indeed, as might be shown in numerous cases, protected against the population itself, and was even in several cases saved at the risk of our own lives.[95]
The gentle Hun and the looking-glass.
In like manner arbitrary destructions and ravages of buildings and the like did not occur on the German side where they were not called forth by the behavior of the inhabitants themselves. They scarcely ever occurred except where the inhabitants had foolishly left their dwellings and the soldiers were excited by closed doors and want of food. “If the soldier finds the doors of his quarters shut, and the food intentionally concealed or buried, then necessity impels him to burst open the doors and to track the stores, and he then, in righteous anger, destroys a mirror, and with the broken furniture heats the stove.”[96]
If minor injuries explain themselves in this fashion in the eyes of every reasonable and thinking man, so the result of a fundamental and unprejudiced examination has shown that the destructions and ravages on a greater scale, which were made a reproach against the German Army, have in no case overstepped the necessity prescribed by the military situation. Thus the much talked of and, on the French side, enormously exaggerated, burning down of twelve houses in Bazeilles, together with the shooting of an inhabitant, were completely justified and, indeed, in harmony with the laws of war; indeed one may maintain that the conduct of the inhabitants would have called for the complete destruction of the village and the condemnation of all the adult inhabitants by martial law.