“The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing I will endeavour to make good as soon as our military goal is achieved.”
From a speech by The German Chancellor.
The Antwerp Outrage.
Next to the tragic and infamous destruction of Louvain, and the attendant atrocities committed in that beautiful old town, nothing has called forth more passionate denunciation than the cowardly attempt made by Zeppelin airships to drop bombs at Antwerp in the dead of night on its sleeping inhabitants. For the first time in history a death-dealing airship has attacked a city in this way. As a weapon the Zeppelin dropping bombs may be as destructive as great shells fired from siege howitzers. The horror of aircraft is, however, more terrorizing than that of any siege gun, because bombs can be thrown down from the sky on defenceless and sleeping cities. The civilized world has greeted with execration this inhuman method of prosecuting war.
Before even a fortified town can be bombarded, the rules of war provide for twenty-four hours’ notice before the commencement of actual bombardment. Here we have a great airship sailing high over a sleeping city. Without warning her crew drop death-dealing bombs from the sky in the dead of night. Surely the killing of unsuspecting men, innocent women, and sleeping children in this way is the most ruthless outrage ever attempted in war.
Piloted by a German who knew the city well—one of the many to whom the city opened wide its doors in the days before the war—the huge airship had for its objective the Palais du Roi, where the Queen of Belgium, the little Princes, and Princess Marie-José lay sleeping. Aided by the darkness, the crew of the Zeppelin felt confident of their ability to carry out their murderous programme. They had mapped out a career of terrifying destruction. In a track of devastation they meant to leave in ruins the Palais du Roi (which would also have involved the death of the Royal Family), the Bourse, the Palais de Justice, the Banque, and the Minerva Motor Works. But in no case was the treacherous aim attained. The cowardly raid proved a complete and utter failure, the only consolation provided the Kaiser being the slaughter of seven innocent persons and the wounding of some twenty others.
Girls Horribly Mutilated.
The bombs which were to have killed the Queen and her family and to have shattered the Bourse fell into an adjoining street, wrecked a house, and injured two women. That destined for the destruction of the Banque struck the attic of a house near by, killed a servant as she slept, and injured two others. Of the other bombs one fell into a shrubbery, dug a deep, funnel-shaped hole, uprooted shrubs, and plucked from their frames windows of the St. Elizabeth Hospital, where the wounded lay. Another—and the most successful bomb—struck a private house inhabited by poor people, murdered a woman, and horribly mutilated three girls, killed two Civic Guards, and seriously injured another. It was at a private house just off the Place de Meir that a bomb wrought much destruction to life and property. It tore off the top storey and split up the front.
Screams of Dying Women.
“As I arrived on the scene,” says a Daily Telegraph correspondent, “a woman tottered out covered with lime dust, crying out, ‘Docteur, docteur!’ Beneath the ruins of the house two Civic Guards were dead. Within the house pitiful screams came from three girls who had been roused from sleep by receiving dreadful wounds on the face and body. One girl had half her face blown away; the two others were seriously wounded on the face. Evidently their bodies had been somewhat protected by the bed-clothes.”