We must also record that on Sept. 4 and 5 bombs were hurled from an aeroplane upon Ghent and Escloo, which are open and undefended towns.
Finally, you are aware, M. le Ministre, that the town of Malines, after it had been completely evacuated by Belgian troops on Aug. 27, was subjected for several days to a bombardment which has seriously damaged the cathedral church of St. Rombaut, the pride of this ancient city. The town of Heyst-opden-Berg was also bombarded without mercy, though there was no strategic interest to warrant such an act.
The Plea of Armed Resistance.
The Germans, in order to excuse their violence, declare that, wherever they have shot civilians or burned and pillaged towns and villages, armed resistance has been offered by the inhabitants. While there may possibly have been isolated instances of this kind, that is nothing more than occurs in all wars, and if they had confined themselves to executing the guilty persons we could only have bowed before the rigor of military law. But in no case could individual and absolutely exceptional acts of aggression justify the wholesale measures of repression which have been adopted against the persons and the property of the inhabitants of our towns and villages—the shooting, the burning, the pillaging which has proceeded pretty well everywhere in our country, not only by way of reprisals but with a refinement of cruelty. Moreover, no provocation has been proved at Visé, Marsage, Louvain, Wavre, Termonde, and other places which have been entirely and deliberately destroyed several days after being occupied, not to mention the systematic burning of isolated buildings situated in the line of march of the troops, and the shooting of the unfortunate inhabitants who fled.
The Germans have asserted in their newspapers that the Belgian Government distributed to the civil population arms which were to be used against the invaders. They add that the Catholic clergy preached a sort of holy war and incited their flock everywhere to massacre the Germans. Finally, they have declared, in order to justify the massacres of women, that women showed themselves as ferocious as the men, and went so far as to pour boiling oil from their windows upon the troops on the march.
A Tissue of Falsehoods.
All these allegations are so many falsehoods. Far from having distributed arms, the authorities everywhere on the approach of the enemy disarmed the inhabitants. The Burgomasters everywhere warned the townspeople against acts of violence, which would involve reprisals. The clergy have unceasingly preached calm to their flock. As for the women, if we except a story in a foreign newspaper, the source of which is suspected, everything shows that their only anxiety was to escape the horrors of a ruthless war.
The true motives for the atrocities the moving evidence of which we have gathered can only be, on the one hand, the desire to terrorize and demoralize the people in accordance with the inhuman theories of German military writers, and, on the other hand, the desire for plunder. A shot fired, no one knows where, or by whom, or against whom, by a drunken soldier, or an excited sentry, is enough to furnish a pretext for the sack of a whole city. Individual plunder is succeeded by war levies of a magnitude which it is impossible to satisfy and by the taking of hostages who will be shot or kept in confinement until payment of the ransom in full, according to the well-known procedure of classic brigandage. It must also be stated that in order to establish the German case all resistance offered by detachments of the regular army is laid to the account of the civilian population, and that the invader invariably avenges himself upon the civilians for the checks or even the disappointments which he suffers in the course of the campaign.
In the course of this inquiry we use only facts supported by trustworthy evidence. It should be noted that up to the present we have been able to record only a small part of the crimes committed against law, humanity, and civilization, which will constitute one of the most sinister and most revolting pages in contemporary history. If an international inquiry, like that which was conducted in the Balkans by the Carnegie Commission, could be conducted in our country, we are convinced that it would establish the truth of our assertions.
[Signed by M. Gooreman, Minister of State, President.]