Read Ebook: Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War Volume 1 The First Twelve Months of War by Allison James Murray Editor Raemaekers Louis Illustrator

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Other soldiers kept on running into the burning houses, carrying out vases, pictures, plate, or small pieces of furniture. They smashed everything on the cobbles and then returned to wreck more things that would have been destroyed by the fire all the same. It was a revelry of drunken vandalism. They seemed mad, and even risking being burned alive at this work of destruction. Most of the officers were also tipsy; not one of them was saluted by the soldiers.

There is very strong reason to suspect that young girls were carried off to the trenches by licentious German soldiery, and there abused by hordes of savage and licentious men. People in hiding in the cellars of houses have heard the voices of women in the hands of German soldiers crying all night long until death or stupor ended their agonies. One of our officers, a subaltern in the sappers, heard a woman's shrieks in the night coming from the German trenches near Richebourg l'Avoue; when we advanced in the morning and drove the Germans out, a girl was found lying naked on the ground "pegged out" in the form of a crucifix. I need not go on with this chapter of horrors. To the end of time it will be remembered, and from one generation to another, in the plains of Flanders, in the Valleys of the Vosges, and on the rolling fields of the Marne, the oral tradition of men will perpetuate this story of infamy and wrong.

The municipal Government of Li?ge remind their fellow citizens, and all staying within the city, that international law most strictly forbids civilians to commit hostilities against the German soldiers occupying the country.

Every attack on German troops by others than the military in uniform not only exposes those who may be guilty to be shot summarily, but will also bring terrible consequences on the leading citizens of Li?ge now detained in the citadel as hostages by the commander of the German troops.

We beseech all residents of the municipality to guard the highest interests of all the inhabitants and of those who are hostages of the German Army, and not to commit any assault on the soldiers of this army.

We remind the citizens that by order of General commanding the German troops, those who have arms in their possession must deliver them immediately to the authorities at the Provincial Palace under the penalty of being shot.

Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the prisons of Germany to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At Munsterlagen alone, 3,100 civil prisoners were numbered. History will tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom.

Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess no complete necrology; but I know there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot and that there, under pain of death, their fellow-citizens were compelled to dig their graves. In the Louvain group of communes 176 persons, men and women, old men and sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burned.

In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on fire and many corpses were seen, some in houses, some in back yards, and some in the streets.

Several examples are given below.

Two witnesses speak to having seen the body of a young man pierced by bayonet thrusts with the wrists cut also.

On a side road the corpse of a civilian was seen on his doorstep with a bayonet wound in his stomach, and by his side the dead body of a boy of 5 or 6 with his hands nearly severed.

The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at the blacksmith's. They had been killed with the bayonet.

In a caf? a young man, also killed with the bayonet, was holding his hands together as if in the attitude of supplication.

Two young women were lying in the back yard of the house. One had her breasts cut off, the other had been stabbed.

A young man had been hacked with the bayonet until his entrails protruded. He also had his hands joined in the attitude of prayer.

In the garden of a house in the main street bodies of two women were observed, and in another house the body of a boy of 16 with two bayonet wounds in the chest.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

In short, the town of Dinant is destroyed. Of 1,400 houses only 200 remained standing. The factories where the laboring population got their bread and butter were wrecked systematically. Many inhabitants were sent to Germany, where they are still kept as prisoners. The majority of the others are scattered all over Belgium. Those who stayed in the towns were starved.

The Belgian Committee has a list of victims. It contains 700 names, and is not complete. Among those killed are seventy-three women, thirty-nine children between six months and fifteen years old.

Dinant has 7,600 inhabitants, of whom ten per cent. were put to death; not a family exists which has not to mourn the death of some victims; many families have been exterminated completely.

It is only in war that we find the action of true heroism, the realization of which on earth is the care of militarism. That is why war appears to us, who are filled with militarism, as in itself a holy thing, as the holiest thing on earth.

PROF. WERNER SOMBART.

During the three months of invasion, more than 21,000 houses had been burnt down in five alone of the nine provinces of Belgium, and a far greater number pillaged--more than 16,000, for instance, in the single Province of Brabant. Of the civilian population, between 5,000 and 6,000 men, women, and children had been massacred, some singly and some in batches, some by clean killing and some after lingering tortures, some in frenzy and some in cold blood, but all with the object of terrorization and with that result. Fleeing before the terror, many hundreds of thousands of Belgians, especially of the middle and upper classes, had taken refuge in Holland and the British Isles.

An hour later the women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant, passing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison the witness saw three lines of bodies which he recognized as being those of neighbors. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. There were about 120 bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay there till eight o'clock in the morning. On the following day they were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in Germany.

Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the prison. About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass square opposite the convent.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE'S REPORT.

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

A corporal named Houston narrated that while he lay wounded on the ground, after the battle of Soissons, he saw a young English soldier lying near him, delirious. A German soldier gave the poor lad water from his flask. The young Englishman, his mind wandering, said, "Is it you, mother?" The German comprehended, and to maintain the illusion, caressed his face with a mother's soft touch. The poor boy died shortly afterwards and the German soldier, on getting to his feet, was seen to be crying.

On Sunday, August 23rd, at half past six in the morning, the soldiers of the 108th regiment of the line drove worshippers of the Premonstratensian Church, separated the men from the women, and shot about fifty of the former through the head. Between seven and nine o'clock there was house to house looting and burning by soldiers who chased the inhabitants into the street. Those who tried to escape were shot off-hand.

At about nine o'clock the soldiers drove all who had been found in the houses in front of them by means of blows from their rifle-butts. They crowded them together in Place d'Armes, where they kept them until six o'clock in the evening. Their guards amused themselves by telling the men repeatedly that they would soon be shot.

At six o'clock a captain separated the men from the women and children. The women were placed behind a line of infantry. The men had to stand alongside a wall; those in the first row were told to sit on their haunches, the others to remain standing behind them. A platoon took a stand right opposite the group. The women prayed in vain for the mercy of their husbands, their sons, and their brothers; the officer gave the order to fire. He had not made the slightest investigation, pronounced no sentence of any sort.

In many groups were to be seen old, old people, grandfathers and grandmothers of a family, and these in their shaking frailty and terror, which they could not withstand, were the more pitiable objects in the great gathering of stricken townsfolk. This pathetic clinging together of the family was one of the most affecting sights I witnessed, and I have not the slightest doubt that in the mad rush for refuge beyond the borders of their native land many family groups of this sort completely perished.

All day and throughout the night these pitiful scenes continued, and when I went down to the quayside early Thursday, when the dawn was throwing a wan light over this part of the world, I found again a great host of citizens awaiting their chance of flight.

The Cathedral of Rheims has many companions in distress. The German army, when it invaded the north of France, destroyed, totally or partially, by bombardment or incendiarism, churches and chapels at Albert, Serres, Vieille-Capelle, Etavigny, Soissons, H?buterne, Rib?court, Suippes, Montceau, Barcy, Revigny, Souain, Maurupt, Berry-au-Bac, Mandray, Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Sermaize-les-Bains, Donci?res, etc.

PROCLAMATION

A War Contribution, amounting to 480,000,000 francs, to be paid in monthly installments over the course of a year, is imposed on the population of Belgium.

The payment of these sums devolves upon the Nine Provinces, which are held collectively responsible for the discharge of it.

The two first installments are to be paid up, at latest, on January 15, 1915, and the following installments on the 10th, at latest, of each following month, to the Field Army Treasury of the Imperial Governor-Generalship at Brussels.

In case the Provinces have to resort to the issue of bonds in order to obtain the funds necessary, the form and terms of these bonds will be settled by the Imperial Commissary-General for the Banks in Belgium.

CONCLUSIONS

It is proved--

That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.

That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.

That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being indeed part of a system of general terrorization.

That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the white flag.

All that I care to say about the Belgian charges is that I have officially informed the State Department in Washington that there is not one word of truth in the statements made to the President yesterday by the Belgian Commission.

Christian mothers, be proud of your sons. Of all griefs, of all our human sorrows, yours is perhaps the most worthy of veneration. I think I behold you in your affliction. Suffer us to offer you not only our condolence, but our congratulation. Not all our heroes obtain temporal honors, but for all we expect the immortal crown of the elect. For this is the virtue of a single act of perfect charity--it cancels a whole lifetime of sins. It transforms a sinful man into a saint.

In Belgium I saw this:

Homeless men, women, and children by thousands and hundreds of thousands. Many of them had been prosperous, a few had been wealthy, practically all had been comfortable. Now, with scarcely an exception, they stood all upon one common plane of misery. They had lost their homes, their farms, their workshops, their livings, and their means of making livings.

I saw them tramping aimlessly along windswept, rain-washed roads, fleeing from burning and devastated villages. I saw them sleeping in open fields upon the miry earth, with no cover and no shelter. I saw them herded together in the towns and cities to which many of them ultimately fled, existing God alone knows how. I saw them--ragged, furtive scarecrows--prowling in the shattered ruins of their homes, seeking salvage where there was no salvage to be found. I saw them living like the beasts of the field, upon such things as the beasts of the field would reject.

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