German Atrocities. A Record of Shameless Deeds

“Completely at a loss what to do with their charges, the Prussian officers ordered them out of the train, and under an armed guard marched them on foot through Vilvorde and Pont Brulé and on to Malines. When crossing the fields the prisoners tore up turnips and beetroots and ate them ravenously. At Malines the officer in charge of the escort told the half-dead men they were free, and by different routes they reached Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, and other places in territory unoccupied by the enemy.”

The Massacre of Innocents.

The stories of the poor panic-stricken women of Louvain who emerged alive from the night of terror cannot fail to arouse horror. One woman upon whose face were marks of the intense suffering through which she had passed told how she tore down the curtains from her windows, wrapped them round some wearing apparel, and ran from the house with her two children. In the street she became involved in a stampede of men, women, and children rushing away from their burning town, whither she knew not.

This miserable refugee’s story was so disjointed, so interspersed with hysterical sobs and exclamations, that it is impossible to make a full and coherent narrative of it.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, with a convulsive shudder, “I will tell you of the burning of Louvain. We had pulled down some of the buildings so that the Germans should not mount guns on them when they came. I believe that was the reason. We were in a state of terror, because we had heard of the cruelties of the Germans. But all we had heard of them was not so bad as we experienced. In the streets people were cruelly butchered, and then on all sides flames began to rise. We were prepared for what we regarded as the worst, but never had we anticipated that they would burn us in our homes. People rushed about frantic to save their property. They were shot down by rifle volleys, struck down by sabres, and pierced by lances. My God! What have we not suffered?”

Two young Oxford undergraduates who were present tell a graphic story, in a letter to the Times, of the sack of the town and the burning of the neighbouring village. Leaving Aix-la-Chapelle on the Wednesday in question, they set off for Louvain. As they passed through the little hamlet of Cortenbergh they encountered a body of German troops who had been dispatched to destroy the village. Taken prisoners, they were guarded while the inhuman soldiers of the Kaiser made use of the cartloads of straw which they had brought with them for their terrible purpose. Soon every house was a mass of flames.

“This was in the afternoon,” they relate, “and from three to six o’clock we had to stand at the end of the street while the firing went on. It was a terrible spectacle, and our first glimpse of the horrors of war, for we saw five civilians, as they left their burning homes, ruthlessly shot down by German soldiers. Neither of us will ever forget the spectacle Louvain presented when we reached it the following morning. The whole town had apparently capitulated to the Germans, although occasionally we heard the sound of firing. The greater part of the town was in flames. Houses were falling, telegraph and telephone poles were tumbling into the streets, and the picture of desolation was complete, while German soldiers were looting among the ruins. Dead bodies littered the streets… Some German soldiers told us that they had taken four hundred English prisoners from among those who had attacked their troop-trains, and three hundred and thirty of them had been shot that morning because they were found in possession of dum-dum bullets.”

A Refugee’s Plight.

The pathetic tale of a Belgian woman, who reached a place of safety after almost inconceivable hardship, was told in words which were few, but pregnant with tragedy and suffering. “Panic-stricken, we women fled from the burning town, and, half-running and half-walking, hurried from the dreadful scene. Mile after mile we covered, until our feet seemed as lead and our senses reeled. I am told we walked over seventy miles before we came to a railway. I wanted to bow down and kiss the cold iron rails. I fell exhausted, having carried my two children in turn. Footsore, broken-hearted, after the first joy of sighting the railway, I felt my head whirling, and I wondered whether it was all worth while. Then I thought of my deliverance, and thanked God.

“What did Louvain look like? Like what it was – a mass of flame devouring our homes, our property, and our relatives. Most of us women were deprived of our husbands. In the town everybody who offered any opposition was killed, and everyone found to be armed in any way was shot. Wives saw their husbands shot in the streets. I myself saw the Burgomaster shot, and I saw another man dragged roughly away from his weeping wife and children and shot through the head.”

An American’s Story.

A vivid word-picture of the scene is given by Mr. Gerald Morgan, an American, in the Daily Telegraph. “An hour before sunset we entered Louvain,” he says, “and found the city a smoking furnace. The railway station was crowded with troops, drunk with loot and liquor, and rapine as well. From house to house, acting under orders, groups of soldiers were carrying lighted straw, placing it in the basement, and then passing on to the next. It was not one’s idea of a general conflagration, for each house burned separately – hundreds of individual bonfires – while the sparks shot up like thousands of shooting stars into the still night-air. It was exactly like a display of fireworks or Bengal lights and set-pieces at a grand display in Coney Island.

“Meanwhile, through the station arch we saw German justice being administered. In a square outside, where the cabs stand, an officer stood, and the soldiers drove the citizens of Louvain into his presence, like so many unwilling cattle on a market day. Some of the men, after a few words between the officer and the escorts, were marched off under fixed bayonets behind the railway station. Then we heard volleys, and the soldiers returned. Then the train moved out, and the last we saw of the doomed city was an immense red glare in the gathering darkness.”

What M. Carton de Wiart Told Me.

Before leaving the subject of Louvain it is necessary for me to chronicle the following, which was told me by M. Carton de Wiart, the Belgian Minister of Justice. “As to the sacking of Louvain,” he stated, “we have here a statement dated August 30th, which has been handed to the Commission by a person of universal repute in Belgium, and which has been telegraphed to us. On August 30th that person went from Brussels to Louvain. On the high-road, when he got to a place called Weerde St. George, he saw only burning villages and peasants beside themselves with terror. When he reached Louvain and got to the American College – a large number of American students, young priests, and medical students come to Louvain – he found that fire had destroyed the whole town except the town hall and city station. This gentleman noted that on Sunday last the Germans kept on kindling new fires and placing straw so as to carry the fire farther. The cathedral and the theatre had been destroyed, and had collapsed completely. So had the famous library, one of the most precious in the world, especially as regards manuscripts and works of art. The town,” he says, “presents the aspect of an old ruined city, a city like Pompeii. In the midst of this scene of desolation the only people you could see were drunken soldiers carrying bottles of wine and liqueurs in their arms, and officers themselves sitting in the streets around tables drinking like their men.”

The “Times” Speaks Out.

Finally I give a quotation from the Times: —

“Deep and deadly must be the vengeance which the defenders of civilization will exact from these new apostles of brutality. Even Attila had his better side. He spared Milan. It has been said of him that, though he destroyed cities without remorse, he respected the laws of nations as they were understood in his day. The modern Attila respects neither the laws of nations nor the laws of God. His evil deeds cry aloud to Heaven and to the horror-struck watching nations. The infamous crime of the destruction of Louvain is without a parallel even in the dark ages. The harmless civil population had been disarmed a week ago. The German garrison at the gates of the town fired upon another force of their own countrymen. To conceal their blunder, they laid the blame upon the helpless townspeople. No denials were listened to. Some of the men of Louvain were shot, the rest were made prisoners, the women and children were flung into trains and carried off to an unknown destination, and the city was razed to the ground. Louvain has ceased to exist. A town of forty thousand inhabitants, bigger than Crewe or Dover or Colchester or Keighley, has been completely wiped out. The wickedness of this abominable act shall be expiated to the uttermost when the day of reckoning comes.

“Until now we have maintained an attitude of deliberate reserve upon the innumerable tales of German atrocities which have reached us. We published without comment the unanswerable list of shocking excesses committed by the German troops, which was sent to England by the Belgian authorities. When a German Zeppelin cast bombs upon ill-fated women asleep in their beds at Antwerp, we did no more than explain the bearings of international law upon conduct which has met with universal reprobation in Europe and America. But now the real object of German savagery is self-revealed, not only by the effacement of Louvain, but by the shameful admissions sent forth from the wireless station at Berlin. Last Thursday night the following official notification regarding Belgium came vibrating through the air: —

“ ‘The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unstinting severity and to create examples which by their frightfulness would be a warning to the whole country.’

“Such is the cynical nature of the German apologia for the destruction of Louvain. Such is the character of the warfare of the modern Huns. They seek to strike terror into the hearts of their foes by methods which belong to the days of the old barbaric hosts, who were thought to have vanished from the world for ever. There must be no mistake about the opportionment of blame for this and numberless other crimes. We have listened too long to the bleatings of professors bemused by the false glamour of a philosophy which the Germans themselves have thrust aside.

“The Kaiser and his people are alike responsible for the acts of their Government and their troops, and there can be no differentiation when the day of reckoning comes. The Kaiser could stop these things with a word. Instead, he pronounces impious benedictions upon them. Daily he appeals for the blessings of God upon the dreadful deeds which are staining the face of Western Europe – the ravaged villages, the hapless non-combatants hanged or shot, the women and children torn from their beds by cowards and made to walk before them under threats of all the infamies which have eternally disgraced German ‘valour.’”

XII

“Just for a word – ‘neutrality’ – just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war.” —The German Chancellor.

The “scrap of paper” was the Powers’ treaty guaranteeing Belgium neutrality.

French Protest to the Powers

So numerous and so terrible were the outrages committed by Germans on French territory that the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, on September 2nd – a month after the outbreak of hostilities – was compelled to address a communication to the Powers which set forth a large number of authenticated cases of barbarity. In the course of this official statement it was explained that the indisputable facts set out were selected merely as examples, and that it was impossible to bring to the notice of the Powers every act contrary to the laws of war of which accounts were being received day by day. The series of memoranda were sufficient to establish the two following classes of facts: —

“First. The Armies and Government of Germany profess the deepest scorn for International Law, and for treaties solemnly recognised for Germany.

“Secondly. The devastations of the invaded countries (incendiarism, murder, pillage, and atrocities) appear to be systematically pursued by order of the leaders, and are not due to acts of indiscipline.

“It is necessary to emphasise this two-fold characteristic of the German proceedings. They constitute a negation of every human and International law, and bring back modern warfare, after centuries of civilisation, to the methods of barbaric invasions. We are confident that such facts will arouse the indignation of neutral States, and will help to make clear the meaning of the struggle which we are carrying on in the respect of law and independence of nations.”

To this communiqué were attached ten separate memoranda, setting forth various specific charges against the Germans, and showing, among other things, how the Kaiser’s troops were killing the French wounded, and had even shot Red Cross nurses.

A Dead Man’s Diary.

“In the fifth of these memoranda,” says Reuter’s correspondent, “the German allegation that the civilian population had taken part in the war was strongly denied, and was declared to be nothing but a pretext put forward by the German troops to give them the appearance of reprisals. From the beginning of the war the Germans had made a practice of burning undefended villages and of assassinating the inhabitants, and evidence of this was to be found in letters and notebooks which had been taken from Germans, dead or prisoners.”

A notebook found on a corpse of a German lieutenant contained the following remark: – “We have fired the church of Villerupt and shot the inhabitants. We pretended that scouts had taken refuge in the tower of the church and had fired on us from there. The fact was, it was not the inhabitants of Villerupt, but Customs officers and forest guards who fired on us.”

The sixth memorandum gave detailed evidence in support of the charge that a systematic devastation of the country had been ordered by the German leaders. Letters found on German soldiers made it clear that the burning of villages and the shooting of the inhabitants were general measures, and that the orders were given by superior officers.

Attention was called to this violation of The Hague Convention, and it was pointed out that it was on the proposal of the German delegates at the second Hague Conference that an article was inserted declaring that the belligerent guilty of such violation should be liable to pay an indemnity.

In the remaining memoranda information was given as to the destruction of villages in the region of Paris, and the burning of Affleville, under circumstances of particular brutality.

The statement concluded: “The Government of the Republic, respecting International conventions which it has ratified, protests against those violations of International law, and holds up to reprobation before the opinion of the world the behaviour of an enemy who respects no rule and goes back on his signature affixed to International agreements.”

The Red Hand of Destruction.

Upon the Franco-German frontier the red hand of destruction was indeed laid heavily, and it seemed incredible that a civilised nation should resort to the methods of savages. Yet it was, alas, true, as was proved in hundreds of cases. Atrocities were committed everywhere; civilians, women, and children were shot down in blind rage. A German officer captured by the French near Blamont admitted that the Germans wanted no prisoners, and that the wholesale massacre of peaceful villagers was according to orders.

German infantrymen belonging to the Bavarian regiments systematically set fire to the villages through which they passed in the region of Barras, Harbone, and Montreux, for during the engagement no artillery fire could have caused such conflagrations. In the same district they forced the inhabitants to precede their scouts. According to the same report the German troops were daily massacring peaceful villagers, and actually made children march before them when debouching from the villages upon the field of battle.

An official report was made by M. Mirman, Prefect of the Meurthe and Moselle, to the French Minister of the Interior, after a visit paid to the districts of Bardonviller, Cirey, and Blamont, in the Luneville area. He stated that it was impossible to cite all the acts of savagery and brutality on the part of the German troops which had come under his notice. He could make out a long list of women, young girls, and old men and women who had been executed without the least reason and upon the slightest pretext. Houses had been systematically burned by order of the German officers as they advanced, and then again as they retreated.

Petrol on Burning Houses.

At Bardonviller, where one of the Kaiser’s sons was with the troops, eleven of the inhabitants had been murdered, among whom was the wife of the mayor, and a woman with her infant child, while seventy-eight houses were burned with petrol and specially-prepared faggots. After pillaging the town and looting everything they could, they fired on and demolished the church, and took fifteen of the inhabitants, including a magistrate, away as hostages.

At Bremeuil the Prefect found a pitiful and shameful state of affairs. There, five inhabitants, one a little lad, were butchered, as well as an old man of seventy-four, who was “trussed and shot like a rabbit.” The Communal building was destroyed, and nearly the whole town swept away, not during battle, but by the soldiers on their arrival.

The French troops in Lorraine had seized an entire mail, letters written by German soldiers to their families. In these it was shown that the chief occupation of the troops was eating and drinking, and in more than twenty of the letters it was stated that all French civilians were shot if they only looked suspicious or evil-disposed. All the men, and even boys under age, were shot.

Another official statement issued by the French Ministry of War stated that two Uhlans who were reconnoitring on the frontier entered the little village of Affleville. They were ejected by a patrol of three mounted riflemen. On the following day a detachment of Uhlans returned, set fire to a farmhouse, and killed the farmer, who attempted to save his property. The inhabitants protested that their village had not interfered with the enemy, but later that evening a further squadron of Uhlans arrived while all the villagers were attending service in the church, and after sprinkling the houses with petroleum set the whole place on fire. The terrified inhabitants fled without money or other property to Verdun, the parish priest being shot.

“We Kill Everyone.”

Many other sensational indictments of the blood-lust of the Kaiser’s savage hordes reached the French Ministry of Justice. The Curé of Pillon, in the Metz district, states that on August 10th fifteen Germans entered his house and pointed their rifles at him. He was dragged into the road and brought before the General. On the way there he was hurried along with the butts of his captors’ rifles. When he stopped they hit him. He took out his handkerchief, and they confiscated it. He shouted: “You are a set of brutes. Take me before one of your officers who speaks French.” An officer replied in French, “It’s all up with you.” A French shell burst not far from the German troops. The Germans threw themselves down, but compelled the priest to remain standing.

Seven lads from French Lorraine at Baroncourt saw a body of Uhlans driving before them old men, women, and children. They struck those that would not or could not walk. Three Uhlans moved aside to a field where a boy of fifteen was tending a herd of cows. The youth attempted to prevent the seizure of the cattle. The troopers shot him point-blank, and he fell without a cry.

In Lorraine a large number of letters written by German soldiers were captured, and these letters are full of descriptions of acts of wanton cruelty. Most of the writers make reference to food and drink. One says, “We have no need for money. We simply take.” In another it is written, “Before burning the village we took away everything that was eatable or drinkable,” and again, “The first village across the frontier was completely destroyed. It was a sight which was both sad and agreeable.” In another letter it is stated, “We have shot the inhabitants of from fourteen to sixty years old. There were thirty of them.” In twenty other letters the phrases recur, “All were shot. We kill everyone.”

“The efforts directed towards the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be described as unworthy of the human race.” —Gen. Von Bernhardi.

Village Ruthlessly Bombarded.

Refugees from Lorraine had a pathetic story to tell. The village of Pontsurseille was burned on August 21st by the Germans. Like several others in the neighbourhood, it was close to the border-line, and courteous relations continued between its inhabitants and the enemy, even after the first days of the war. But on August 14th a body of Uhlans suddenly appeared and commandeered a number of things. They were supplied at once with 200 chickens, a quantity of oats, and some other provisions. The Guard Champêtre himself delivered the objects commandeered, and took them across the border into the German camp. He was not allowed to return immediately, and was detained for two days. On Monday, August 17th, when the Guard Champêtre had returned, a shell suddenly burst over the village. It exploded a few yards from a place where a couple of women were engaged in milking the cows. Other shells followed. They came from a battery erected on the other side of the border.

No French soldier had been seen at the village for three days. They had made their appearance only for a short time, and had fallen back. The firing stopped after a while, but was resumed during the night and continued for several nights following. All the able-bodied men had left for the garrisons, and only the women, the children, and some aged men remained. The Guard Champêtre was the only person with any authority that remained, and he took over the administration of the commune. Meanwhile he was compelled every day to go back and forwards between the village and the German camp and supply the provisions that were commandeered.

A young seminarist acted as secretary at the Mairie, and the wife of the Guard Champêtre took charge of the fire-engine and tried to put out the fire caused by the shells with the help of some other women.

On the night of August 20th it became evident that the Germans intended to lay the village in ruins. The bombardment was continued all night and the following day. The inhabitants took refuge in the cellars, which protected them against the shells. About forty of them found shelter in a big cellar belonging to a rich farmer, M. François Michel.

Helpless Children.

There were small children of three, six, and nine years, and infants only a few months old. The Guard Champêtre, assisted by his wife, directed everything. He had the openings protected by mattresses, which prevented the Germans from discharging their rifles into the cellar.

By making a hole in one of the walls he secured a retreat into an adjoining cellar. Suddenly an officer came, had the door opened, and ordered everybody to come out at once. M. François Michel was the first to step out, and he was instantly shot down by a group of soldiers standing by. Next a boy of six, a nice little lad, stepped out. He was also shot down. Everybody in the cellar then rushed back, amid cries of horror raised by the wife of M. Michel and his children.

The Germans shouted, “Come out, or we shall burn you alive,” and fired a volley down the steps of the cellar. The soldiers poured petroleum down the cellar and on the mattresses, and set fire to it. The people inside took refuge in the adjoining cellar, and the Guard Champêtre and his wife were the last to leave. From this cellar they finally escaped and fled across the field. The soldiers meanwhile had seized the young seminarist, and another young man, aged twenty, and shot them, declaring that they were of age for military service.