Quartermaster General.
It is not the German people alone that will have cause to remember Liége; the whole world will do well to learn from the case of Liége that an organized manufactory of lies is trying to deceive the public opinion of all the nations. Glorious victories are converted into "defeats with heavy losses," and the strong moral discipline of the German troops is slanderously described in the reports of the imaginative, phrase-loving French as cruelty—just as in 1870 the Prussian Uhlans were described as thrusting through with their lances all the French babies and pinning them fast to the walls.
How far the "grande nation" has already degenerated, and how far the Belgian population, akin to the French both in blood and in sentiments, imitate the French in their Balkan brutality, is illustrated by two examples. One of these, in the form of a German official warning, says: "The reports at hand about the fighting around Liége show that the population of the country took part in the battle. Our troops were fired upon from ambush. Physicians were shot at while following their profession. Cruelties were practiced by the population on wounded soldiers. There is also news at hand showing that German patrols in the vicinity of Metz were fired at from ambush from the French side. It may be that these occurrences are due to the composition of the population in those industrial regions, but it may also be that France and Belgium are preparing for a guerrilla warfare upon our troops. If the latter alternative should prove true, and this proof be strengthened through repetitions of these occurrences, then our opponents will have themselves to thank if this war be carried on with unrelenting severity even against the guilty population. The German troops, who are accustomed to preserve discipline and to wage war only against the armed forces of the hostile State, cannot be blamed if, in just self-defense, they give no quarter. The hope of influencing the result of the war by turning loose the passions of the populace will be frustrated by the unshaken energy of our leaders and our troops. Before neutral foreign countries, however, it must be demonstrated, even at the beginning of this war, that it was not the German troops who caused the war to take on such forms."
The details of the cruelties, here only hinted at, on the Belgian and French side, are supplied and proved by an eye-witness, a German physician, who reports:
We have experienced from the Belgian population, from men, women, and half-grown boys, such things as we had hitherto seen only in wars with negroes. The Belgian civilian population shoots in blind hatred from every house, from every thick bush, at everything that is German. We had on the very first day many dead and wounded, caused by the civilian population. Women take part as well as men. One German had his throat cut at night while in bed. Five wounded Germans were put into a house bearing the flag of the Red Cross; by the next morning they had all been stabbed to death. In a village near Verviers we found the body of one of our soldiers with his hands bound behind his back and his eyes punched out. An automobile column which set out from Liége halted in a village; a young woman came up, suddenly drew a revolver, and shot a chauffeur dead. At Emmenich, an hour by foot from Aachen, a sanitary automobile column was attacked by the populace on a large scale and fired at from the houses. The red cross on our sleeves and on our automobiles gives us physicians no protection at all.
GERMANY AND THE FOREIGNER.
Respect for the foreigner—Russians willing to remain in Germany—Ill-treatment of Germans in Belgium and France.
Enemies on all sides! With dishonorable weapons against us, and with documentary lies for the rest of the world! Let us calmly allow them to continue lying and slandering as they have begun—it will result finally in injuring themselves. The world will very soon see through this impudent, unabashed game; and it will finally side with the people which keeps to the truth, Only the weakling lies and swindles; the strong man loves and honors truth. Let us act like the strong man in this struggle!
Respect for the foreigner, protection for his person and property have at all times been considered sacred among civilized people. Germany can without exaggeration claim to have upheld this respect and this protection in these fateful days. Except for a few insignificant incidents which took place in several large cities, where the natural excitement of the people and the legitimate defense against an insolent system of spying led to the molesting and arrest of foreigners—mostly Russians—the measures taken against the citizens of hostile nations did not exceed what was absolutely necessary to the safety of the country. The Imperial Government and likewise the Federated States have refrained from expelling "en masse" Frenchmen, Russians, Belgians and Englishmen. It was, of course, unavoidable to take measures for the detention of such persons as seemed suspicious and for the internation of strangers liable to be called to take arms against Germany. This took place in cities, e.g., Berlin, where these men were taken away as "prisoners of war," as soon as the "state of war" had been proclaimed, and placed in special rooms or camps. Lodgings and food are such as seem requisite and the treatment of these prisoners is according to their own opinion very kind. The Russian agricultural laborers constitute a special group of foreigners in Germany: There are about 40,000 to 50,000 of them, men and women.