Their Crimes

by Unknown

Enquiries conducted by high magistrates have established the fact that German officials are very frequently guilty of premeditated lies. It is probable, all the same, that many German soldiers, on entering Belgium or France, were obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them. The cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting for pillage—"Man hat geschossen (they have fired)"—is enough for a locality to be delivered up at once to the wildest fury. "When an inhabitant has fired on a regiment," said a soldier at Louvain, "the place belongs to the regiment." What a temptation for a Boche soldier to fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and massacre!

Some mistakes have possibly been made which could have been avoided by the least enquiry. Read this admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon officer: "The lovely village of Gué-d'Hossus has been given over to the flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a cyclist fell off his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself. As a consequence there was firing in his direction. Then, the male inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames. Such horrors will not be repeated, we must hope … There ought to be some compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this indiscriminate shooting of people."

The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbourhood of, villages have been those of French or Belgian soldiers covering their retreat. Sometimes this has been discovered, but too late, and they have continued their crimes—in order to justify them.

Here is the statement of a neutral: "In one village they found corpses of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot…. In the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with consideration, and allowed himself to talk freely: his complaint was the misdeeds of his soldiers. Near Haelen, he told his host, he had to have a soldier shot on finding in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings: the man, on being questioned, admitted that he had cut them off the bodies of the German dead."[25]

In exceptional cases an enquiry is held; and in every such instance the truth is discovered and massacre prevented.

At the end of August, Liebknecht,[26] a member of the Reichstag, set out in his car for Louvain. He came to a village where there was considerable excitement going on. The Germans had just found three of their men lying dead on the road, and accused the peasants of being responsible for the deed. Liebknecht examined them, and was not long in obtaining proof that the Germans had been killed by Belgian riflemen. At Huy there were shots in the night; two soldiers wounded; the populace accused; the mayor arrested and condemned to death; but he knew that there were no Allied troops in the neighbourhood, and also that his own people had not fired a shot. "Shoot me, if you like," he said calmly, "but not before extracting the bullets from the wounded." The officer, less of a brute than some, gave his consent to this. The bullets in the wounds were German bullets. But the Germans do not even require a pretext to take action. Their first crime, to our knowledge, was on August 4th. Some officers dashed up to Herve in a car, challenged two civilians while crossing the bridge and, without giving them time to answer, shot them down with revolvers.

In their private diaries they accuse one another, each throwing on his neighbour the responsibility for crimes committed. A cavalryman writes: "It is unfortunately true that the worst elements of our Army feel themselves authorised to commit any sort of infamy. This charge applies particularly to the A.S.C." A bombing officer: "Rethel, September 2nd. Discipline becoming lax. Brandy. Looting. The blame lies with the infantry." An infantry officer: "Discipline in our company excellent—a contrast with the rest. The Pioneers are not worth much. As for the Artillery, they are a band of brigands." A final extract seems to be the only one that gives the truth: "Brin … troops of all arms are engaged in looting."

It has been possible sometimes to prove premeditation. On the 17th August, a German officer was billeted with a Belgian magistrate. Their talk turned on Dinant. "Dinant," said the officer, "is a condemned town!" M. X …, of Dinant, happening to be in another town, made the acquaintance of a German officer, who said to him on August 20th, "You come from Dinant? Don't go back. It's a bad place, and will be destroyed." Troops on their march towards Andenne announced in villages through which they passed that they were going to burn the town and massacre the inhabitants. At Louvain, a German officer, treated generously by a middle-class family, and appreciating their courtesy, rushed to their house on the 25th at 11 o'clock in the morning,[27] and earnestly pressed his hosts to leave without delay, refusing to give them any explanation. The family, puzzled and perturbed by his appeal, went off and so escaped.

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In the eyes of the moralist the worst of all their crimes will perhaps be this, that the wretches tried to dishonour Belgium, after first assassinating her. They have dared to say, write, and proclaim publicly, and affirm to Neutrals, that Belgian women and girls had mutilated German wounded soldiers, blinding them with scissors or with boiling water. The reports of the Belgian Commission of Enquiry have been replied to in a counter report[28] published as a German White Book. This enquiry and these documents will live in history. In centuries to come they will hang as a heavy weight on the Kaiser's memory and the conscience of Germany. Listen to the pathetic conclusion of the Belgian reply: "Before God and before man, the Belgian Government has no hesitation in giving this as its opinion of the conduct of the German Government towards the Belgian nation: 'He is twice guilty who violates the rights of others and then attempts, with singular audacity, to justify himself by imputing to his victim faults that were never committed.'"[29]