GERMANS IN BELGIUM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16019, 10 September 1915, Page 8

GERMANS IN BELGIUM.

OUTRAGE AT WARSAGE. MURDER OF CIVILIANS. The latest reports of the Commission of Inquiry of violations of the rules of the rights of the nations, laws, and customs of war by the Germans is to hand. The following passage in the report is from the statement of Mr. Flechet, Burgomaster at Warsage, late member of the Chamber of Representatives—

On August 6 an infantry troop of about 300 men, led by two officers, arrived at Warsage. It was pretended that the civilians had shot at the entrance of the village, but nobody was caught with arms in hand, and not even any arms were seized. The soldiers often kept their guns in one hand and their Browning in the other; they had their fingers on the trigger; they turned over and over again unceasingly, very nervously, and on the slightest provocation a shot was fired. It is, therefore, in this way that one might explain that on the road before entering the village and almost opposite an isolated and uninhabited villa a German officer fell, struck by a bullet. "The vil'a was surrounded, searched, and burnt, and nobody was discovered. Therefore the shot had not been fired from there, and the surroundings were orchards, where it was not possible to secret oneself. Furthermore, the unfortunate offioei killed had been struck by a very small bullet, a bullet of a war gun. Now, such arms cannot be found in tho small village, exclusively devoted to farming. "There was no inquiry. They started to burn the houses of the neighbourhood. They hurled themselves into the villages, and there they forced the doors, smashed the windows, and pulled the citizens from their homes. Two men were killed, and about 25 houses and farms were burned. The soldiers shut the windows which remained open. " I intervened immediately as the Burgomaster and I recommended calm to everybody. My efforts were of no avail. The roise was frightful. It was impossible to make or.eself heard. The chief officer ordered me to get the people to come out of their dwellings, and to assemble on the place, which was done- Then he selected at least a dozen inhabitants at random myself included, and he gave us the order to march at the head of the troops, keeping silence, with our hands tied behind our backs, adding that if a shot was fired in the village we would all be instantly shot. " The following morning, at about 4.45, six were hanged. One of the escapees from Warsage wrote me a long letter, and here is an extract: ' I could not tell you what the soldier shouted to us at Four on, because it was in German, but we had been called dirty Belgians and pigs quite a number of times during that terrible night from the 6th to the 7th August, by a soldier who spoke French, and who had lived six years in Belgium; he said he knew the Belgians well, but he was going to let us see what the Alboches were— being the name which we give to the Gennanß in Belgium. He advised us to address ourselves to our Holy Lady, since we had so much confidence in her; let her come to deliver us ; and whilst we were on our knees those who roamed around us maltreated us with blows with their spurs, bayonets, fists, kicks and blows with the butts of their guns they pulled our hair, and they tried even to root out one of my eyes coming back seven or eight times.' "