In this war, the occupation of any place is systematically accompanied and followed, sometimes even preceded, by acts of violence towards the civil population, which acts are contrary both to the usages of war and to the most elementary principles of humanity.
Brutality Everywhere.
The German procedure is everywhere the same. They advance along a road, shooting inoffensive passers-by—particularly bicyclists—as well as peasants working in the fields.
In the towns or villages where they stop they begin by requisitioning food and drink, which they consume till intoxicated.
Sometimes from the interior of deserted houses they let off their rifles at random and declare that it was the inhabitants who fired. Then the scenes of fire, murder, and especially pillage begin, accompanied by acts of deliberate cruelty, without respect to sex or age. Even where they pretend to know the actual person guilty of the acts they allege, they do not content themselves with executing him summarily, but they seize the opportunity to decimate the population, pillage the houses, and then set them on fire.
After a preliminary attack and massacre they shut up the men in the church, and then order the women to return to their houses and to leave their doors open all night.
From several places the male population has been sent to Germany, there to be forced, it appears, to work at the harvest, as in the old days of slavery. There are many cases of the inhabitants being forced to act as guides and to dig trenches and entrenchments for the Germans. Numerous witnesses assert that during their marches, and even when attacking, the Germans place civilians, men and women, in their front ranks, in order to prevent our soldiers firing.
The evidence of Belgian officers and soldiers shows that German detachments do not hesitate to display either the white flag or the Red Cross flag in order to approach our troops with impunity. On the other hand, they fire on our ambulances and maltreat the ambulance men. They maltreat and even kill the wounded. The clergy seem to be particularly chosen as subjects for their brutality.
Finally, we have in our possession expanding bullets which had been abandoned by the enemy at Werchter, and we possess doctors’ certificates showing that wounds must have been inflicted by bullets of this kind.
The documents and evidence on which these conclusions rest will be published in due course.