Chapter IV: Part 4

Some of the points where the fighting has been heaviest are shown in letters on the map. A is the "little fort," a redoubt on an open spur, holding perhaps 500 men. This was first attacked in January; it was partly taken, but the French in the end retained only the southern corner, where they remained for something like a fortnight. On Feb. 16 it was again taken in part, and lost the same day. On the 17th the same thing happened. On the 23d they once more got into the work; in the evening they repulsed five separate counter-attacks; then a sixth succeeded in turning them out. On the 27th they took all except a bit of trench in the northern face, and two days later they made that good, as well as a trench about fifty yards to the north of the work.

B is a small hill, marked 196. The capture of this, with its two lines of trenches, was one of the most brilliant pieces of work done. Since this date, the 26th, the enemy have continued to counter-attack nearly every day. It was here that the Prussian Guard was put in; but they have failed to get it back, and their losses have been very high. The prisoners stated that one regiment had its Colonel and all the superior officers killed or wounded. C is a wood, called the "Yellow Burnt Wood." It is still in the hands of the Germans, a regular nest of machine guns, which command the ground not only to the front but also down valleys to the east and west. The French are just in the southwest corner.

At D there are two woods; the southern we will call No. 3, the northern No. 4. On the 16th our allies got a trench just south of No. 3; they got into the wood on the 18th, and fought backward and forward in the wood that day and all the 19th and 20th; by the evening of the 20th they had almost reached the northern edge. On the 21st a stronger counter-attack than usual was repulsed, and in pursuing the retiring enemy they secured the northern edge. On the 22d there was more fighting in No. 3, but in the end the French managed to make their way into No. 4 as far as a trench which runs along a crest midway through the wood. The next six days saw continuous fighting in No. 4, sometimes near the northern end, sometimes at the crest in the middle, and occasionally back near the southern end. The French now hold the northern edge, and have pushed troops into the "Square" wood just north of the line of the 25th.

At E again there are two small woods; these were both captured on the 26th, but the trenches in the northern one had been mined, and the French had no sooner seized them than they were blown up. At F there was another small redoubt; part of this was taken on the 19th from the east, but the work was not finally captured till the 27th, when 240 corpses were found in it. On the extreme west, at G, is a wood which has twice been unsuccessfully attacked. On the first occasion troops got into the wood, but a severe snowstorm prevented the artillery from continuing to assist them, and they were driven out. The second was an attempt to surprise the enemy at 2 A.M. on the 25th; this also failed. A third attack was made on March 7 and was successful; the French line now runs through the wood.

The above will serve to show the tenacity which is required for an operation of this kind. Up to the present the French have made steady and continuous progress, and their success may be best judged from the fact that they have not been forced back on any day behind the line they held in the morning, despite innumerable counter-attacks. And this is not merely a question of ground, but one of increasing moral superiority, for it is in the unsuccessful counter-attacks that losses are heavy, and these and the sense of failure affect the morale of an army sooner or later.

Will the French push through the line? Will a hole be made, or is the enemy like a badger, who digs himself in rather faster than you can dig him out? I cannot tell; it would indeed be an astonishing measure of success for a first attempt, and the enemy may require a great deal more hammering at many points before he has definitely had enough at any one point. But these operations have brought the day closer, and turn our thoughts to the time when we shall be able to move forward, and one finds the cavalrymen wondering whether perhaps they, too, will get their chance.

The Germans Concrete Trenches

By F.H. Gailor, American Rhodes Scholar of New College, Oxford

[From The London Daily Mail, March 24, 1915.]

At the kind invitation of General Longchamps, German Military Governor of the Province of Namur, I spent two days with him going along the country in and behind the firing line in Northern France from near Rheims to the small village of Monthois, near Vouziers, on the Aisne.

About five miles out of Monthois we came to the artillery positions of the Germans. We could see the flashes of the guns long before we reached the hills where they were placed, but when we came up and dismounted the position was most cleverly concealed by a higher hill in front and the heavy woods which served as a screen for the artillery. I noticed many holes where the French shells had burst, and the valley to the north looked as if some one had been experimenting with a well digger. One 21-centimeter shell had cut a swath about 100 yards long out of the woods on the hill where we dismounted. The trees were twisted from their stumps as if a small cyclone had passed, and one could realize the damage the shells could do merely by the displaced air.

We went on forward into the valley on foot and stopped about two hundred yards in front and to the left of where the German guns were firing. There, although of course we could not see the French position, we could hear and see their shells as they exploded. They were firing short, one of the officers told me, because they thought the Germans were on the forward hill. He could see one of the French aeroplanes directing their fire, but I could not make it out. We stayed there listening to the shells and watching the few movements of German batteries that were taking place. A party of officers hidden by the trees were taking observations and telephoning the results of the German fire and, no doubt, of the French fire in the German trenches. There was no excitement; but for the noise the whole scene reminded me of some kind of construction work, such as building a railroad.

After about an hour, when nothing had happened, one began to realize that even such excitement may become monotonous and be taken as a matter of course. One of the officers told me that the Germans had been there since the beginning of October and that even the trenches were in the same position as when they first came.

Certainly the trenches seem permanent enough for spending many Winters. A number of them have now been built of concrete, especially in that swampy part near the Aisne where they strike water about three feet underground. The difficulty is in draining out the water when it rains.

Some of the trenches have two stories, and at the back of many of them are subterranean rest houses built of concrete and connected with the trenches by passages. The rooms are about seven feet high and ten feet square, and above the ground all evidence of the work is concealed by green boughs and shrubbery so that they may escape the attention of the enemy's aeroplanes.

With the noise and the fatigue, the men say it is impossible to sleep naturally, but they become so used to the firing and so weary that they become oblivious of everything even when shells are falling within a dozen yards of them. They stay in the trenches five days and then get five days' rest. In talking to the men one feels the influence on them of a curious sort of fatalism--they have been lucky so far and will come through all right. One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great game. The strain of football a thousand times magnified. The joy of winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side by side with the stronger passions of hatred and anger and the sight of agony and death.

We talked to some of the little groups of men along the road who were going back to their five days in the trenches. Of course all large units are split up so as not to attract attention. They were all the same, all sure of winning, and all bearded, muddy, and determined. I could not help thinking of American football players at the end of the first half. These men seemed all the same. I have no recollection of a single individual. The "system" and its work has made a type not only of clothes but of face. Their answers to the usual questions were all the same, and one felt in talking to them that their opinions were machine-made. Three points stood out--Germany is right and will win; England is wrong and will knuckle under; we hate England because we are alike in religion, custom, and opinion, and it is the war of kindred races. Everywhere one met the arguments and stories of unfairness and cruelty in fighting that have appeared in the English papers, but with the names reversed. English soldiers had surrendered and then fired; had shot from beneath a Red Cross flag or had killed prisoners. The stories were simple and as hackneyed as most of those current in England.

The concrete rest houses were interesting. Most of them have furniture made from trees "to amuse us and pass the time." Both officers and men use the same type of house, though discipline forbids that the same house be used by both officers and men. The light in these houses is bad and the ventilation not all that it should be, but they are extremely careful about sanitation, and everywhere one smells disinfectants and sees evidence of scrupulous guarding against disease. Oil and candles are scarce and the "pocket electric" that all the men and officers carry does not last long enough for much reading. There are always telephone connections, but in most cases visits are impossible save by way of the underground passages and the trenches.

One officer described the life as entirely normal; another said, in speaking of a Louis XV. couch which had been borrowed from a near-by château and was the pride of a regiment, "Oh! we are cave-dwellers, but we have some of the luxuries of at least the nineteenth century."

The Major Commandant at Rethel showed me a letter from a friend demanding "some easy chairs and a piano for his trench house," and the Major said, "I hear they have music up on the Yser, but the French are too close to us here!"

All that I saw of the German Red Cross leads me to believe that it is adequate and efficient. At Rethel we saw a Red Cross train of thirty-two cars perfectly equipped. The cars are made specially with open corridors, so that stretchers or rubber-wheeled trucks may be rolled from one car to another. The berths are in two tiers, much like an American sleeping car, and each car when full holds twenty-eight men. There is an operating car fully equipped for the most delicate and dangerous cases; in fact, when we saw the train at Rethel it had stopped on its way to Germany for an operation on a man's brain.

The Spirits of Mankind

By Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States

The conviction that great spiritual forces will assert
themselves at the end of the European war to enlighten the
judgment and steady the spirits of mankind was expressed by
President Wilson in an address of welcome delivered at the
Maryland annual conference of the Methodist Protestant Church
at Washington on April 8, 1915. The text of his address
appears below.

These are days of great perplexity, when a great cloud of trouble hangs and broods over the greater part of the world. It seems as if great, blind, material forces had been released which had for long been held in leash and restraint. And yet underneath that you can see the strong impulses of great ideals.

It would be impossible for men to go through what men are going through on the battlefields of Europe and struggle through the present dark night of their terrible struggle if it were not that they saw, or thought that they saw, the broadening of light where the morning should come up and believed that they were standing each on his side of the contest for some eternal principle for right.

Then all about them, all about us, there sits the silent, waiting tribunal which is going to utter the ultimate judgment upon this struggle, the great tribunal of the opinion of the world; and I fancy I see, I hope that I see, I pray that it may be that I do truly see, great spiritual forces lying waiting for the outcome of this thing to assert themselves, and are asserting themselves even now to enlighten our judgment and steady our spirits.

No man is wise enough to pronounce judgment, but we can all hold our spirits in readiness to accept the truth when it dawns on us and is revealed to us in the outcome of this titanic struggle.

It is of infinite benefit that in assemblages like this and in every sort of assemblage we should constantly go back to the sources of our moral inspiration and question ourselves as to what principle it is that we are acting on. Whither are we bound? What do we wish to see triumph? And if we wish to see certain things triumph, why do we wish to see them triumph? What is there in them that is for the lasting benefit of mankind?

For we are not in this world to amuse ourselves with its affairs. We are here to push the whole sluggish mass forward in some particular direction, and unless you know the direction in which you want to go your force is of no avail. Do you love righteousness? is what each one of us ought to ask himself. And if you love righteousness are you ready to translate righteousness into action and be ashamed and afraid before no man?

It seems to me, therefore, that it is worth suggesting to you that you are not sitting here merely to transact the business and express the ideals of a great church as represented in the State of Maryland, but you are here also as part of the assize of humanity, to remind yourselves of the things that are permanent and eternal, which if we do not translate into action we have failed in the fundamental things of our lives.

You will see that it is only in such general terms that one can speak in the midst of a confused world, because, as I have already said, no man has the key to this confusion. No man can see the outcome, but every man can keep his own spirit prepared to contribute to the net result when the outcome displays itself.

"What the Germans Say About Their Own Methods of Warfare"

By Joseph Bedier, Professor in the College de France

[From an article in the Revue de Paris for January, 1915.]

I purpose to show that the German armies cannot altogether escape the reproach of violating on occasion the law of nations. I shall establish this by French methods, through the use of documents of sound value.

My texts are genuine, well vouched for, and I have taken pains to subject them to a critical examination, as scrupulous and minute as heretofore in times of peace I expended in weighing the authority of some ancient chronicle, or in scrutinizing the authenticity of some charter. Perhaps this care was born of professional habit, or due to a natural craving for exactness, but in either case it is a voucher for the work, which is meant for all comers--for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ye have a heart.

I have, moreover, sought for documents not only incontestably genuine but of unquestioned authority. Accusation is easy, while proof is difficult. No belligerent has ever been troubled to find mountains of testimony, true or false, against his enemy; but were this evidence gathered by the most exalted magistrates, under the most solemn judicial sanction, it must unfortunately long remain useless; until the accused has full opportunity to controvert it, every one is free to treat it as false or, at the best, as controvertible. For this reason I shall avoid resting the case upon Belgian or French statements, though I know them to be true. My purpose has been to bring forward such testimony that no man living, be he even a German, should be privileged to cast a doubt upon it. German crimes will be established by German documents.

These will be taken mainly from the "War Diaries," which Article 75 of the German Army Regulations for Field Service enjoins upon soldiers to keep during their marches, and which were seized by the French upon the persons of their prisoners, as military papers, as authorized by Article 4 of The Hague Convention of 1907. The number of these is daily increasing, and I trust that some day, for the edification of all, the complete collection may be lodged in the Germanic section of manuscripts in the National Library. Meantime, the Marquis de Dampierre, paleographer and archivist, graduate of the Ecole des Chartes, is preparing, and will shortly publish, a volume in which the greater part of these notebooks will be minutely described, transcribed, and clarified. Personally, I have only examined about forty of them, but they will answer my purpose, by presenting relevant extracts, furnishing the name, rank, and regiment of the author, with indications of time and place. Classification is difficult, mainly because ten lines of a single text not infrequently furnish evidence of a variety of offenses. I must take them almost at random, grouping them under such analogies or association of ideas or images as they may offer.

I.

The first notebook at hand is that of a soldier of the Prussian Guard, the Gefreiter Paul Spielmann, (of Company I, First Brigade of the Infantry Guard.) He tells the story of an unexpected night alarm on the 1st of September in a village near Blamont. The bugle sounds, and the Guard, startled from sleep, begins the massacre, (Figs. 1 and 2:)

The inhabitants fled through the village. It was horrible. The
walls of houses are bespattered with blood and the faces of
the dead are hideous to look upon. They were buried at once,
some sixty of them. Among them many old women, old men, and
one woman pregnant--the whole a dreadful sight. Three children
huddled together--all dead. Altar and arches of the church
shattered. Telephone communication with the enemy was found
there. This morning, Sept. 2, all the survivors were driven
out; I saw four little boys carrying on two poles a cradle
with a child some five or six months old. The whole makes a
fearful sight. Blow upon blow! Thunderbolt on thunderbolt!
Everything given over to plunder. I saw a mother with her two
little ones--one of them had a great wound in the head and an
eye put out.

Deserved repression, remarks this soldier: "They had telephone communication with the enemy." And yet, we may recall that by Article 30 of The Hague Convention of 1907, signed on behalf of H.M. the Emperor of Germany, "no collective penalty, pecuniary or other, shall be proclaimed against a population, by reason of individual acts for which the population is not responsible _in solido_." What tribunal during that dreadful night took the pains to establish this joint participation?

II.

The unsigned notebook of a soldier of the Thirty-second Reserve Infantry (Fourth Reserve Corps) has this entry:

Creil, Sept. 3.--The iron bridge was blown up. For this we set
the streets on fire, and shot the civilians.

Yet it must be obvious that only the regular troops of the French Engineer Corps could have blown up the iron bridge at Creil; the civilians had no hand in it. As an excuse for these massacres, when any excuse is offered, the notebooks usually note that "civilians" or "francs-tireurs" had fired on the troops. But the "scrap of paper" which Germany subscribed--the Convention of 1907--provides in its first article "the laws, the rights, and the duties are not applicable solely to the army, but also to militia and bodies of volunteers" under certain conditions, of which the main one is that they shall "openly bear arms;" while Article 2 stipulates that "the population of an unoccupied territory, which on the approach of the enemy spontaneously takes up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to organize as provided in Article I, shall be considered as a belligerent, if they bear arms openly and observe the laws and customs of war."

In the light of this text, the bearing of the barbarous recitals which follow may be properly estimated:

(a) Notebook of Private Hassemer, (Eighth Corps, Sept. 3,
1914, at Sommepy, Marne.)--Dreadful butchery. Village burned
to the ground; the French thrown into the burning houses,
civilians and all burned together.

(b) Notebook of Lieut. Kietzmann, (Second Company, First
Battalion, Forty-ninth Infantry,) under date of Aug. 18, 1914,
(Fig. 3.)--A short distance above Diest is the village of
Schaffen. About fifty civilians were concealed in the church
tower, and from there fired on our troops with a
_mitrailleuse_. All the civilians were shot.

[It may here be noted, for the sake of precision, that the
First Report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, Antwerp,
Aug. 28, Page 3, identifies some of the "civilians" killed at
Schaffen on the 18th of August; among them, "the wife of
François Luyckz, 45 years of age, with her daughter _aged 12,
who were discovered in a sewer and shot_"; and "the daughter
of Jean Ooyen, 9 years of age, who was shot"; and "André
Willem, sacristain, who was bound to a tree and _burned
alive_."]

(c) Notebook of a Saxon officer, unnamed, (178th Regiment,
Twelfth Army Corps, First Saxon Corps,) Aug. 26.--The
exquisite village of Gué-d'Hossus (Ardennes) was given to the
flames, although to my mind it was guiltless. I am told that a
cyclist fell from his machine, and in his fall his gun was
discharged; at once the firing was begun in his direction, and
thereupon all the male inhabitants were simply thrown into the
flames. It is to be hoped that like atrocities will not be
repeated.

This Saxon officer had, nevertheless, already witnessed like "atrocities." The preceding day, Aug. 25, at Villers-en-Fagne, (Belgian Ardennes,) "where we found grenadiers of the guard, killed and wounded," he had seen "the curé and other inhabitants shot"; and three days previous, Aug. 23, at the village of Bouvignes, north of Dinant, he had witnessed what he thus describes:

Through a breach made in the rear we get access into the
residence of a well-to-do inhabitant and occupy the house.
Passing through a number of apartments, we reach a door where
we find the corpse of the owner. Further on in the interior
our men have wrecked everything like vandals. Everything has
been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle
of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description.
They have been shot at such short range that they are almost
decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest
corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places.
The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent,
from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent
is about to be set fire to; it may, however be ransomed if it
surrenders the guilty ones and pays a ransom of 15,000 francs.

We shall see as we proceed how these notebooks complement one another.

(d) Notebook of the Private Philipp, (from Kamenz, Saxony,
First Company, First Battalion, 178th Regiment.) On the day
indicated above--Aug. 23--a private of the same regiment was
the witness of a scene similar to that just described;
perhaps, the same scene, but the point of view is
different.--At 10 o'clock in the evening the First Battalion
of the 178th came down into the burning village to the north
of Dinant--a saddening spectacle--to make one shiver. At the
entrance to the village lay the bodies of some fifty citizens,
shot for having fired upon our troops from ambush. In the
course of the night many others were shot down in like manner,
so that we counted more than two hundred. Women and children,
holding their lamps, were compelled to assist at this horrible
spectacle. We then sat down midst the corpses to eat our rice,
as we had eaten nothing since morning. (Fig. 4.)

Here is a military picture fully outlined, and worthy to compete in the Academy of Fine Arts of Dresden. But one passage of the text is somewhat obscure and might embarrass the artist--"Women and children, holding their lamps, were compelled to assist at this horrible spectacle." What spectacle?--the shooting, or the counting of the corpses? To get some certainty on this historic point, the artist should question that noble soldier--the Colonel of the 178th.

His work of that night, however, was in accord with the spirit of his companions in arms, and of his chiefs. We may assure ourselves of this by consulting the Sixth Report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry upon, the violation of the rules of the law of nations (Havre, Nov. 10, 1914) and the ignoble proclamations placarded by the Germans throughout Belgium. I will content myself with three short extracts.

Extract from a proclamation of General von Bülow, placarded at Liège, Aug. 22, 1914:

The inhabitants of the city of Andenne, after having protested
their peaceful intentions, were guilty of a treacherous
surprise upon our troops. It was with my consent that the
General in Chief set fire to the whole locality, and that
about one hundred persons were shot.

(The Belgian report controverts the accusation against the inhabitants of Andenne of having taken hostile measures against the German troops, and adds: "As a matter of fact, more than two hundred persons were shot"--almost everything was ravaged. For a distance of at least three leagues the houses were destroyed by fire.)

Extract from a proclamation of Major Dieckmann, placarded at Grivegnée, Sept. 8, 1914:

Any one not responding instantly to the command "raise your
arms" is subject to the penalty of death.

Extract from proclamation of Marshal Baron von der Goltz, placarded at Brussels, Oct. 5, 1914:

Hereafter the localities nearest the place where similar acts
(destruction of railways or telegraphic lines) were
done--whether or not they were _accomplices in the act_--will
be punished without mercy. To this end hostages have been
taken from all the localities adjacent to railways menaced by
similar attacks, and upon the first attempt to destroy the
railways, telegraphic or telephone lines, they will at once be
shot.

III.

I copy from the first page of an unsigned notebook, (Fig. 5:)

Langeviller, Aug. 22.--Village destroyed by the Eleventh
Battalion of Pioneers. Three women hanged to trees; the first
dead I have seen.

Who can these three women be?--criminals undoubtedly--guilty of having fired upon German troops, unless, indeed, they may have been "in communication by telephone" with the enemy; and the Eleventh Pioneers unquestionably meted out to them just punishment. But, at all events, they expiated their guilt, and the Eleventh Pioneers has passed on. The crime these women committed is unknown to the troops which are to follow. Among these new troops will there be found no chief, no Christian, to order the ropes cut and allow these dangling bodies to rest on the earth?

No, the regiment passes under the gibbets and their flags brush against the hanging corpses; they pass on, Colonel and officers--gentlemen all--Kulturträger. And they do this knowingly; these corpses must hang there as an example, not for the other women of the village, for these doubtless already understand, but as an example to the regiment and to the other regiments that will follow, and who must be attuned to war, who must be taught their stern duty to kill women when occasion offers. The teaching will be effective, unquestionably. Shall we look for proof of it? The young soldier, who tells us above that these corpses were the first dead he had ever seen, adds a week later, on the tenth and last page of his notebook, the following, (Fig. 6:)

In this way we destroyed eight dwellings and their
inhabitants. In one of the houses we bayoneted two men, with
their wives and a young girl 18 years old. The young: one
almost unmanned me, her look was so innocent! But we could not
master the excited troop, for at such times they are no longer
men--they are beasts.

Let me add a few texts which will attest that these assassinations of women and children are customary tasks set to German soldiers:

(a) The writer in a notebook, unsigned, reports that at Orchies (Nord) "a woman was shot for not having obeyed the command to halt!" whereupon he adds, "the whole locality was set on fire." (Fig. 7.)

(b) The officer of the 178th Saxon Regiment, mentioned above, reports that in the vicinity of Lisognes (Belgian Ardennes) "the Chasseur of Marburg, having placed three women in line, killed them all with one shot."

(c) A few lines more, taken from the notebook of the Reservist Schlauter (Third Battery, Fourth Regiment, Field Artillery of the Guard,) (Fig. 8:)

Aug. 25, (in Belgium.)--We shot 300 of the inhabitants of the
town. Those that survived the salvo were requisitioned as
grave diggers. You should have seen the women at that time!
But it was impossible to do otherwise. In our march upon Wilot
things went better; the inhabitants who wished to leave were
allowed to do so. But whoever fired was shot. Upon our leaving
Owele the rifles rang out, and with that, flames, women, and
all the rest.

IV.

Frequently when a German troop want to carry a position, they place before them civilians--men, women, and children--and find shelter behind these ramparts of living flesh. As such a stratagem is essentially playing upon the nobility of heart of the adversary, and saying to him "you won't fire upon these unfortunates, I know it, and I hold you at my mercy, unarmed, because you are not as craven as I am," as it implies a homage to the enemy and the self-degradation of the one employing it, it is almost inconceivable that soldiers should resort to it; it represents a new invention in the long story of human vileness, which even the dreadful Penitentiels of the Middle Ages had not discovered. In reading the stories from French, Belgian, and English sources, attributing such practices to the Germans, it has made me doubt, if not the truthfulness, at least the detailed exactness of the stories. It seemed to me that the tales must be of crimes by men who would be disavowed, individual lapses, which do not dishonor the nation, because the nation on ascertaining them would repudiate them. But how can we doubt that the German Nation has, on the contrary, accepted these acts as exploits worthy of herself, that in them she recognizes her own aptitudes, and finds pleasure in the contemplation; how, I ask, can we doubt this in reading the following narrative signed by a Bavarian officer, Lieut. A. Eberlein, spread out in the columns of one of the best known periodicals of Germany, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, in its issue of Wednesday, Oct. 7, 1914, Page 22, Lieut. Eberlein relates there the occupation of Saint-Dié at the end of August. He entered the town at the head of a column, and while waiting for reinforcements was compelled to barricade himself in a house, (Fig. 9:)

We arrested three civilians, and a bright idea struck me. We
furnished them with chairs and made them seat themselves in
the middle of the street. There were supplications on one
part, and some blows with the stocks of our guns on the other.
One, little by little, gets terribly hardened. Finally, there
they were sitting in the street. How many anguished prayers
they may have muttered, I cannot say, but during the whole
time their hands were joined in nervous contraction. I am
sorry for them, but the stratagem was of immediate effect. The
enfilading directed from the houses diminished at once; we
were able then to take possession of the house opposite, and
thus became masters of the principal street. From that moment
every one that showed his face in the street was shot. And the
artillery meanwhile kept up vigorous work, so that at about 7
o'clock in the evening, when the brigade advanced to rescue
us, I could report "Saint-Dié has been emptied of all
enemies."

As I learned later, the ---- Regiment of Reserves, which came
into Saint-Dié further north, had experiences entirely similar
to our own. The four civilians whom they had placed on chairs
in the middle of the street were killed by French bullets. I
saw them myself stretched out in the street near the hospital.

V.

Article 28 of The Hague Convention of 1907, subscribed to by Germany, uses this language: "The sacking of any town or locality, even when taken by assault, is prohibited." And Article 47 runs: "[in occupied territory] pillage is forbidden."

We shall see how the German armies interpret these articles.

Private Handschuhmacher (Eleventh Battalion of Chasseurs Reserves) writes in his notebook:

Aug. 8, 1914, Gouvy, (Belgium.)--There, the Belgians having
fired on some German soldiers, we started at once pillaging
the merchandise warehouse. Several cases--eggs, shirts, and
everything that could be eaten was carried off. The safe was
forced and the gold distributed among the men. As to the
securities, they were torn up.

This happened as early as the fourth day of the war, and it helps us to understand a technical article on the operations of the military treasury (Der Zahlmeister im Felde) in the Berliner Tageblatt of the 26th of November, 1914, in which an economic phenomenon of rather unusual import is recited as a simple incident: "Experience has demonstrated that very much more money is forwarded by postal orders from the theatre of operations to the interior of the country than vice versa."

As, in accordance with the continual practice of the German armies, pillaging is only a prelude to incendiarism, the sub-officer Hermann Levith (160th Regiment of Infantry, Eighth Corps) writes:

The enemy occupied the village of Bievre and the edge of the
wood behind it. The Third Company advanced in first line. We
carried the village, and then pillaged and burned almost all
the houses.

And Private Schiller (133d Infantry, Nineteenth Corps) writes:

Our first fight was at Haybes (Belgium) on the 24th of August.
The Second Battalion entered the village, ransacked the
houses, pillaged them, and burned those from which shots had
been fired.

And Private Sebastian Reishaupt (Third Bavarian Infantry, First Bavarian Corps) writes:

The first village we burned was Parux, (Meurthe-et-Moselle.)
After this the dance began, throughout the villages, one after
the other; over the fields and pastures we went on our
bicycles up to the ditches at the edge of the road, and there
sat down to eat our cherries.

They emulate each other in their thefts; they steal anything that comes to hand and keep records of the thefts--"Schnaps, Wein, Marmelade, Zigarren," writes this private soldier; and the elegant officer of the 178th Saxon Regiment, who was at first indignant at the "vandalismus" of his men, further on admits that he himself, on the 1st of September, at Rethel, stole "from a house near the Hôtel Moderne a superb waterproof and a photographic apparatus for Felix." All steal, without distinction or grade, or of arms, or of cause, and even in the ambulances the doctors steal. Take this example from the notebook of the soldier Johannes Thode (Fourth Reserve Regiment of Ersatz):

At Brussels, Oct. 5, 1914.--An automobile arrived at the
hospital laden with war booty--one piano, two sewing machines,
many albums, and all sorts of other things.

"Two sewing machines" as "war booty." From whom were these stolen? Beyond a doubt from two humble Belgian women. And for whom were they stolen?

VI.

I must admit that, out of the forty notebooks, or thereabout, that I have handled, there are six or seven that do not relate any exactions, either from hypocritical reticence or because there are some regiments which do not make war in this vile fashion. And there are as many as three notebooks whose writers, in relating these ignoble things, express astonishment, indignation, and sorrow. I will not give the names of these, because they deserve our regard, and I wish to spare them the risk of being some day blamed or punished by their own.

The first, the Private X., who belongs to the Sixty-fifth Infantry, Regiment of Landwehr, says of certain of his companions in arms, (Fig. 10:)

They do not behave as soldiers, but rather as highwaymen,
bandits, and brigands, and are a dishonor to our regiment and
to our army.

Another, Lieut. Y., of the Seventy-seventh Infantry of Reserves, says:

No discipline, ... the Pioneers are well nigh worthless; as to
the artillery, it is a band of robbers.

The third, Private Z., of the Twelfth Infantry of Reserves, First Corps, writes, (Fig. 11:)

Unfortunately, I am forced to make note of a fact which should
not have occurred, but there are to be found, even in our own
army, creatures who are no longer men, but hogs, to whom
nothing is sacred. One of these broke into a sacristy; it was
locked, and where the Blessed Sacrament was kept. A
Protestant, out of respect, had refused to sleep there. This
man used it as a deposit for his excrements. How is it
possible there should be such creatures? Last night one of the
men of the Landwehr, more than thirty-five years of age,
married, tried to rape the daughter of the inhabitant where
he had taken up his quarters--a mere girl--and when the father
intervened he pressed his bayonet against his breast.

Beyond these three, who are still worthy of the name of soldiers, the other thirty are all alike, and the same soul (if we can talk of souls among such as these) animates them low and frantic. I say they are all about alike, but there are shades of difference. There are some who, like subtle jurists, make distinctions, blaming here and approving there--"Dort war ein Exempel am Platze." Others laugh and say "Krieg ist Krieg," or sometimes they add in French, to emphasize their derision, "Ja, Ja, c'est la guerre," and some among them, when their ugly business is done, turn to their book of canticles and sing psalms, such as the Saxon Lieut. Reislang, who relates how one day he left his drinking bout to _assist at the "Gottesdienst"_, but having eaten too much and drunken too much, had to quit the holy place in haste; and the Private Moritz Grosse of the 177th Infantry, who, after depicting the sacking of Saint-Vieth, (Aug. 22,) the sacking of Dinant, (Aug. 23,) writes this phrase:

Throwing of incendiary grenades into the houses, and in the
evening a military chorus--"Now let all give thanks to God."
(Fig. 12.)

They're all of a like tenor. Now, if we consider that I could exchange the preceding texts with others quite similar, quite as cynical, and taken at random, for instance--from the notebook of the Reservist Lautenschlager of the First Battalion, Sixty-sixth Regiment of Infantry, or the notebook of the Private Eduard Holl of the Eighth Corps, or the notebook of the sub-officer Reinhold Koehn of the Second Battalion of Pomeranian Pioneers, or that of the sub-officer Otto Brandt of the Second Section of Reserve Ambulances, or of the Reservist Martin Müller of the 100th Saxon Reserve, or of Lieut. Karl Zimmer of the Fifty-fifth Infantry, or that of the Private Erich Pressler of the 100th Grenadiers, First Saxon Corps, &c., and if we will note that, among the exactions reported above, there are very few that are the work of isolated brutes, (such as, unfortunately, may be found even in the most noble armies,) but that, on the contrary, the crimes represented here are collective actions in obedience to service orders, and such as rest upon and dishonor not only the individual but the entire troop, the officers, and the nation; and if we will further note that these thirty notebooks taken at random--Bavarian, Saxon, Pomeranian, Brandeburger, or from the provinces of Baden and the Rhine--must of necessity represent hundreds and thousands of others quite similar, as we may judge from the frightful monotony of their recitals; if we consider all this, we must, I think, be forced to admit that these atrocities are nothing less than the practical application of a methodically organized system.

VII.

H.M. the Emperor of Germany, by ratifying The Hague Convention of 1907, covenanted (Article 24) that "it is forbidden (c) to kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or being without means of defense, has surrendered unconditionally. (d) To declare that no quarter shall be given."

Have the German armies respected these covenants? Throughout Belgian and French reports depositions such as the following abound. This is taken from a French Captain of the 288th Infantry:

On the 22d, in the evening, I learned that in the woods, about
one hundred and fifty meters north of the square formed by the
intersection of the great Calonne trench with the road from
Vaux-les-Palameis to Saint-Rémy, there were corpses of French
soldiers shot by the Germans. I went to the spot and found the
bodies of about thirty soldiers within a small space, most of
them prone, but several still kneeling, and _all having a
precisely similar wound_--a bullet through the ear. One only,
seriously wounded in his lower parts, could still speak, and
told me that the Germans before leaving had ordered them to
lie down and that then had them shot through the head; that
he, already wounded had secured indulgence by stating that he
was the father of three small children. The skulls of these
unfortunates were scattered; the guns, broken at the stock,
were scattered here and there; and the blood had besprinkled
the bushes to such an extent that in coming out of the woods
my cape was spattered with it; it was a veritable shambles.

I quote this testimony, not to base any accusations upon it, but simply to give precision to our indictment. I will not lay stress upon it as evidence, for I wish to keep to the rule which I have laid down--to have records of nothing but German sources of information.

I will quote here the text of an order of the day addressed by General Stenger, in command of the Fifty-eighth German Brigade, on the 26th of August, to the troops under his orders:

From this day forward no further prisoners will be taken. All
prisoners will be massacred. The wounded, whether in arms or
not in arms, shall be massacred. Even the prisoners already
gathered in convoys will be massacred. No living enemy must
remain behind us.

Signed--First Lieutenant in Command of the Company, Stoy;
Colonel Commanding the Regiment, Neubauer; General in Command
of the Brigade, Stenger.

About thirty soldiers of Stenger's Brigade (112th and 142d Regiments of Baden Infantry) were questioned. I have read their depositions, taken under oath and signed with their own names; all confirming the fact that this order of the day was given to them on the 26th of August. In one place by the Major Mosebach, in another by Lieut. Curtius, &c. Most of these witnesses said that they were ignorant whether the order was carried out, but three among them testified that it was carried out under their own eyes in the Forest of Thiaville, where ten or twelve wounded French, already made prisoners by a battalion, were done away with; two others of the witnesses saw the order carried out along the road of Thiaville, where several wounded, found in the ditches by the company as it marched past, were killed.

Of course, I cannot here produce the original autograph of General Stenger, nor am I here called upon to furnish the names of the German prisoners who gave this testimony. But I shall have no trouble to establish entirely similar crimes on the faith of German autographs.

For instance, we find in the notebook of Private Albert Delfosse (111th Infantry of Reserves, Fourteenth Reserve Corps,) (Fig. 13:)

In the woods (near Saint-Rémy, 4th or 5th of September)--Found
a very fine cow and a calf killed; and again the corpses of
Frenchmen horribly mutilated.

Must we understand that these bodies were mutilated by loyal weapons, torn perhaps by shells? This may be, but it would be a charitable interpretation, which is belied by this newspaper heading, (Figs. 14 and 15:)

JAUERSCHES TAGEBLATT Amtlicher Anzeiger Für Stadt und Kreis
Jauer Jauer, Sonntag, Den 18, Oktober, 1914. Nr. 245. 106,
Jahrgang.

This is a heading of a newspaper picked up in a German trench. Jauer is a city of Silesia, about fifty kilometers west of Breslau, where two battalions of the 154th Regiment of Saxon Infantry are garrisoned. One Sunday morning, Oct. 18, doubtless at the hour when the inhabitants--women and children--were wending their way to church, there was distributed throughout the quiet little town, and through the hamlets and villages of the district, the issue of this local paper with the following inscription: "A day of honor for our regiment, Sept. 24, 1914," as the title of an article of some two hundred lines, sent from the front by a member of the regiment--the sub-officer Klemt of the First Company, 154th Infantry Regiment.

Whose stubborn defense of Przemysl made it one of the most notable sieges of history.

_(Photo from Underwood & Underwood.)_]

Whose submarine exploits have done more damage to England's navy than all Germany's gunners.

_(Photo from The Photo News.)_]

The sub-officer Klemt relates how, on the 24th of September, his regiment having left Hannonville in the morning, accompanied by Austrian batteries, suddenly came up against a double fire of infantry and artillery. Their losses were terrible, and yet the enemy was still invisible. Finally, says this officer, it was found that the bullets came from above, from trees which the French soldiers had climbed. From this point let me quote verbatim, (Fig. 16:)

They're brought down from the trees like squirrels, to get a
hot reception with bayoneted stock; they'll need no more
doctors' care. We are not fighting loyal enemies, but
treacherous brigands. [Note--It is scarcely necessary to point
out that it is no more "treacherous," but quite as lawful, to
fire from the branches of a tree as from a window, or from a
trench, and that, on the contrary, it is rather more
venturesome and more courageous, as the sequel of this story
will show.] We crossed the clearing at a bound. The foe is
hidden here and there among the bushes, and now we are upon
them. No quarter will be given. We fire standing, at will;
very few fire kneeling; nobody dreams of shelter. We finally
reach a slight depression in the ground, and there the red
trousers are lying in masses, here and there--dead or wounded.
We club or stab the wounded, for we know that these rascals,
as soon as we are gone by, will fire from behind. We find one
Frenchman lying at full length upon his face, but he is
counterfeiting death. A kick from a robust fusilier gives him
notice that we are there. Turning over he asks for quarter,
but he gets the reply--"Oh! is that the way, blackguard, that
your tools work?" and he is pinned to the ground. On one side
of me I hear curious cracklings. They're the blows which a
soldier of the 154th is vigorously showering upon the bald
pate of a Frenchman with the stock of his gun; he very wisely
chose for this work a French gun, for fear of breaking his
own. Some men of particularly sensitive soul grant the French
wounded the grace to finish them with a bullet, but others
scatter here and there, wherever they can, their clubbings and
stabbings. Our adversaries have fought bravely. They were
élite troops that we had before us. They had allowed us to
come within thirty, and even within ten, meters--too close.
Their arms and knapsacks thrown down in heaps showed that they
wanted to fly, but upon the appearance of our "gray phantoms"
terror paralyzed them, and, on the narrow path in which they
crowded, the German bullets brought them the order to halt!
There they are at the very entrance of their leafy hiding
places, lying down moaning and asking for quarter, but whether
their wounds are light or grievous, the brave fusiliers saved
their country the expensive care which would have to be given
to such a number of enemies.

Now the recital continues very ornate, very literary, and the writer relates how his Imperial Highness Prince Oscar of Prussia, being advised of the exploits (perhaps, indeed, other exploits than these) of the 154th and of the Regiment of Grenadiers, which forms the Brigade with the 154th, declared them both worthy of the name of "King's Brigade," and the recital closes with this phrase: "When night came on, with a prayer of thankfulness on our lips we fell asleep to await the coming day." Then adding, by way of postscript, a little phrase "Heimkehr vom Kampf." He carries the notebook--prose and verse together--to his Lieutenant, who countersigns it: "Certified as correct, De Niem, Lieutenant Commanding the Company," and then he sends his paper to his town of Jauer, where he is quite confident that he will find some newspaper publisher to accept it, printers to set it up, and a whole population to enjoy it. Now, let me ask any reader--whatever be his country--if he can imagine it possible for such a tale to be spread abroad in any paper in his language, in his native town, for the edification of his wife and his children. In what other country than in Germany is such a thing conceivable? Not in France, at all events. Now, if my readers want another document to show how customary it is in the German Army to mutilate the wounded, well, I will borrow one from the notebook of Private Paul Glöde of the Ninth Battalion of Pioneers, Ninth Corps, (Figs. 17 and 18:)

Aug. 12, 1914, in Belgium.--One can get an idea of the fury of
our soldiers in seeing the destroyed villages. Not one house
left untouched. Everything eatable is requisitioned by the
unofficered soldiers. Several heaps of men and women put to
execution. Young pigs are running about looking for their
mothers. Dogs chained, without food or drink. And the
houses about them on fire. But the just anger of our soldiers
is accompanied also by pure vandalism. In the villages,
already emptied of their inhabitants, the houses are set on
fire. I feel sorry for this population. If they have made use
of disloyal weapons, after all, they are only defending their
own country. The atrocities which these non-combatants are
still committing are revenged after a savage fashion.
_Mutilations of the wounded are the order of the day._