German Atrocities. A Record of Shameless Deeds

“I got into Liége by Holland. I went first to Rosendael, then to Maastricht, last to Eysden, and then openly passed the frontier. I will not describe Visé, Mouland, Berneau, and other places, all burned, sacked, and devastated in the most horrible fashion. Although all I have seen has hardened my nerve, I still shiver when I think of it. One cannot grasp the idea of all that has really taken place there. The Germans, mad with rage on account of the resistance which we opposed to them, have acted like wild beasts, to give it a mild name. I have seen men, women, and children hanged or horribly mutilated. I have seen heaps of corpses, of which no trace will be left in a few hours, as the inhabitants round Liége have been commandeered to bury them in lots. Ah! the Prussians will have to render us a terrible account. I witnessed an incident on the Place Lambert, in Liége. A Belgian chauffeur was arguing with a German officer. Visibly, the Belgian chauffeur could not understand what was wanted of him. The crowd gathered, and I could not follow the rest of the scene; but I heard a revolver shot. Then German soldiers rushed out of the palace to stop the crowds, and I saw the chauffeur, with blood-covered face, carried into a house by two soldiers. Not a sign of revolt from the crowd. The rifles are loaded, ready to go off. At my side a German said, laughingly: ‘Ach, das ist nichts! Eine kleinigkeit.’ (‘Oh! that’s nothing. Only a small thing.’)”

Dinant Destroyed.

It was at Dinant, one of the most famous beauty spots of Belgium, and which is so well known to English tourists, who flock to it in great numbers every year, that some particularly atrocious outrages took place. According to the message of Reuter’s correspondent at Ostend, the women were confined in convents whilst hundreds of men were shot. A hundred prominent citizens were shot in the Place d’Armes. M. Hummers, manager of a large weaving factory employing two thousand men, and M. Poncelet, son of a former Senator, were both shot, the latter in the presence of his six children. The Germans appeared at the branch of the National Bank, where they demanded all the cash in the safe. When the manager refused to give them the money they tried to blow the safe open. Not succeeding in this they demanded the combination for the lock. The manager refused. On this the Germans shot him immediately, together with his two sons. Dinant was afterwards destroyed by shell-fire and incendiarism.

“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.” —Times.

The wanton destruction of this ancient and beautiful town is a crime second only to that committed at Louvain.

Children Outraged.

A Belgian soldier who fought at Dinant was eye-witness of a terrible scene. Several German infantrymen had entered a house in a small village on the Meuse, and he, with four other Belgians, lay in wait for them. The Germans emerged with a young woman, whom they subjected to brutal ill-usage. The Belgians feared that if they fired they might hit the woman, but presently one of the Kaiser’s savages drew his bayonet and plunged it into the poor girl’s breast, whereupon she sank down uttering a piteous cry.

At Harseet the Uhlans suddenly descended upon the village, shot the first men they came across, numbering seven; this was followed by outrages on women, and twenty-two men were carried off as prisoners. Two Uhlans demanded a fowl from a peasant, who replied that he had none. They found one, and promptly shot him.

Because two Jesuit professors at Louvain University were found with newspapers upon them, telling of German atrocities, one was shot, while thirty of the Jesuits were taken away in carts to an unknown fate.

In La Préville a number of Uhlans who broke open a café and satiated themselves with drink saw a little boy of seven playing with a toy gun. Because he pointed it at a German soldier he was shot.

Base Act of Ingratitude.

Many Belgian refugees, after weary wanderings, found themselves in Paris, and some of them were given shelter in the vast Cirque de Paris, where straw was laid upon the floor upon which those made homeless and destitute by the Kaiser’s savage barbarians made their bed.

One old grey-haired man, bent and travel-stained, was found by a correspondent seated alone and silently weeping. A kindly Red Cross nurse inquired the reason of his despondency. He said: “My name is Jean Beauzon. I kept a little coffee-house just across the river from Liége, in the town of Grivegnee. When the army was mobilized my two sons, both strapping fine fellows, went off to join the regiment. I have two daughters, one left with my old father and the other here”; so saying he pointed to a bright-eyed girl of sixteen, whose face and head were swathed in bandages.

“You see,” he went on, “that poor dear face. Well, a German did that. They burst into my place and demanded wine, which I gave them. What happened then I cannot exactly remember. It all seems like a horrible nightmare. We subsequently left our home and wandered away in the opposite direction from the terrible cannonading that was going on.

“After walking in the dark for two hours my other daughter became too tired to go any farther and sat down in despair by the roadside.

“This girl here and I then went on to try to find some means of conveyance for her. A little way down the road we came upon a riderless horse, which we managed with great difficulty to catch and mount. We then went back to find my other daughter. We had not left her for more than half an hour, but she was no longer there. We spent the rest of the night looking for her, but found no sign or trace of her, and in the end were obliged to give up the search.

“Finally we got into a train, which brought us here. I was cared for by the Red Cross. I don’t know where they found me or anything else except that I have prayed all the time to the Blessed Virgin to return my cherished lamb to me undefiled.”

“What kind of soldiers can these be who slaughter old women with bayonet thrusts, who violate young girls and then murder them, who strip and stab young boys, who hang and burn old men, and who subject to degradation and insult innocent and unoffending priests?”

    – From the Daily Telegraph.

XI

The Crime of Louvain

“In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has suffered a loss which can never be repaired.” —Press Bureau.

No words can adequately describe the wave of disgust which swept over the whole of the civilized communities of the world when it became known that the Germans had reduced to ashes the beautiful old city of Louvain. Mr. Asquith has described the sack of Louvain as

“the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years’ War. With its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivalled associations, a shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance.”

This ancient city, the Oxford of Belgium, has been reduced by the new Huns to a heap of ashes. “Every traveller in Belgium,” says Sir William Robertson Nicoll, “will remember the ancient mediæval town, its wonderful Hotel de Ville, the most perfect piece of architecture in Belgium, the Church of St. Peter, begun in 1425, and the University with its priceless library. All have perished, and why? The civil population had been disarmed, but in a night skirmish German soldiers accidentally fired on their own guard, and it was decided in the panic of the hour to destroy the whole town. A town of forty-five thousand inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”

The wanton destruction of this ancient seat of learning, rich in historic associations, was an act of vandalism almost without parallel in history, a crime not only against humanity, but against the generations of future years.

The restrained and dignified words in which our own Official Press Bureau made known the ruthless sacking of Louvain constitute a fearful indictment of German Militarism, which can give official sanction to such an appalling deed. Here are the words of the Press Bureau: —

“Ancient and beautiful Louvain, a town of forty-five thousand people, a seat of learning, famous for its ancient and beautiful churches and other buildings, many of them dating from the fifteenth century, has been utterly destroyed by one of the Kaiser’s commanders in a moment of passion to cover the blunder of his own men. The excuse for this unpardonable act of barbarity and vandalism is that a discomfited band of German troops returning to Louvain were fired upon by the people of the town, who had been disarmed a week earlier. The truth is that the Germans, making for the town in disorder, were fired upon by their friends in occupation of Louvain, a mistake by no means rare in war. The assumption of the German commander was, in the circumstances, so wide of probability that it can only be supposed that in the desire to conceal the facts the first idea which occurred to him was seized upon as an excuse for an act unparalleled in the history of civilized people.

“The Emperor William has stated that the only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to the whole country. The case of Louvain is such an ‘interference,’ without even the miserable excuse suggested. Louvain is miles from the scene of real fighting. In International Law it is recognized that ‘the only legitimate end which the States should aim at in war is the weakening of the military forces of the enemy.’ And the rules under the annex to Convention IV. of 1907, which expand and demand the provision of the Declaration of Brussels, lay down that any destruction or seizure of enemies’ property, not imperatively called for by military necessities, is forbidden.

“In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has suffered a loss which can never be repaired.”

Incredible Wickedness.

But even the above statement does not relate one half of the fearful crimes against property and human life committed by these uniformed ruffians in the ill-fated city, perpetrated by hosts of armed men against innocent and helpless non-combatants, aged men, defenceless women, and children. The houses and buildings of the town were without doubt deliberately set on fire. Helped by petrol poured on by brutal Teuton soldiers, the flames spread rapidly and fiercely.

“For every vile deed wrought under the impious benedictions of the monarch who is ravaging Europe ample reparation shall be exacted.” —Times.

Everyone who offered opposition was killed; everyone found in the possession of arms shot. Wives saw their husbands murdered before their eyes, mothers their sons. Men were brutally dragged away from their weeping wives and children, propped up against a wall and shot, or ruthlessly cut down where they stood. German soldiers, encouraged by their officers, looted where and how they liked; the inhabitants were in some cases driven to take refuge on the roofs of their houses, which were set on fire. From burning houses were to be heard the agonized cries of those perishing in the conflagration, which was destined to reduce the city to ashes.

Many authenticated stories of these terrible happenings have reached London. At first they seemed unbelievable, but each day brings further corroboration. I take the liberty of reproducing a despatch of Mr. Hugh Martin, the special correspondent of the Daily News and Leader, whose vivid narrative brings home to us the details of the sufferings of the poor victims of these abominable proceedings: —

“Stories of the sacking of Louvain, which are almost unbelievable in their horror, reach here (Rotterdam) from the frontier. One of the most vivid is that of an assistant in a bicycle shop, who, though a Dutchman, was given special facilities for escape owing to his being mistaken for a German.

“ ‘At mid-day last Tuesday,’ he begins, ‘a fearful uproar broke out in the streets while we were at dinner, and the crackle of musketry was soon followed by the roar of artillery near at hand.

“ ‘Hearing shrieks from the inhabitants of our streets, I rushed to the window and saw that several houses were already in flames. Soldiers were smashing the shop windows and looting in all directions.

Shot Down Like Rabbits.

“ ‘As the people rushed into the streets from the burning houses they were shot down like rabbits. With my governor, his wife, and little boy, we fled to the cellar, where I and the boy hid under a pile of tyres, while the manager crept into a chest, and his wife far into a drain, where she stood with water up to her waist for many hours.

“ ‘Night fell and the sound of shooting in the streets became brisker. I crept out of my hiding-place to get some water, and, peeping out of the window, saw, to my horror, that almost the whole street was in ruins. Then we found that our own house was alight, and it was necessary to choose between bolting and being burnt to death where we were.

“ ‘I decided to make a dash for it, but the moment I was outside the door three Germans held me up with their revolvers and asked me where I was going. My reply was that I was a German, and that my master and his wife were Germans who had been trapped in the burning house.

“ ‘Apparently my German was good enough to make them believe my statement, for they promised to give us safe conduct out of the town. Our walk through the streets to the railway station I shall always remember as a walk through hell.

“ ‘The beautiful town, with its noble buildings, was a sea of flame. Dead bodies lay thick in the streets. Dreadful cries came from many of the houses. It was half-past five on Wednesday morning when we reached the railway station. Soldiers were even then still going about the streets with lighted brands and explosives in their hands, setting alight any buildings that still remained intact.

“ ‘In the parks they had already begun to bury the dead, but in many cases so shallow were the graves that a large part of each body was still visible. At the railway station we witnessed a truly harrowing spectacle. Fifty citizens, both men and women, had been brought from houses from which the soldiers swore that shots had been fired.

“ ‘They were lined up in the street, protesting with tears in their eyes that they were innocent. Then came a firing squad. Volley followed volley, and the fifty fell dead where they stood.’

“This appalling story is fully confirmed by an independent despatch from a Dutch journalist who happened to be at Louvain on his way to Brussels. He states that he was standing on Tuesday evening near the railway station at Louvain talking to a German officer, when he was strongly advised to leave the spot, owing to the great danger.

“A group of some five hundred men and women described as hostages were ranked in the open space by the station, and they were informed that for every soldier fired on in the town ten of them would be shot. This arrangement was carried out with true German regard for the punctilious observation of all rules.

“The wretched people sobbed and wrung their hands and fell on their knees, but they might as well have appealed to men of stone.

“Ten by ten as the night wore on they were brought from the ranks and slaughtered, without regard to age or sex, before the eyes of those who remained.