The most celebrated German writers on international law, Heffter, Klueber, Geffcken, have taught that the State which declares war can neither keep enemy subjects who happen to be on its territory nor their property, for as they came into this territory in reliance upon public law and have received permission to stay there, they can avail themselves of the tacit promise made by the State that every freedom and safety are guaranteed them for their return. If the State wishes them to go, it must allow them a reasonable time to go away with their property; if not, enemy subjects, who are subject to the regulations of the police and of public safety have the right, so long as they respect these laws, to appeal for protection to them. In any case deliberate ill-treatment of enemy subjects cannot be permitted.
This principle, by the confession of the Germans themselves, condemns the methods to which Germany has resorted by empowering her officials to behave cruelly to French and Russian subjects who happened to be in Germany on the 3rd August, and by tacitly approving the behaviour of the mob to them.
The fear of spying, of which it appears that all these people were suspected, perhaps because of the audacity which the Germans themselves showed in resorting to it in foreign countries, was invoked by the Germans as the excuse for all these outrages and the justification for all these annoyances.
Nevertheless, ill-treatment could not be justified in this way. As a precaution against spying, foreigners may be compelled to leave a country en masse. A straightforward and honest supervision may be exercised over them at their departure, but no one has the right to allow them to be struck, nor to expose them to the clamours of a mob, nor to speak to them as if they were prisoners in the dock. Only definite suspicion falling upon individuals would justify such conduct, and by justifying it would give, in addition, the rights of arrest and cross-examination.
People who are merely being brought back to their own country in case of war have the right to be shown every consideration by the authorities.
In all the disgraceful situations which German officials and private citizens brought about in Germany in their dealings with enemy subjects of Germany, we can, therefore, see merely the expression of a cowardly hatred of everything that belongs to the powers hostile to Germany, powers which the Germans think they are hitting when they insult and ill-treat their peaceful and harmless citizens. The same feeling which animated German officials against the Dowager Empress of Russia, against the Grand Duke Constantin, against the ambassadors, ministers and consuls of Russia and France, could only assert itself with still greater fury, devoid of all consideration and all scruple, against plain French citizens or Russian subjects. In this letting loose of evil passions there were manifested features of grotesque arbitrariness. For example, such was these people’s whim, every woman who wore spectacles was subjected to a more minute search than other travellers, on the ground, it was alleged, that there was more likelihood of her being a spy!
Thirty-two Russians belonging to the highest aristocracy, who were passing the summer at Baden and other bathing resorts, were arrested at Hamburg and detained for several days. Thanks to the intervention of the Spanish consul, M. Veler, they were able eventually to continue their journey; but at Neumunster, M. Schebeko, on the authority of a telegram from Berlin, was suddenly arrested in the train, compelled to get out of the carriage guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets, in the midst of a crowd shouting “Shoot him!” He was then dragged off to prison, where he spent twenty-four hours in a dark cell, in the company of malefactors under the common law.
The Countess of Vorontsoff, daughter of the Viceroy of the Caucasus, went so far as to protest. Immediately the soldiers, in a rage, forced themselves into her carriage, pushed her with the butt-ends of their rifles on to the platform and began to search her. It was only with great difficulty that the travellers were able to resume their journey, which, from Baden to the Danish frontier, lasted seven days. At Reudsburg station they were again dragged from their carriage and carefully searched: at the Fleusburg station they were detained for four hours under a guard of armed soldiers. Other Russian travellers of note were at first brought to the frontier town of Eydtkuhnen, and then dispatched again to Mecklenburg, and the Island of Ruegen.
The travellers were fearfully crowded together. Some of them were put into cattle-trucks and had nothing to eat or drink. Even women were not spared blows with the fist and with the butt-ends of rifles, nor threats of death. Several had to make long marches on foot between rows of armed soldiers, and at stopping-places had no shelter but pig-sties. A large number of men aged from seventeen to fifty were stopped.
Husbands were taken away from their wives, children were harshly treated, and left alone at the stopping-places in spite of the cries of their mothers, who were forced to continue their journey.
In the sanatorium at Frankfurt, which was filled with a large number of foreigners, especially Russians, several of whom had just been operated on, shameful behaviour of the same kind took place. The sanatorium was cleared in twenty-four hours. A woman who had just been confined was sent to Berne, where she arrived in a dying condition. Her baby died on the way.
After stories like these, we can easily imagine what bad treatment travellers of less distinction had to endure. The vicissitudes through which they passed not merely astound, but revolt, the hearer. The Russians who were brought to Sasuitz, for the most part robbed of all that they had, agreed to make the following declaration—
“Those who wish to do so may take the boat to go back to Sweden. Those who do not wish to return to Sweden will remain here, as prisoners of war, until the end of the war. The women will sew linen for our soldiers, the men will be employed in making trenches. Whoever departs from the appointed place where he is to stop will be brought before a court-martial and will be shot. We do not guarantee regular food.”
The French were no more spared than the Russians. At Kembs, fronting Istein, the German authorities blew up with dynamite Monsignor Kannengieser’s dwelling-house. The noble prelate, who was almost blind, was shamefully ill-treated, because (such is the statement of the Liberté de Fribourg) he had in his possession plans of Istein.
As for French travellers going back to France, their journey was checked at any moment by the police, who stopped them for long hours, if not for whole days, at every station. Several found that they were treated like regular prisoners; on the slightest suspicion they were shut up in dark cells, and in order to intimidate them or to drag confessions out of them, they were threatened with death. Those who were not stopped by the police were unmercifully beaten by the crowd, who loaded them with insults.
At Hanover a child who was wearing the inscription France on the ribbon of its hat was dragged from its mother and ill-treated.
At Donaueschingen a certain number of women were compelled by the German military authorities to discontinue their journey, and were brought to a school, where they had to sleep on straw.
They got the benefit, however, of the sole and only act of charity which was performed during the whole of this time in Germany towards an enemy subject, for the Princess of Fürstenberg, whose castle is at Donaueschingen, hearing of their condition, had beds given them in a hospital of which she is patroness.
In these acts of unbridled violence due note should be made of the fact that German officials, officers and private soldiers made no distinction between individuals who held public offices and mere private citizens. Still more worthy of note is the fact, which we think is obvious, that they made no distinction between the subjects of enemy and those of neutral states. The sacred duty laid upon every State to protect the life, property and even the interests of neutrals was absolutely repudiated in Germany, and we think it is our duty to draw the reader’s attention with special emphasis to outrages of this kind committed by the Germans both in Germany and in the territories which they invaded.
M. Bernardino del Campo, ex-Minister of Finance of Brazil, ex-President of Sao-Paolo and leader of the Republican Party of that country, happened to be on the 3rd August at Bad-Nauheim with his wife, who was taking a course of treatment there, and his four children. The Germans showed no consideration either for his nationality, his rank or his age. M. Bernardino del Campo, although he had reached the age of sixty-two years, was struck with the butt-end of the rifle by Bavarian soldiers, robbed of his jewels and left dying at the Swiss frontier.
The news of this incident caused great indignation in Brazil.
Baroness Karen-Groothe, daughter of the King of Denmark’s Master of the Hunt, and wife of a Turkish officer, happened to be at Mecklenberg when war was declared, and was arrested as a spy and treated so brutally that she had to keep to her bed at Copenhagen, to which she was brought back.
Several Danish subjects resident in Schleswig were treated with the same kind of brutality. Count de Schack was imprisoned; when, on his release, he tried to escape across the Danish frontier, he was arrested again and sent to a fortress in the interior of Germany. The editors of the Danish papers in Schleswig, and a large number of distinguished people in the annexed provinces, were also imprisoned.
Americans were no better treated than Danes. The New York Sun (11th August, 1914) discussed the treatment of Americans in Germany in an article dealing with the arrest of Mr. Archer Huntington and his wife on a baseless charge of espionage, and the brutality with which several young Americans had been treated.
“It would seem that the German authorities” (said the Sun) “think that in war there is no obstacle to their will and no atonement for their acts. The American Government will speedily have to disabuse them of this idea. Germany must be made to understand clearly that ample compensation is due to her victims, and that those who have abused their authority must be punished.”
The Austrian authorities were as discourteous as the German to foreigners, subjects of neutral countries. At Carlsbad the famous singer, Adelina Patti, and her husband, Baron Cederstrom, a Danish subject, were kept prisoners for several days in their hotel, where the police searched everything and rummaged through all their trunks and portmanteaus, while the crowd, who threatened to carry the hotel by assault, raised a hideous din by way of demonstration against the singer, who is a friend of Russia and France.
According to the Italian newspaper Messagero, an Italian commercial traveller, M. Ugo Lorenzini, and ten fellow-countrymen were ill-treated by the Austrians on their return from Berlin to Italy on the outbreak of hostilities. They were imprisoned at Innsbruck, then shut up in a motor wagon, which took a day and a half to bring them to Trente. There they were robbed of everything they had, especially of 2000 crowns, which was all the money in their possession. For a whole week the Austrians actually kept them digging trenches for fifteen hours a day: hardly any food was given them and they were struck with sticks and swords. One morning, after one of them had killed the guard, they managed to escape. A Trentino peasant helped them to make good their flight to the Italian frontier, where they arrived in a state of exhaustion.
The most serious of these crimes was that committed by the soldiers of Lieutenant-colonel Blegen at Dinant against M. Himmer, Vice-Consul of the Argentine. This vice-consul, who ought to have been respected not merely as a non-combatant and a neutral, but because his consular rank should have protected him, was killed, and the Argentine flag trampled under foot, with the result that keen indignation was aroused in the Argentine.
Amongst the many inhabitants at Liège who were shot were five young people of Spanish nationality. They were massacred on the 20th August. Their names were known and were as follows: the brothers Oliver, Juan and Antonio, natives of Oller, Jaime Llabres of Majorca, Juan Nora and José Nielle.
The Consul-General of the Balearic Islands, who had received confirmation of this report, made an official request to the Spanish Government that they should protest against these outrages and exact reparation—that is to say, present a demand for an indemnity for the families of the murdered men, and in order to make the demand effective, seize all the German ships which had taken refuge in Spanish ports.
In France, at Jarny, twelve kilometres from Briey, the German soldiers, not satisfied with other acts of barbarism which they had committed, shot in addition thirteen Italian subjects. Here is the story of these murders, given by one of the comrades of the victims, the Italian Agostino Baccheta de Gattico of Novara, in the Gazetta del Popolo (see the Matin for 27th August, 1914).
At Jarny, Baccheta ran a small café which was a rendezvous for Italians, some of whom were his boarders. He returned to Italy, after a long and painful journey, accompanied by the sister of one of the men who had been shot.
“It was about eight o’clock in the morning, on the 3rd August,” said he, “when several battalions of the 63rd German infantry regiment, with some cavalry and artillery, got as far as Jarny, without meeting with much resistance from the French, who were not in great numbers.
“The Germans lost one man killed and four wounded. They immediately accused the inhabitants of having fired on their party, and, having summoned the chief magistrate and the local doctor, ordered them to assemble the whole male population on the open space of the village.
“Women and children were knocked down. When they wanted to follow their men-folk they were brutally driven back with the butt-ends of rifles and several were bayoneted. A woman, named Giuseppa Trolli, tried to prevent her husband getting out of the bed where he was lying seriously ill, and called out to the Germans, ‘Savage brutes.’ She, and the child which she was holding in her arms, were wounded.
“When all the men had assembled, patrols began to search the houses. In the rooms of my café, which had been let to some Italians, they found pickaxes and other tools. This was the excuse for arresting and immediately afterwards shooting the workmen, whose names are as follows: Gerolamo Bernacchini of Gattico; Giovanni Testa of Bergama; Angelo Luisetti of Borgomanero; Stefano Piralli of Gattico; Giovani Zoni of Trevisa.
“In the inn kept by a man named Gaggioli Stefano of Serralunga, two rusty revolvers were found. The proprietor of the inn, a man named Vaglia Giuseppe of Castelamonte, and Cesaroni Vincenzo of Viterbe, were arrested and paid with their lives for what this search had yielded.
“Finally, in the Carrera Café, a fowling-piece was found belonging to Pesenti Luigi, of Milan, who was forthwith shot.”
Bachetta adds that some days afterwards the following were arrested and shot: Giovanni Tron of Conegliano; Andrew Bisesti of Bologna; a lad of thirteen years old called Eurigo Maffi of Lugo; Amilcare Zoni of Trevisa, because, when asking for a passport of repatriation, they had questioned the German Commandant in a spirited manner.
Italian refugees informed the consular authorities of the tragedy of which their companions had been the victims. They then went to Gattico to bring to M. Niccolo Leonardi the material proofs of their story.
Spanish subjects resident in Reims suffered dreadfully during the German occupation and the famous bombardment, which we describe in detail further on.
During the occupation, M. Rolland, a Spanish subject, was ill-treated and fifty German soldiers looted everything in the restaurant of which he was proprietor, especially his cellar.
Several other houses and shops belonging to Spaniards, over which their national flag was flying, were systematically pillaged.
The bombardment of September 18-20 had fresh disasters in store for the Spanish residents of Reims. The Spanish Consulate was bombarded although the Spanish flag made it conspicuous and all the Spaniards of Reims had taken refuge there on the advice of a Frenchman, M. Humbert, who, in the absence of the vice-consul, Cama, had taken charge of Spanish interests. The house of Narcisso Torres, which also had the Spanish flag upon it, was struck by two shells. Father Torres, aged seventy-six years and ill, died of excitement. M. Antonio’s house was set on fire; his daughter, aged eleven years, was seriously wounded.
In the outskirts of Reims, the premises of the well-known Spanish firm, Montener & Co., were bombarded four times, and suffered damage which might be estimated at 500,000 francs.
The Spanish committee of Paris, which had sent a deputation to the department of the Marne, to report upon the disasters of the war, protested as soon as they received the report of their deputies against the crimes committed in defiance of the Spanish flag and of humanity.
Finally, let us add that, at the time of the second bombardment of Dunkirk, which was carried out by German aeroplanes (22nd January, 1915), the United States consul, Mr. Benjamin Morel, was wounded by a bursting bomb. The consulates of the United States, Norway and Uruguay were, in addition, struck by explosive projectiles thrown by German airmen.
Among savage races, or even nearer home, before certain agreements had been made between nations, poisoned or barbed arrows, small shot, pounded glass, and soft-nosed bullets were used to aggravate the condition of wounded enemies to the worst possible extent. To-day all these contrivances are prohibited, with the consent of Germany, who signed the conventions which embodied this prohibition. German jurists like Bluntschli approved this concurrence of opinion, and the German General Hartmann declared that for a long time these kinds of projectiles have gone into the lumber-rooms of arsenals.
This fact, however, did not prevent Germany from resorting in this war to the use of weapons of the same kind, or even the still more formidable dum-dum bullets. Moreover, dum-dum bullets are expressly specified among the list of prohibitions laid down by the Hague Conference, 29th July, 1899, prohibitions signed by Germany and her ally Austria. These declare that “the contracting parties forbid the use of bullets which expand or easily get flattened in the human body, such as bullets with a hard outer case which does not completely cover the core or is notched at the end.”
The report of the military governor of Ghent, Lieutenant-general L. Clooten, and the results of experiments made by M. V. Rousseaux, armoury expert at Antwerp, prove indisputably that these bullets were in use among the Germans. The following is the report—
“Headquarters at Ghent, 26th September, 1914.
“Sir,
“I have the honour to send herewith some cartridges with bullets of the kind called ‘dum-dum,’ seized on the Hanoverian Lieutenant von Halden, who was taken prisoner at Ninove, by my troops, on the 29th inst.
“This officer’s pistol, which he threw away shortly before his capture, could not be found again.
“Lieutenant-general L. Clooten,
“Military Governor.”
The following is the result of the experiment made by M. V. Rousseaux—
“The box with green label which you send me (20 cartridges for Mauser self-loading pistols of calibre 7·63) must have contained full cartridges. It contains three rows of expanding dum-dum bullets, taken from the special boxes with yellow labels. These bullets were made to expand by the process of manufacture, and it is impossible to make them so by hand.
“V. Rousseaux,
“Armoury Expert.
“Antwerp, 28th September, 1914.”
The first instance of the use of dum-dum bullets on French soil goes back to the early days of the war. It was denounced by the French Government in the protest which they addressed (21st August, 1914) to the signatory powers of the Hague Convention.
This protest points out that “on the 10th August, 1914, after an engagement between French and German troops, a surgeon-major sent to the general in command of the Infantry Brigade” a case found on the road to Munster “close to the German Custom-House,” which contained five cartridges primed with cylindro-conical bullets cut at the end, the nickel cover of which was incomplete and left bare the upper portion of the lead slug.
This was not the only instance. On the 14th September, Dr. Chas. Lavielle, superintendent of the auxiliary hospital of Baignots-à-Dax, sent to the sub-prefect of the department of Landes a report on the operations which had been performed on patients, and declared that four of them had been struck by expanding bullets. Photographs were appended to the report.
Doctor Napieralski, physician-in-chief of the 7th auxiliary hospital of the third French army corps à Pont Audemer, noted the case of a foot soldier wounded in the shoulder with a huge scar as big as an open hand. It was not an ordinary wound.
The wounded man’s name was Adrien Bousquet, the foreman of some electricity works at Verdalles. He related (said the report) that on the 2nd November, in a battle to the East of Ypres, he found himself cut off with his section from the rest of his company.
For three days his comrades and he fired from a trench, but at last, on the 5th November, they were outnumbered. The majority surrendered. Bousquet, however, not wishing to be made prisoner, tried to escape towards the main body of his troop. He was fired at from different sides. All at once he felt in his shoulder so violent a concussion that it actually turned him round. Still, it was only a bullet which had struck him.
Dr. Napieralski noted that there could be no question of a wound caused by a bursting shell, for the wound showed no trace of powder nor any blackish stain of metallic oxide.
As the wounded man was carrying his knapsack on his back, Dr. Napieralski adds that the explosive force of the bullet was increased by the pressure of the knapsack. The result was that the sinews were torn over a wide surface and the bone formation of the shoulder-blade was shattered.
The depositions of the other wounded men who took part in the battle in which Bousquet was wounded confirm all his statements. On that day, at this point on the front, no artillery battle took place, and the Germans made use of many explosive bullets; no mistake is possible on this point, for it is easy to recognise them because as soon as they touch the ground, or any obstacle whatever, they burst with a dry, crackling noise. All the wounded who were questioned quote typical examples of deaths and wounds caused by these bullets; they also mention numerous witnesses, soldiers, their own comrades, whose evidence it is easy to collect and who will confirm their statements (Temps, 29th December).
German troops have used dum-dum bullets on all fronts and at every point where military operations were in progress. The fact that they have done so was proved particularly in the Togoland battles and confirmed by the English Governor of the Gold Coast in his report to the Colonial Minister in London (September 1914).
The discovery of these facts could not fail to arouse universal indignation which Germany tried to forestall by accusing her enemies of similar acts. The Kaiser used the Wolff Bureau to make this accusation against France and England, and lodged a complaint against both with the President of the United States. France immediately issued a denial in a telegram under date 11th September, 1914. Another denial drawn up on September 8 had come from England.
The Lokal-Anzeiger and the Tag of Berlin (September 10) published facsimiles of cartridges, and of pouches of cartridges alleged to be dum-dum, found by German troops at Longwy. Now, the very inscription on these pouches—“Practice Cartridges”—showed the futility of the accusation, for it proves that here we have to do merely with ammunition for use at the rifle-ranges of military training clubs. As these ranges sometimes had to be prepared in a hurry, it was a case of necessity to send them cartridges crushed at the end, so that the speed of the bullet should be reduced and that it should not go right through targets which were not thick enough.
These cartridges were not even used at the regimental rifle-range, and the fact that they neutralise the projectile capacity of the French rifle was a still stronger reason why nobody ever thought of using them in war.
Moreover, the Germans left at Compiègne, and on several battlefields of France, pouches, carefully put in a conspicuous position, of French cartridges which they had made into dum-dum bullets by scooping out the protruding end. The object of this artifice was to give currency to the belief that these prohibited missiles were used by the French troops.
The following is the reply made by the President of the United States to the Emperor of Germany. “In reply to your protest, the United States can do nothing. I do not think your Majesty expects me to say more.”
People who allowed themselves to be deceived by an accusation which had its origin in Germany soon received proof, and from Germany too, that the accusation was false.
Professor Straub, of Freiburg in Bresgau, published in a Munich medical journal the results of his inquiry into the nature of the French bullet. He admitted that, from the medical point of view, this bullet was composed of an admirable alloy, which could not poison, and he came to the conclusion that it was humane. Dr. Haberlin, a Swiss doctor attached to the hospitals at Arlon and at Louisburg, where he had chiefly German wounded under his care, declared on his honour that he had never heard tell of wounds inflicted on Germans by dum-dum bullets.
That the Germans used dum-dum bullets against the Russians was proved in a hospital at Vilna, where a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian infantry, wounded in the leg, chanced to be under treatment. The wound, which at its entrance was smaller than a penny, was as large as a hand where the bullet left the body.
The photograph of one of the dum-dum bullets used in this way was given by the Novoïé Vrémia on 17th September, 1914.
Moreover, the German missiles used against the Russian troops often gave off poisonous gases which caused the death of the wounded, and which were expressly forbidden by the Hague Conventions (1899) under the category of “projectiles, the sole purpose of which is to spread asphyxiating or noxious gases.”
The use of explosive bullets by the German troops was regularly followed by their allies, the Austrians, both on the Russian front and the Serbian.
The superintendent of the Red Cross at Petrograd was informed at the beginning of the war by his deputy at the first outpost detachment that, after Austrian field works had been taken, a large quantity of explosive bullets in special pouches and in belts for use in machine-guns had been found, and also many spent cartridges which had been adapted for this kind of bullet. These bullets bore the date 1914, and were used on every occasion that the Russians took the offensive.
On the other hand, “The use of explosive bullets by the Austrians,” declared an official note of the Russian Government, “has been often proved by medical reports and photographs of wounds.” Cartridges and bullets which have been captured leave no doubt on that point. The Russian troops which had succeeded in taking the village of Lajenki, near Nemirof, found there 10,000 explosive bullets, the place of origin of which is obvious from the fact that they had the stamp of an Austrian arsenal upon them.
On the 21st October, near Przemsyl, the Russian troops took some machine-guns, the belts of which were full of cartridges with explosive bullets.
Moreover, all the Serbian generals without exception declared that the Austrians employed explosive bullets on the whole Serbian front. The first ten rounds from the machine-guns were always, they said, made with this kind of bullet, and the Austrian soldiers were provided with explosive cartridges in the proportion of 20 per cent.
Again, Dr. Reiss, professor at the University of Lausanne, who was sent to Serbia as a special commissioner of the Gazette de Lausanne, and who returned from his expedition on the 10th December, told of numerous Austrian bullets which had been found on Balkan battlefields and which all the marksmen to whom they were shown declared to be explosive.
The following are some examples of this dastardly conduct. At Liège, the Germans resorted to it against the Commandant of the Bucelles fort, upon whom they treacherously made a murderous attack. They appeared with a flag of truce and demanded the surrender of the fort. “I refuse,” he replied. “Commandant,” was the answer, “come and see the condition of your defence works. You will agree that they can hold out no longer.”
The Commandant went off with the Germans, intending to show them the satisfactory condition of the works. Scarcely had he crossed the threshold when they fired their revolvers at him. The brave officer received two bullets in the thigh and only by chance got away from this murderous attack.
A similar case happened during the siege of Liège. On the night of 5-6th August about a hundred German soldiers came to a point 750 metres from the Belgian trenches, and, throwing down their arms, held up their hands and waved white flags. The Belgian Commandant gave the order to cease firing, and went towards the spot with some men. He had hardly gone more than about thirty yards when he fell, mortally wounded.
Near Hofstade, in Belgium, on the 26th August, the Germans advanced to the attack in the same way, preceded by a white flag.
In a battle which took place sixty kilometres from Lemberg, the Austrians resorted to the same means. The regiment of the Russian Colonel Frolow having attacked them with the bayonet, they hoisted the white flag. The colonel immediately gave the order to halt. He himself went alone to the enemy’s position and gave the order to cease firing. In vain, for as he was going back to his men he was mortally wounded.
One form of treachery repeated very often by the Germans was to sound the bugle calls of enemy troops and thus mislead them. In the thick of the battles round about Mulhausen, in the beginning of August, the French were not a little surprised to hear the call to cease firing. Fortunately, one of the superior officers saw through the enemy’s treachery and immediately ordered the signal to be given for attack, which sent the Germans flying helter-skelter. As such acts in German eyes are permissible stratagems, they constantly resorted to them. Another consisted in marching civilians of the invaded countries in front of the German troops. One of the officers who did this, Lieutenant A. Eberlein, has with extraordinary composure related in one of the most reputable German newspapers (Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 7th October, 1914) how he resorted to this device.
“We stopped three people,” writes this officer, “as we were going into Saint Dié; and then a fine idea occurred to me. We gave them chairs, and ordered them to carry these into the middle of the street and sit down. Entreaties followed on the one side, and some blows with the butt-end of the rifle on the other. By degrees one gets frightfully harsh. At last they sat down outside in the street. I do not know what prayers they said, but their hands were all the time clasped as if they had cramp. I was sorry for them, but the plan served its purpose and at once the firing aimed from the houses at our flanks immediately slackened, and we could now occupy the house opposite and in that way had command of the principal street. Everybody who showed himself in the street after this was shot. Moreover, the artillery had been hard at work all this time, and when, at seven o’clock in the evening, the brigade came up to our rescue, I was able to report, ‘Saint Dié is cleared of enemies.’
“As I learnt later, the reserve regiment … which entered Saint Dié further north, had experiences exactly like ours. The four people whom they also had compelled to sit in the street were killed by French bullets. I myself saw them lying in the middle of the street near the hospital.”
According to information which will complete the story and which appeared two months later in the Saint Dié Gazette Vosgienne, the names of the four people stopped by the reserve regiment “which entered Saint Dié further north” were Camille Chôtel, carpenter, aged thirty-four years; Léon George, twenty-seven; Henri Louzy and Georges Visser. They were compelled, not merely to sit down, but to march in front of the German detachment.
The same thing happened elsewhere on other occasions.
In Belgium, near Liège, on the 6th August, when two captive Belgian soldiers who had been forced to march before the German troops met their death at the hands of their fellow-countrymen. At Dietz, on the 26th August, several women and children, who had been barbarously compelled to play the same part, were struck by the fire of the German troops.
At Marchiennes several hundred persons were driven in front of a German column. At Erpe, on the 12th September, a German column of two hundred to three hundred men, which had been fired upon by a Belgian machine-gun, took twenty to twenty-five young men, among whom was a lad of only thirteen years, and placed them in the middle of the road, with the result that these young people were in the line of fire. Two were wounded and the firing was stopped. In the fight at Alost, on the 26th September, the Germans drove before them several people, whose names are given by the Belgian Commission of Inquiry in one of their reports. At Lierre-Sainte-Marie four priests officiating in a church were taken by the Prussians, because they had not been quick enough in bringing the service to a close and had thereby delayed the quartering of the troops in the church. On the following day they were obliged to march in front of the soldiers and all four were killed.
In France the same crime was repeated twenty times. We shall not record all the cases. In the battle at Billy, on the 10th August, according to an official report of the French Commandant, the Germans compelled several women and children to march in front of them, as a screen for themselves and to prevent the French firing on them as they were coming out of the village and filing on to the battlefield.
In the Belfort area the Germans stripped a great number of prisoners, drove them in front of their line, and exposed them almost naked to the French bullets.
At Denain, on the 25th August, the German cavalry, at two o’clock in the morning, compelled women and children to march in front of the column; at Méry (in the Department of the Oise), during a battle with the French on the 1st September, the Germans seized the manager of a sugar-refinery, his family, and the whole staff of the works, and made them march side by side with them, as a screen against a fusillade on their flank. As a result, a workwoman, Mlle. Jeansenne, was killed by a French bullet. The foreman of the works was wounded.
The bombardment of towns, villages, and dwelling-houses is forbidden when these places have no military defence. If they have, bombardment is permitted, but under certain conditions. The commander who carries it on is bound to give notice beforehand to the enemy authorities, or at least to do everything he can to warn them. In the second place, bombardment must spare buildings dedicated to religion, science, and philanthropy, and also hospitals and centres for the sick and wounded, provided, of course—
(1) that these buildings have not been used for military purposes;
(2) that they are distinguished by some mark besiegers can see.
Consequently, the crimes which an army may commit, so far as bombardment is concerned, are as follows—
(1) bombardment of an undefended town or village.
(2) bombardment of a town or village without previous notice.
(3) bombardment of churches, monuments, scientific and charitable institutions, hospitals, ambulances.
The Germans committed all these crimes simultaneously, but the least excusable and most cruel of all was the bombardment of towns which the enemy had evacuated, and to which, therefore, he could render no further aid.
Three French towns and districts, Pont-à-Mousson, Douai, and Lille, met with this fate from artillery and aeroplanes.
This began on the 11th August, continued the following day, then on the 14th August and finally became intermittent. The firing on the town was resumed more than a hundred times. It was an open town, however, and the French army were not defending it, further than that the bridge over the Moselle had been put in a state of defence at the outbreak of hostilities by the 26th light infantry battalion.
Moreover, the bombardment of Pont-à-Mousson took place without previous warning, and was not preceded by any notice, nor any occupation by the German troops, who did not even show themselves (on the 11th, 12th and 14th August) before the town. The operation was carried out by means of guns placed in concealment on the other side of the frontier. The firing was directed by an airship flying over the batteries.
Acts of this kind are the proof of a deliberate and premeditated desire to destroy and to terrorise. In this case destruction is here not the inevitable sequence to attack and defence, but an end pursued for its own sake in contravention and defiance of established laws. Thanks to the signals given by the airship, the German batteries were able to damage the St. Martin quarter, on the right bank of the Moselle, and the site of the new hospital and the college. The hospital was flying the Red Cross flag, but was struck precisely for that very reason: a shell burst near the bed in which a wounded Saxon officer was under treatment. Fortunately, no one in the hospital was wounded, though not less than seventy shells struck the building during the 14th August. In the rest of the town forty people were killed and as many wounded. They were women and children.
Towards the end of the month of August the town of Douai served as a storehouse for numerous German troops. It was formerly occupied on the 1st October. The outrages which it suffered from the Germans on the 8th and 12th October were committed against a town which it was, in fact, impossible for the French to defend. On the 8th October a Taube bombarded Douai, throwing two bombs, which did little damage. On the 12th October a second Taube threw another bomb, which burst behind M. Mathieu’s house, in the Rue d’Hesdin, and killed a little girl named Briois, aged five years, who was closing the windows of a house.
On the 10th October, when the French were coming up to Lille, the Germans forcibly carried off M. Delesalle, mayor of the town; M. Ducastel, municipal councillor, and several other municipal officials. Then, when they had almost evacuated the town, they directed against it a furious bombardment, which began on the evening of the 10th October and continued, with a short interval, until the 12th October at 9 o’clock in the morning. The Rue Faidherbe was completely demolished and the end of the Rue de l’Hôpital Militaire was terribly damaged. Many fires broke out in the Rues de Paris, du Mélinel and de Béthune. The town hall, the prefecture, the post office, the Palais des Beaux Arts were injured. The Kulmann and Wallaert works were burnt down. The Times correspondent stated that a bomb thrown by a Taube, near the prefecture, wounded a woman who was walking along, and killed by her side her little son, aged twelve years.
Let us repeat that this bombardment of Lille took place when the French were only coming up to the town and that the latter had not been completely evacuated by the Germans, who were, therefore, guilty of violation of the laws of war. It was the same with the bombardment carried on upon the 11th and 12th November. On this occasion also the allied troops were only coming up. More than 7000 shells fell on the town during the time the Germans remained there. The presence of the Germans is proved by one abominable detail. It is a fact that they had cut the water-pipes in order that the fires kindled by the bombardment could not be put out. A little later they were compelled to blow up houses with melinite to stop the fire which was spreading in all directions.
At the beginning of the month of December Lille had a total of 998 burnt houses. During the bombardment the College Saint-Joseph, which was flying a white flag as a signal that it should be spared, was struck by two shells.
On account of its geographical situation the capital of Serbia was evacuated by Serbian troops. Only civilians remained and the Red Cross flag was hoisted. Consequently the town was entitled to think itself immune from outrage and bombardment. Nothing of the kind was the case.
Belgrade was bombarded on the 28th and 30th July, then from the 16th to the 18th August, and finally on the 14th and 15th September. Several quarters of the town were burnt; many of the inhabitants were killed, amongst others two mental patients in a private asylum.
As soon as a fire broke out, the places round the burning building were riddled with bullets, so that the residents could neither put out the fire nor localise it.
In the midst of all the turmoil the Serbian Government took care to lodge its complaint with the Powers, through their representatives.
We should not forget that the notice of bombardment required by the laws of war was impossible in more cases than one. Moreover, it is admitted that attacking troops are absolved from the charge of breach of these laws, when they do all they can to give warning. Besides, warning of bombardment is not always required to make an attacked town expect it. We could not, therefore, regard as a contravention of law all bombardments, without exception, which the Germans had made without giving notice. But, this said, can we allow to pass the circumstance that, of all these bombardments, only two, those of Antwerp and Reims, were preceded by the necessary warning? German callousness and cruelty stand self-condemned by the fact that the proportion is so small. Add that the bombardment of Reims, started on the pretext that two German bearers of a flag of truce, who had lost their way in the French lines, were not brought back quickly enough, was in itself a sheer outrage.
One kind of bombardment for which there is no excuse is that in which German aircraft engaged over towns and villages behind the enemy lines, out of the reach of German guns and sometimes even outside the theatre of war. It is certain that the intention to give oneself up to such acts absolutely precludes respect for open towns and for preliminary warnings. It is the proof of an absolute contempt for the laws of war, and of a fixed determination to act contrary to ordinary good sense.
The bombing of Paris, Antwerp (25th August to 2nd Sept.), Dunkirk, Warsaw—towns all of which were situated, when the attack took place, out of the range of German cannon, is an outrage of a special kind. No military object was in view, but merely a desire to terrorise the civil population. At Paris six people were killed and about thirty wounded: at Antwerp there were twelve people killed and twenty-five wounded; at Dunkirk about fifteen were killed and more than twenty wounded; at Warsaw 106 people were injured. All these victims—except at Warsaw, where among the people struck were nine soldiers—were civilians, for the most part women, children and old men. Hence we understand the indignation aroused among neutrals by these bombardments, and the care which several nations took to protest against them.
The American Committee, founded by the United States ambassador in Paris, and consisting of the most influential Americans resident in Paris, was entrusted with the duty of keeping an eye upon the conduct of Germans on the outskirts of the French capital and above it. They were indignant at the deadly acts of the German aeroplanes in Paris, and dispatched a report on the subject. As for the throwing of bombs on Antwerp, the American newspapers denounced it and emphatically assigned it to its category. The World described this kind of attack as “murder, pure and simple”; “dynamite for children,” said the New York Herald; the New York Times spoke of “crime against humanity”; and the Tribune energetically protested against the repetition of murder so blind, so purposeless and so unpardonable.
When the Belgians took Malines again, on the 25th August, the Germans began to bombard it. This act can only be put down to a thirst for vengeance. They made violent efforts to demolish it quarter by quarter by bursting shells. One shell struck a bakehouse and killed two workmen in it. The cathedral, the museum, the town hall, St. Peter’s Church, the magistrates’ court, and all the buildings round about the “Grand Place” were badly damaged, and the ministers of State of the Triple Entente, who visited Malines on the 13th September, saw shells smashing in before their eyes the pro-cathedral of Saint-Rombaud, full of miracles of art, where Van Dyck’s “Christ upon the Cross” towered high above the tombs of the archbishops; they witnessed also the destruction of the famous old carillon of the pro-cathedral, and the belfries of churches, convents and seminaries buried beneath the ruins (vide the photograph of one of the chapels of “Our Lady of Malines” after the Germans had passed by, in L’Illustration for the 3rd October).
What is left of Malines? A German journalist, war-correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, undertook to reply to this question, in a description, entitled Malines the Dead, of the town in the condition in which the German bombardment left it.
“Life has become extinct. The town is dead. The sixty thousand inhabitants have fled. The melancholy houses stand open. The streets are empty. German soldiers go up and down. In the Grand Place, the wool-market, the Place d’Egmont, at the railway station, soldiers are working in larger groups, but the ordinary residents are wanting.
“The emptiness and the havoc in these venerable-looking streets are so awful and so overwhelming that one’s breath is stopped and one recalls with terror the legend of towns that bore a curse upon them. What no one has ever seen, what Hoffmann and Edgar Poe have never dreamed of in their morbid visions, has here become a reality.
“In the midst of the town rises the cathedral, a Gothic building of gigantic size. The tower, 100 metres high, bounds the horizon on the west. At the top, at a height which makes the brain reel, four dials, fourteen metres in diameter, are twisted and riddled with bullets. Shells have hollowed out seven holes in the wall.”
Lierre, a town of 26,000 inhabitants, was, like Malines, pitilessly bombarded towards the end of September.
When the cannonade began the inhabitants concealed themselves in cellars, but shortly afterwards they fled. Several among them took refuge in Antwerp. Many houses in the town were destroyed and a certain number of people were wounded. A shell even struck a hospital and killed nine persons.
The village of Mars-la-Tour, in Lorraine, was bombarded by the Germans on the 16th August, the anniversary of the battle which took place in 1870. They cannonaded the memorial church, Abbé Faller’s Musée patriotique, and the monument to commemorate the battle of 1870. The bombardment lasted a full hour, and took place with mathematical regularity. Only one house was damaged, which proves that the buildings mentioned were the carefully chosen target of the German guns; two persons, an old mechanic and a woman, were fatally injured. The other inhabitants took refuge in the cellars.
On the 24th August, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the bombardment of Étain began. Suspended for some hours, it began again at nearly eleven p.m. and lasted until two a.m. The results were frightful. The next morning half the town was in ashes; the other half was falling into ruins. The Red Cross hospital in particular was aimed at. The first shell struck down the white flag, while Dr. Proust was operating on the wounded: the latter had to be hidden away in the cellars, whence they were driven to Verdun (Report of Mme. Paul, President of the Committee of the Association des Dames Françaises at Étain).
The bombardment of Albert took place on the 30th August. We may judge how violent it was from a photograph of the ruins which appeared in L’Illustration for the 10th October. Whole streets disappeared, and the whole Place d’Armes was demolished: the Germans made a target of Notre Dame de Brébières, the basilica which the inhabitants call the Lourdes of the North, and to which so many pilgrimages make their way each year. This church was completely ruined by the sacrilegious fire expressly aimed at it, and the Statue of the Miraculous Virgin which crowned it is to-day thrown down and lies upon the ground. All around there is nothing but building material that has fallen in, half-burnt beams, charred walls, houses without roofs, broken tiles, doors broken in, cut up by grapeshot.
The French Commission of Inquiry, in its report, published in the Journal Officiel of the 8th January, 1914, states that the capital of Lorraine was bombarded “without previous warning during the night of the 9th to 10th September. About sixty shells (continues this report) fell on the central and southern-cemetery districts—that is to say, on places where there is no military defence. Three men, a young woman, and a little girl were killed, thirty people were wounded, and serious damage was done.”
“Enemy airmen flew over the town twice. On the 4th September one of them threw two bombs, one of which killed a man and a little girl, and wounded six people on the ‘Place de la Cathédrale.’ On the 13th October three bombs were thrown on the goods station. Four employees of the Eastern Railway Company were wounded.”
The story of the first bombardment of Reims was told in the Temps of the 26th October by M. Henriot, who had the opportunity of interviewing an influential resident in the town.
On the 4th September, whilst Zimmer, head of the German Stores Department, was negotiating the terms of a levy to be paid by the village, a shell, says M. Henriot, burst hard by.
“What was that explosion?” cried the German. “You know you have no right to destroy anything.” He thought that the French were blowing up some outwork. Another shell disabused him. Then he thought the French had begun to fire on the town in order to drive the Germans. The local people undeceived him. One of them ran out to the Place and brought back a fragment of shell, which the commissary was compelled to admit was a German missile. Then he was seen to grow pale, nor could he understand how his own troops should engage in such an attack. The white flag was hoisted on one of the belfries of the cathedral: at the same time Zimmer sent a motor to give the order to cease firing. In the space of three-quarters of an hour there fell upon the town 200 shells, which struck Saint-Remi and Saint-André churches, broke down houses, and killed sixty people. That was the first bombardment of Reims, due, as was then believed, to a misunderstanding. Zimmer expressed his regrets for it, and cried in tones of wonder, “What a fine cathedral you have!”
The bombardment of the 4th September took place by order of General Bülow, as a reprisal for the disappearance of two bearers of a flag of truce, MM. Armim and Kimmer, who had been sent by him on the evening before to Reims. On account of these two worthies, who, without fulfilling their mission, had lost their way in the French lines, the town found that it was threatened with the execution of ten hostages, with bombardment, and with a levy of 100 million francs. The second bombardment took place some days afterwards under circumstances of barbarism which will hold it up to the execration of the ages. In the past history of Europe there is nothing to compare with the destruction of the Cathedral of Reims, save that of the Acropolis of Athens by the Venetians. This cathedral was pitilessly bombarded for two days (18th to 20th September): the masterpiece of Gothic art, honoured by the coronation of the kings of France, where Jeanne d’Arc put the crown upon Charles VII in 1429, became the target of destructive shells, hurled by the Vandals.
The following is a faithful account of this event, telegraphed to the Daily Mail by the special correspondent of that paper—
“By artillery fire deliberately aimed at the Cathedral of Reims, the Germans set fire to and burnt the magnificent building, which was not merely the pride of the town, but an historic monument known and admired by the entire world. Of this jewel of architecture there remains only an empty shell, burnt and charred walls. The impression left by this act of hideous vandalism will never leave the memory of those who have had an opportunity of seeing these ruins.
“The sight of flames devouring a wonder which took not less than 150 years to build, and which was respected throughout numberless wars which took place in this part of France, was one which both alarms and haunts the mind. It seemed as if one were present at an attack by some supernatural power, outside humanity: it was like the vision of a work of hell.
“The fire began between four and five o’clock on Saturday afternoon (19th September). All day shells fell in the town. A whole district of the town, 100 metres in extent, was devoured by the fire, and in the majority of streets only blazing houses and buildings were to be seen.
“Even on the evening before (18th September) some shells had accidentally struck the cathedral. On Saturday morning the German batteries of Nogent l’Abbesse, eight kilometres to the east of Reims, started aiming at the cathedral. Shells discharged regularly and without intermission made a breach in it. These huge blocks of stone, which had resisted the storms of several centuries, and might still have braved the assaults of time, sank with a fearful crash like the roll of thunder.
“At 4.30 the scaffolding on a part of the cathedral where repairs were going on took fire. In a moment this mass of woodwork and scaffolding began to blaze like straw. Sparks falling on the roof carried the fire to the old oak beams which support this part of the building. Soon the roofs of the naves and the transepts were nothing but a blazing brazier, and the flames darted out and licked the towers. One of the burning beams fell on a bed of straw which the Germans, as soon as they occupied the town, had spread inside the cathedral to lay their wounded on. At once the confessionals, the chairs, and everything which happened to be inside the building took fire.
“I had left Paris at midday and I had made a detour round Meaux. I did not get as far as Reims until sundown. It was too late to enter the town, but from the hills which surround it, it was possible to get a still more impressive view of the town than what I should have been able to see in the streets themselves.
“From the gaping roof rose red fire and black smoke, and the reflection of the flames glanced upon the glasswork. At last the dead of night came on, but it was not undisturbed for long. At two o’clock in the morning the German batteries reopened fire. By day it is the smoke of the shell which calls attention to the explosion. By night the swift red flashes make a still more terrible spectacle.
“The dawn came, grey and gloomy with a cold rain, and when the shadows were dispelled and light at length glimmered through the dismal leaden-coloured clouds, which rose and brought the plain into view again, the sight of the ravaged city with its ruined cathedral, the walls of which smouldered among houses still in flames, was a spectacle so dismal that the sun in his course can have seen none more wretched in any quarter of the world.”
According to the report of the Commission of Inquiry, which had as President the French Under-Secretary for Fine Arts, and whose task was to prepare official accounts of the damage done to the Reims Cathedral, the following were the results of the bombardment—
“The cathedral was struck by about thirty projectiles which, by actually striking the building or by explosion, pulverised the stonework, smashed the glass, and set fire to everything inflammable.
“Projectiles, fragments of which struck the whole building, for the most part hit the upper part of the north tower, smashing the corner of a turret, scraping the face of the tower, and pressing so hard upon the adjoining masonry as nearly to displace it; one of them carried away the upper support of a flying buttress; another smashed the stonework of some bays sloping up to the tower; another broke up a staircase the steps of which had been cut; still another knocked down part of the balustrade of the principal façade under the rose-window.
“The fire kindled by the shells caused the most serious damage; no vestige of roof is to be seen over the nave, the transepts, the choir, the apse, the aisles: only some chapels kept their covering; but everything else was reduced to ashes, the woodwork, the slates consumed; everywhere lead melted and iron twisted.
“All this debris settled down beneath the vaulted roofs, which, although they evidently suffered by contact with the fire, were not broken in.
“On the other hand, the stonework close to the great gallery at the top of the walls, and of the circular galleries underneath the great glass work, was shattered and charred.
“The belfry was devoured by the flames. The bells, which fell on the lower roof without breaking it in, were partly melted; the louvre-boards were untouched. The flames started by the conflagration, driven over the surfaces by the wind, completely defaced the stonework, throwing down not only some of the statues which decorated the open entrance underneath this particular tower, but also the copings of the arches which rise above the door, crowned by a gable containing a representation of the Crucifixion. The damage extends to the pinnacles that rise above the buttresses as high as the gallery of kings.
“The right side of this portal was less damaged; the other portals were struck by fragments of shells.
“In the interior, where German wounded had been laid out on couches of straw, the fire splintered off the moulding at the bases of the pillars in the nave, setting fire to the tympana of the gates and even to the gates themselves. This fire destroyed the statues placed in the niches of the inner front, right and left of the door of the south entrance. Finally, all the glasswork was damaged by the explosion of projectiles and of splinters which passed through them; half of the upper rose-window and the open-work parts above the north and south entrances were denuded of their stained glass; the rose-window above the central entrance was only riddled.
“To sum up, the cathedral was disfigured in its outlines and in the details of its decoration; if its powerful construction has partly sustained the shock of the projectiles, its wonderful sculptures can never be replaced, and it will bear for ever the imprint of a vandalism beyond all imagination.”
“See also photographs of the burning cathedral in L’Illustration (10th October, 1914. These photographs are genuine historic documents. See also M. P. Gsell’s account in the Liberté of the 24th September and Mr. Bartlett’s in the Daily Telegraph, in L’Illustration of the 26th).”