The evidence before us proves that in the parts of France referred to murder of unoffending civilians and other acts of cruelty, including aggravated cases of rape, carried out under threat of death, and sometimes actually followed by murder of the victim, were committed by some of the German troops.
(b) The Treatment of Women and Children.
The evidence shows that the German authorities, when carrying out a policy of systematic arson and plunder in selected districts, usually drew some distinction between the adult male population on the one hand and the women and children on the other. It was a frequent practice to set apart the adult males of the condemned district with a view to the execution of a suitable number—preferably of the younger and more vigorous—and to reserve the women and children for milder treatment. The depositions, however, present many instances of calculated cruelty, often going the length of murder, toward the women and children of the condemned area. We have already referred to the case of Aerschot, where the women and children were herded in a church which had recently been used as a stable, detained for forty-eight hours with no food other than coarse bread, and denied the common decencies of life. At Dinant sixty women and children were confined in the cellar of a convent from Sunday morning till the following Friday, (Aug. 28,) sleeping on the ground, for there were no beds, with nothing to drink during the whole period, and given no food until the Wednesday, "when somebody threw into the cellar two sticks of macaroni and a carrot for each prisoner." In other cases the women and children were marched for long distances along roads, (e.g., march of women from Louvain to Tirlemont, Aug. 28,) the laggards pricked on by the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of having been brutally kicked by privates. Others were struck with the butt end of rifles. At Louvain, at Liège, at Aerschot, at Malines, at Montigny, at Andenne, and elsewhere, there is evidence that the troops were not restrained from drunkenness, and drunken soldiers cannot to be trusted to observe the rules or decencies of war, least of all when they are called upon to execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the very first women were not safe. At Liège women and children were chased about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, very circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the market place of the city, five young German officers assisting. At Aerschot men and women were deliberately shot when coming out of burning houses. At Liège, Louvain, Sempst, and Malines women were burned to death, either because they were surprised and stupefied by the fumes of the conflagration or because they were prevented from escaping by German soldiers. Witnesses recount how a great crowd of men, women, and children from Aerschot were marched to Louvain, and then suddenly exposed to a fire from a mitrailleuse and rifles. "We were all placed," recounts a sufferer, "in Station Street, Louvain, and the German soldiers fired on us. I saw the corpses of some women in the street. I fell down, and a woman who had been shot fell on top of me." Women and children suddenly turned out into the streets, and, compelled to witness the destruction by fire of their homes, provided a sad spectacle to such as were sober enough to see. A humane German officer, witnessing the ruin of Aerschot, exclaims in disgust: "I am a father myself, and I cannot bear this. It is not war, but butchery." Officers as well as men succumbed to the temptation of drink, with results which may be illustrated by an incident which occurred at Campenhout. In this village there was a certain well-to-do merchant (name given) who had a good cellar of champagne. On the afternoon of the 14th or 15th of August three German cavalry officers entered the house and demanded champagne. Having drunk ten bottles and invited five or six officers and three or four private soldiers to join them, they continued their carouse, and then called for the master and mistress of the house.
"Immediately my mistress came in," says the valet de chambre, "one of the officers who was sitting on the floor got up, and, putting a revolver to my mistress temple, shot her dead. The officer was obviously drunk. The other officers continued to drink and sing, and they did not pay great attention to the killing of my mistress. The officer who shot my mistress then told my master to dig a grave and bury my mistress. My master and the officer went into the garden, the officer threatening my master with a pistol. My master was then forced to dig the grave and to bury the body of my mistress in it. I cannot say for what reason they killed my mistress. The officer who did it was singing all the time."
In the evidence before us there are cases tending to show that aggravated crimes against women were sometimes severely punished. One witness reports that a young girl who was being pursued by a drunken soldier at Louvain appealed to a German officer, and that the offender was then and there shot. Another describes how an officer of the Thirty-second Regiment of the Line was led out to execution for the violation of two young girls, but reprieved at the request or with the consent of the girls' mother. These instances are sufficient to show that the maltreatment of women was no part of the military scheme of the invaders, however much it may appear to have been the inevitable result of the system of terror deliberately adopted in certain regions. Indeed, so much is avowed. "I asked the commander why we had been spared," says a lady in Louvain, who deposes to having suffered much brutal treatment during the sack. He said: "We will not hurt you any more. Stay in Louvain. All is finished." It was Saturday, Aug. 29, and the reign of terror was over.
Apart from the crimes committed in special areas and belonging to a scheme of systematic reprisals for the alleged shooting by civilians, there is evidence of offenses committed against women and children by individual soldiers, or by small groups of soldiers, both in the advance through Belgium and France as in the retreat from the Marne. Indeed, the discipline appears to have been loose during the retreat, and there is evidence as to the burning of villages and the murder and violation of their female inhabitants during this episode of the war.
In this tale of horrors hideous forms of mutilation occur with some frequency in the depositions, two of which may be connected in some instances with a perverted form of sexual instinct.
A third form of mutilation, the cutting of one or both hands, is frequently said to have taken place. In some cases where this form of mutilation is alleged to have occurred it may be the consequence of a cavalry charge up a village street, hacking and slashing at everything in the way; in others the victim may possibly have held a weapon; in others the motive may have been the theft of rings.
We find many well-established cases of the slaughter (often accompanied by mutilation) of whole families, including not infrequently that of quite small children. In two cases it seems to be clear that preparations were made to burn a family alive. These crimes were committed over a period of many weeks and simultaneously in many places, and the authorities must have known, or ought to have known, that cruelties of this character were being perpetrated; nor can any one doubt that they could have been stopped by swift and decisive action on the part of the heads of the German Army.
The use of women and even children as a screen for the protection of the German troops is referred to in a later part of this report. From the number of troops concerned, it must have been commanded or acquiesced in by officers, and in some cases the presence and connivance of officers is proved.