Chapter L: MIRMAN, Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle (2)

M. Tschoffen, public prosecutor at Dinant, the high official who writes these lines, finishes his deposition with these words: "They had no reason whatever for our arrest, and I do not see any reason that they could have for setting us at liberty. One fine day they told us that we were going to leave."

Here is another illustration: Before the 28th February, 1915, more than 10,000 persons, old men, women, and children, who had been deported from France to Germany, had been repatriated by way of Switzerland. All those who received them on their return were "alarmed at their ragged condition and weakness," which was so great that the French Commission of Enquiry received special instructions to question these victims. They took the evidence of over 300 witnesses in 28 different localities. To do justice to their case one ought to quote the whole report--children brutally torn away from their mothers, poor wretches crowded for days together in carriages so tightly packed that they had to stand up, cases of madness occurring among these half-stifled crowds, howling with hunger. But we must confine our quotations to a few items of "Kultur." "While the men of Combres set out for Germany, the women and children were shut up in the village church. They were kept there for a month, and passed their nights seated in the pews. Dysentery and croup raged among them. The women were allowed to carry excrement only just outside the church into the churchyard."--"At least four of the prisoners were massacred because they could not keep up with, the column, being completely exhausted."--"Fortin, aged 65, and infirm, could not go any further. They tied a rope to him, and two horsemen held the ends so that he had to keep the pace of the horses. As he kept falling down at every moment, they made him get up by poking him with their lances. The poor wretch, covered with blood, prayed them to kill him."

"189 inhabitants of Sinceny, who were sent to Erfurt, arrived there after a journey of 84 hours, during which each of them got nothing but a single morsel of bread weighing less than four ounces. Another convoy spent four days on the railway journey and were only fed once, and were beaten with sticks and fists and with knife handles." The same brutalities were experienced in the German cities through which they passed, and very few of the civilian prisoners escaped being buffeted by the infuriated crowds or being spat upon.

So much for the journey. Now for what happened to them after their arrival! "The declarations made to us show clearly that the bulk of the prisoners almost collapsed from hunger. After food had been distributed, when anything was left, you saw some of them rush to the neighbourhood of the kitchens; hustled and beaten by the sentries, these unfortunates risked blows and abuse to try and pick up some additional morsels of the sickening food. You saw men, dying of hunger, picking up herring heads, and the grounds of the morning's decoction."

At Parchim, where 2,000 French civilians from 12 to 77 years of age were interned, two starving prisoners who asked for the scraps left over were beaten with the butt-ends of rifles to such an extent that they died of their wounds. The young son of one of them who tried to protect his father was tied to a stake for a week on end.

On oath, Dr. Page deposes: "Those who had no money almost died of hunger. When a little soup was left, a crowd of unfortunates rushed to get it, and the non-commissioned officers got rid of them at last by letting the dogs loose on them." But what is the need of all these details and of all this evidence? Look at the 10,000 who came back after being repatriated and see what the bandits have done to them. Reader, summon up your courage and peruse to the bitter end the conclusions of the Official Commission of Enquiry. "It is impossible to conceal the melancholy and indignation we felt on seeing the state of the 'hostages'[22] whom the Germans had returned to us after they had kidnapped them in defiance of the rights of nations. During our enquiry we never ceased hearing the perpetual coughs that rent them. We saw numbers of young people whose cheerfulness had disappeared apparently for ever, and whose pale and emaciated faces betrayed physical damage probably beyond repair. In spite of ourselves we could not help thinking that scientific Germany had applied her methodical ways to try and spread tuberculosis in our country. Nor were we less profoundly moved to thought by the sight of women mourning their desolated hearths and missing or captive children, or by the moral impression left on the faces and bearing of many prisoners by the hateful regime which was intended to destroy, in those who were subjected to it, the feeling of human dignity and self-respect."[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[18] _Prisoners_, as well as wounded, have very often been massacred on the field of battle. As to the treatment that prisoners--French, Belgian, Russian and English--have undergone in German camps, it is a pitiful tale that we do not intend to begin here. Some day it must be written. With the actual evidence before us, the lot of the German prisoners in England, Russia and France must be compared with that of ours in Germany. The most indifferent reader will feel his heart stirred within him, and will hesitate to say whether we were "generous," or whether we were "fools."

[19] We speak of those who have left--but what of those who have remained in Belgium and France, under the German heel? The time has not yet come for writing this piece of history, but we cannot refrain from referring to the sufferings of these children of the North, boys and girls, torn from their families, carried off like bands of slaves to other invaded regions to be employed on forced labour. France has apprised the neutral countries of these facts: Will they remain silent?

[20] Further on it will be seen that much worse happened on numerous other journeys.

[21] "We got one pound of black sour bread per diem. In the morning we had a tepid decoction intended for coffee; at mid-day a pint and a half of thick soup, and at night rather less than a pint of thin soup. On three occasions only did we get potatoes, but never once meat. Cabbage soup was the usual thing and after a certain time it turned our stomachs. Certain prisoners were employed in chopping up the cabbages to make sauerkraut, and they had to keep the broken leaves, as these were used up for our soup."

[22] Through an old habit, the Commission makes use of this word; they are not "hostages," of course.

[23] It must also be noted that when the Commissioners making the enquiry saw the repatriated people, they had had some time in which to recover, first in Switzerland, and then in France. The arrival of these pitiable drafts gave rise (even among those of the Swiss people who were in principle the least hostile to Germany) to such a feeling of horror for their executioners that the Kaiser took warning and thought it wiser to suspend the repatriations for several months. For the welcome and the kind care which our poor martyrs received at the hands of the Swiss, our grateful thanks and salutations are due!

GERMAN EXCUSES: LIES AND CALUMNY

The Boches have taken up three positions in succession. In the first place, in their speeches, in their writings and by commemorative pictures and medals, _they have gloried in their misdeeds_, thus declaring that Kultur is above morality (as stated by their writer, Thomas Mann), and that the right of German might is above everything. Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world outside them there was something known as a "moral conscience," not understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, _they cynically denied the charges_. Finally, when they were driven from this second trench, when simple negation became impossible, _they had perforce to explain their crimes_.

Their commonest explanation is this, "Civilians fired on us."[24] The French Commission of Enquiry came to the following conclusion on this point: "This allegation is false, and those who put it forward have been powerless to give it the appearance of truth, even though it has been their custom to fire shots in the neighbourhood of dwellings, in order to be able to affirm that they have been attacked by innocent inhabitants, on whose ruin or massacre they had resolved."

Enquiries conducted by high magistrates have established the fact that German officials are very frequently guilty of premeditated lies. It is probable, all the same, that many German soldiers, on entering Belgium or France, were obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them. The cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting for pillage--"Man hat geschossen (they have fired)"--is enough for a locality to be delivered up at once to the wildest fury. "When an inhabitant has fired on a regiment," said a soldier at Louvain, "the place belongs to the regiment." What a temptation for a Boche soldier to fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and massacre!

Some mistakes have _possibly_ been made which could have been avoided by the least enquiry. Read this admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon officer: "The lovely village of Gué-d'Hossus has been given over to the flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a cyclist fell off his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself. As a consequence there was firing in his direction. Then, the male inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames. Such horrors will not be repeated, we must hope ... There ought to be some compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this indiscriminate shooting of people."

The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbourhood of, villages have been those of French or Belgian soldiers covering their retreat. Sometimes this has been discovered, but too late, and they have continued their crimes--in order to justify them.

Here is the statement of a neutral: "In one village they found corpses of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot.... In the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with consideration, and allowed himself to talk freely: his complaint was the misdeeds of his soldiers. Near Haelen, he told his host, he had to have a soldier shot on finding in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings: the man, on being questioned, admitted that he had cut them off the bodies of the German dead."[25]

In exceptional cases an enquiry is held; and in every such instance the truth is discovered and massacre prevented.

At the end of August, Liebknecht,[26] a member of the Reichstag, set out in his car for Louvain. He came to a village where there was considerable excitement going on. The Germans had just found three of their men lying dead on the road, and accused the peasants of being responsible for the deed. Liebknecht examined them, and was not long in obtaining proof that the Germans had been killed by Belgian riflemen. At Huy there were shots in the night; two soldiers wounded; the populace accused; the mayor arrested and condemned to death; but he knew that there were no Allied troops in the neighbourhood, and also that his own people had not fired a shot. "Shoot me, if you like," he said calmly, "but not before extracting the bullets from the wounded." The officer, less of a brute than some, gave his consent to this. The bullets in the wounds were German bullets. But the Germans do not even require a pretext to take action. Their first crime, to our knowledge, was on August 4th. Some officers dashed up to Herve in a car, challenged two civilians while crossing the bridge and, without giving them time to answer, shot them down with revolvers.

In their private diaries they accuse one another, each throwing on his neighbour the responsibility for crimes committed. A cavalryman writes: "It is unfortunately true that the worst elements of our Army feel themselves authorised to commit any sort of infamy. This charge applies particularly to the A.S.C." A bombing officer: "_Rethel_, September 2nd. Discipline becoming lax. Brandy. Looting. The blame lies with the _infantry_." An infantry officer: "Discipline in our company excellent--a contrast with the rest. The _Pioneers_ are not worth much. As for the _Artillery_, they are a band of brigands." A final extract seems to be the only one that gives the truth: "Brin ... _troops of all arms_ are engaged in looting."

It has been possible sometimes to prove premeditation. On the 17th August, a German officer was billeted with a Belgian magistrate. Their talk turned on Dinant. "Dinant," said the officer, "is a condemned town!" M. X ..., of Dinant, happening to be in another town, made the acquaintance of a German officer, who said to him on August 20th, "You come from Dinant? Don't go back. It's a bad place, and will be destroyed." Troops on their march towards Andenne announced in villages through which they passed that they were going to burn the town and massacre the inhabitants. At Louvain, a German officer, treated generously by a middle-class family, and appreciating their courtesy, rushed to their house on the 25th at 11 o'clock in the morning,[27] and earnestly pressed his hosts to leave without delay, refusing to give them any explanation. The family, puzzled and perturbed by his appeal, went off and so escaped.

* * * * *

In the eyes of the moralist the worst of all their crimes will perhaps be this, that the wretches tried to dishonour Belgium, after first assassinating her. They have dared to say, write, and proclaim publicly, and affirm to Neutrals, that Belgian women and girls had mutilated German wounded soldiers, blinding them with scissors or with boiling water. The reports of the Belgian Commission of Enquiry have been replied to in a counter report[28] published as a German White Book. This enquiry and these documents will live in history. In centuries to come they will hang as a heavy weight on the Kaiser's memory and the conscience of Germany. Listen to the pathetic conclusion of the Belgian reply: "Before God and before man, the Belgian Government has no hesitation in giving this as its opinion of the conduct of the German Government towards the Belgian nation: 'He is twice guilty who violates the rights of others and then attempts, with singular audacity, to justify himself by imputing to his victim faults that were never committed.'"[29]

It still remains to be explained how, by what means, by what deadly influences, this German nation, consisting of men who, as individuals, are not all brigands, has reached and been led to this state of savagery? In the preparations for this _collective madness_ of a people, what part has been played by its leaders of thought and its politicians, by race and by education? This is a disturbing phenomenon which students of mental disease[30] will study later, but on the examination of which we cannot here embark. It is not for us to seek the pathological cause for this moral decay--this decadence. We have only to note its _effects_.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Need it be noted here that even if in any locality an imprudent civilian had fired a shot, it would still remain--in accordance with the Hague Convention, International Law, and plain morality--a veritable crime to massacre in a heap, haphazard, and without enquiry, so many innocent souls?

[25] L.H. Grondijs, "Les Allemands en Belgique," p. cxix. (Paris, Berger-Levrault, Publishers).

[26] Liebknecht was too honest and embarrassing a witness for Germany. He has been thrown into prison. We salute him.

[27] The martyrdom of Dinant began on August 24th; that of Louvain on the 25th August, at 5 p.m.

[28] It may be recalled that commissions of enquiry, at which _both_ sides should be represented, were offered by Belgian Socialists to German Socialists, by Belgian Freemasons to German Freemasons, by Belgian Bishops to German Bishops. Three proposals. Three refusals!

[29] France has suffered from similar calumny. We alluded above (note, p. 37) to the declaration of a German army doctor that orders were given to amputate, as a reprisal, "all wounded limbs." So _we_ are said to have done that? A monstrous lie, which will be spurned indignantly by all who know the honourable traditions of our ambulances and of our French doctors. The _method of systematic lying_ has been shown to the life in connection with the use of asphyxiating gas. The Boches made immense preparations for the use of this gas. When their organization was complete, they took care, before acting, to publish each day for a week in their communiques, little notes announcing that the enemy were "making wide use of this new method of warfare,"--a statement contrary to fact, and known by them to be so, but one that was calculated to mislead public opinion. When they considered that public opinion was sufficiently "prepared," they launched their deadly gases and their flaming liquids; and we needed a long time, needed also to overcome our moral hesitation, to make sure of our defence and our reply. _Cynical lying_ with the Germans is not only admitted, but _gloried in_. When it was completely proved that, in order to start the war of 1870, Bismarck had committed _forgery_. Professor Hans Delbrück exclaimed, "Blessed is the hand that forged the Ems despatch."

[30] Who, except the specialist in mental diseases, can deal with this proclamation of the Kaiser to his Army of the East?: "Remember that you are the chosen people! The Spirit of the Lord has descended upon me as Emperor of the Germans! I am the instrument of the Most High. I am His sword. Woe and death unto those who resist my will! Woe and death unto those who believe not in my mission!"

THE GERMAN APPEAL

APPEAL TO THE CIVILISED WORLD

Now that we have reached the close of this book of horrors, let us impanel the 93 Germans of light and learning, and confront them with the words of their own manifesto:

"As representatives of German Science and Art, we the undersigned, declare that:--

"It is not true that Germany provoked this War....

"It is not true that we have criminally violated the neutrality of Belgium....

"It is not true that our soldiers have made any attack on the life or property of a single Belgian citizen without being forced to it by sheer necessity....

"It is not true that our troops brutally destroyed Louvain....

"It is not true that we have conducted warfare in defiance of International Law. Our soldiers commit neither undisciplined acts nor cruelties....

" ... In this struggle we shall continue to the end to act as a civilised nation, to whom the heritage of a Goethe, a Beethoven or a Kant is as sacred as our own hearth and home. We answer for that in our own name and on our honour."[31]

And since irony is more powerful than abuse, let us set down here, without a word of comment, a few German utterances:--

The Kaiser: "We are the salt of the earth. God created us to civilise the world."

The Cardinal-Archbishop of Cologne: "It is with God that our soldiers set out for this war that has been inflicted upon us, and in which we are fighting for the sacred treasures of Christianity, and for its own particular gift, Kultur."

Dryander, a Protestant Minister, and preacher to the Royal Court at Berlin: "On our side we are fighting with a self-control, a conscience, and a gentleness unexampled perhaps in the history of the world."

Professor Lasson: "Our characteristics are humanity, gentleness, conscience--the Christian virtues. In a world of evil, we stand for love, and God is with us."

And, finally, this older and memorable saying of their great philosopher Hegel: "The destiny of the German race is to supply the sustaining pillars of Christian teaching."

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Speaking of honour, it is as well to recall here the reply made by a German officer to the schoolmaster at Chanteheux. The schoolmaster quite simply pledged his word of honour that no inhabitant had fired: "You French pig," the brute shouted, "don't talk of honour--you have none."

APPEAL BY BELGIAN WORKMEN

800,000 copies of this pamphlet had already been sent out when the world rang with the tragic appeal of the Belgian workmen to their brother workers in other lands. This appeal ought to be fixed on the door of every factory and workshop. Every worker, every citizen, should study it. We regret that we cannot reprint it here in full, but the following extracts will at least give an idea of this new crime committed by Germany:--

"Workers,--In the name of the international bonds that
unite all workmen, the working classes of
Belgium--threatened, without exception, with slavery,
deportation, and forced labour for the enemy's
gain--send to the working classes in other lands a
supreme appeal.

"Germany, as you know, attacked and terrorised Belgium
in 1914 for having defended her right to neutrality and
her faith and honour.

"Germany has been martyrizing Belgium. She has from that
moment onwards turned the land into a prison: the
frontiers are armed against Belgians like a battle
front.. All our constitutional liberties have been
abolished. There is no longer safety anywhere; the
life of our citizens is at the mercy of the
policeman,--arbitrary, limitless, pitiless ... Belgian
industrial idleness has been the creation of the
Germans, maintained by them for their own profit.[32]
To these 500,000 unemployed they have for the last month
been saying: 'Either you will sign a contract to work
for Germany, or you will be reduced to slavery.' In
either case, it means exile, deportation, forced labour
in the interests of the enemy, and against the interests
of our country: formidable punishments, the cruellest
ever invented by tyranny for the punishment of
crimes--and what _are_ the crimes alleged?... On the
western front, Belgian workmen--your brothers and
ours--are being forced to dig trenches, to build
aviation camps, to fortify the German lines, and when
the victims, in spite of everything, are firm in their
refusal to take part in work forbidden by International
Law, they are starved and beaten into illness, wounded,
and sometimes even _killed_.

"In Germany, they are turned on to work in mines, and at
lime-kilns, quite regardless of their age, profession,
or trade. Youths of seventeen, old men of seventy, are
deported in haphazard masses. _Is not this a revival of
ancient Slavery with all its horrors_?... Do you know,
brothers, what the Germans throw to their victims by way
of pay? 30 pfennigs (3d.) a day!

"Workers: _Never forget that the soldiers-who are_
_acting as the torturers or our Belgian workmen are
themselves German workers!_

"In the depths of our distress, we count on you. It is
for you to act! For ourselves, even if brute force
succeeds for the moment in reducing our bodies to
servitude, we shall never give our consent.

"A final word: Whatever tortures we may undergo, we do
not wish for Peace except with the independence of our
country and the triumph of justice.

"THE WORKMEN OF BELGIUM."

FOOTNOTES:

[32] By levying on Belgium a war contribution which already exceeds £40,000,000--by transporting to Germany food, merchandise and various products to the value of more than £200,000,000--by seizing and despatching to their own country the greater portion of our raw material, machines and accessories--by issuing threatening edicts to prevent localities from using the unemployed on their own important works of public utility.