GERMAN HORRORS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2502, 1 July 1915, Page 6

GERMAN HORRORS

A BLACK CHRONICLE ATROCITIES PROVED TO BRITISH COMMISSION CALCULATED SAVAGERY WOMEN MUTILATED AND BABIES BAYONETED. Dealing with the report of the committee on alleged German outrages appointed by the British Government, the "Daily Mail" describes it as the most appalling record ever printed of horrible cruelty and systematic, coldblooded, calculating devilish murder, and adds that it gives some faint picture of what would happen if the Germans came to 'Eugland. Extraordinary weight attaches to tiiG committee's finding because of the eminence and judicial capacity of its members, who are Lord Bryce (the former British Ambassador at Washingten), Sir i\ Pollock, Sir Edward Clarke, Sir Keuel'.n Digby, Sir A. Hopkinson, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, and Mr. Harold Cox. The committee is unanimous in its verdict, whidi is: "IT IS PROVED— Tha.t there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organised 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 necossity could be alleged, being indeed part of a system of general terrorisation. 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 tho Red Cross and tho White Flag. "Sensible as they are of the gravity of these conclusions, the committee conceive that they would be doing less than their duty if they failed to record t'hem as fully established bj; tho evidence,. Murder, lust,, and pillage prevailed over many parts of Belgium on a scale unparalleled- in any war between civilised nations, during the last three centuries.

"Our function is ended when we hare stated what tho evidence established, but we may be permitted to express our belief that these disclosures .will not have been made in- vain if they touch and rouse the conscience of mankind, and we venture to hope that as soon as the present war is over the nations of the world in council will consider what means can bo provided and sanctions devised to prevent the recurrence of such horrors as our generation is now witnessing. CALCULATED SAVACERY. Among the more atrocious crimes which are recorded* are:— Mutilation of women in a most hideous fashion. Breasts of women slashed; legs and , arms cut off. - Babies bayoneted (numerous instances). Baby of three nailed to a door by its hands and feet. Baby pinned to the ground with a German lance. Bayoneting of pregnant women. Murder of old men of eighty. Torture of prisoners. Torture and murder of priests. Machine guns turned upon crowds of civilians, women, and children. Forcing non-combatants, ■ women, and children into filthy horse-trucks and keeping them in these trucks for days deprived of food, without allowing 'them to leave the trucks for any purpose whatever. Cutting off of hands in some cases. Slaughter of women after viclatipn. The committee find that outrages were committed with a set purpose. Thus they, state of the deeds perpetrated at Louvain: "It was to the discipline rather than the want of discipline in tho (German) army that these outrage.) which we are obliged to describe as systematic were due.; . . . We are driven to the conclusion that the. harrying of villages in the district, the burning of a large part of Louvain, the massacres ' there, the marching out of the prisoners and the transport to Cologne (all done without inquiry as to whether the particular persons seized or killed had committed any wrongful act), were due to a calculated policy carried out scientifically and deliberately, not merely with the sanction but under the direction of higher military authorities, and were not due to any provocation or resistance by the civilian population." The Committee records its conviction that the campaign- of outrages could have been checked by a single order: "These crimes were committed over a period of many weeks and simultaneously in many places, and the' authorities must have' known or ought to have known that cruelties of this character were being perpetrated, nor can anyone doubt that they could have_ been stopped by swift and decisive action on the part of tlio heads of the German army.

CORPS OF FIRE RAISERS. One proof that the outrages were calculated and prepared before the war is to be found in the appearance at the very outset of a corps of specially uniformed incendiaries. These men at Louvain: Had broad belts with the words "Gott mit uns" (God with us, and their equipment consisted of a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. Throughout the report names have been suppressed lest friends or relatives of the witnesses might be exposed to vengeance. More than 1200 depositions have been made-by witnesses and considered by the Committee. The first part of the report is an account of atrocities perpetrated district by district, and fills 35 closely-printed pages. The second part contains a summary of broaches of the usages of war by tho enemy filling 15 pages. Tho appendix of 200 pages contains some of the most "startling and shocking evidence" and facsimiles of German proclamations and diaries. Some typical stories may be taken from this gliastly record: "How rapidly the German officers and men themselves to tho slaughter of civilians is illustrated by an entry in tho diary .of Kurt Hoffman, a ono year's mah.iu, tlie Ist Jaegar's: 'As suspicious civilians were hanging about houses were cleared, tlie owners arrested (and shot the following day). ... I shoot n civilian with rifle at 440 yards slap through the head.' " . Near Liego a number of villagers, innocent non-combatants, were seized: "One asked io bo allowed to speak, i"iid said: 'If yon think these people lired, kill me but- let them go.' The answer was Ihi'ec volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. Their corpses w<?re aeon in the iield that nisht by. another ;

witness. One at least had been mutilated. "At Blegny Trembleur a witness says he saw a number of German soldiers in charge of Belgian prisoners. 'I saw,' ho adds, 'some ol : the soldiers place lighted cigarettes' in each of these prisoner's ears and nostrils.' "A married woman of Aerschot states: 'I saw the clergyman of Golrode standing by the walls of the churcli with his hands abovo Iris hoad and being guarded by soldiers, and I could seo by the appearance around hira that men had used him as a lavatory.' Ho was afterwards murdered." At Audenne: "400 people lost tlioir lives in a massacre. -Bight men belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close to a machine-gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body home on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked it, and piled up all tho eatables in a heap on the floor and relieved tliomselvos upon it. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. "A few days later the Germans celebrated a Fete Nocturne in the square. Hot wine, looted in the town, was drunk, and the women were compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing 'Deutschland über Alles.' " At Denee: "A Belgian soldier saw a cripple and an old man of eighty, who was paralysed, shot." At Monceau-sur-Sambre: "A young man of 18 was shot. His father and brother were seized. The son was shot first. The father was compelled to stand close to the feet of his soil's corpse and to fix his eyes upon it while he himself wa6 shot. BREASTS CUT OFF. "At Malines, one witness saw a German soldier cut off a woman's breasts after he had murdered her. At Hoftsade two young women were lying in the back yard of the house. One had her breasts cut off; the other had been stabbed. At Sempst a witness saw a girl of 17, dressed only in a chemise, m great distress. She_ alleged that she herself and other girls had been dragged into a field, stripped naked and violated, "and that some of them had been, killed with the bayonet.

"At Meerbeck, a German soldier was seen to fire three times at a little girl of five years old. Having failed to nit her, he subsequently bayoneted her. "At Dinant, another' witness saw a i little girl of seven, one of whose legs was broken and the other injured by a bayonet. At Eppeghem a pregnant woman who had been wounded with a bayonet was discovered in tile convent. She was dying. At Haecht a child of three with its stomach cut open by ia bayonet was lying near a house. One child of two or three years old was found nailed to tlio door of a farmhouse by its hands and feet. In the garden of this house was the body of a firl who had been shot in the foreead. At Eppeghem the dead body of a child of two was seen pinned to the ground with a German lance. "At Tremeloo Belgian soldiers on patrol duty found a young girl naked on the ground, covered - with scratches.. She complained of having been violated.

"A woman at Flemalle said that some German soldiers had driven her daughter up into the loft, to rape her. She was 8J months gone in pregnancy. Two of them raped her. The child was born next day. The. same day a girl of 16 said that two Germans had raped her. She was too weak to..resist. At Hermalle an officer was caught raping a girl of 12. _ _ "The cases of violation, sometimes under threat of death, are numerous and clearly proved. . They were often accompanied with cruelty,. and the slaughter of women after violation is more than, once credibly attested. ... In this tale of horrors hideous forms of. mutilation occur with some, frequency in the depositions, two of which may 'be connected in some instances with i a perverted form of sexual instinct." FAMILY KILLED AND BURNED. An example of German conduct to women is given in this passage, describing how a German patrol of an " officer and six men visited a cottage: "The peasant came (as they were breaking down the door) and asked what they were doing. The officer said he did not come quickly enough. His hands were tied, behind his back and he was., shot at once without a moment's delay. . The-wife came out with a little sucking child. She put the child down and sprang at the Germans like a lioness. She clawed their faces.

"One of the Germans took a rifle and struck her a tremendous blow with the butt on the head. Another took his bayonet and fixed it and ran it through the child. Ho then put his rifle on his shoulder with the child upon it, its little arms' stretched out once or twice. The officer then ordered the house to be set'on fire, and straw'was obtained and it was done. The man and his wife and the child were thrown on the top of tho straw.

"At Malines a small child, aged two, came out of a house as some German soldiers came along the street. One of the second line stepped aside and drove iii* bayonet with both hands into the child's stomach, lifting the child into the air on his bayonet and carrying it away on liis bayonet, •he and his comrades still singing." .1 '

AVomen were chased or driven into burning houses and burnt to death by their fiendish persecutors: "At Liege women and. children were chased about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, \ery circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the marketplaces of tlie_ city, five-young German officers assisting. y WAR SPIRIT DEIFIED. The committee sternly dismiss the German excuse that the people fiTed on the German troops, and show that no evidence has been produced by the German Government to that effect and that the facts contradict it. _ The deeper explanation of these cannibal atrocities is that "in the minds of Prussian officers war seems to have become a sort of sacred mission. The Spirit of War is deified. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory.'-' The full horror of the report can only be grasped by those who read its enormous mass of evideuce arid observe the cumulative effect of its carefully-sifted testimony. AMERICAN OPINION. The report of the commission was published simultaneously in London and New York, and the Now York papers published a full report of tho findings. The "Tribune" says.:—"The truth must be faced'with absolute frankness. What the Bryce report alleges will be' implicitly believed by millions, for all who know Lord Bryce—and 110 European is better known in this country—his name attached to the fatal document is as final af that of the highest Court.'! Asserting that Americans will accept tho report because of Lord Bryce's high character, known fairness,' and lifelong experience in judging historic evidence, the "World" says, "and never in the black chronicle of warfare had a historian a eravnr indictment to draw against a nation." Says the "Times": . "The detailed accounts of murder, torture, mutilation, and outrage civen by the committee make dreadful reading. They are shockiiirr. They would be altogether beyond belief were tliey not so well attested. This is the German military policy of 'friihtfulness.'" The "Herald," "Sun," and "Eveninsr Post" 'express their detestation in equally forcible language.