BOMBARDMENT OF UNDEFENDED TOWNS. CRIMES COMMITTED DURING BOMBARDMENT. DEFINITION OF BOMBARDMENT

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.

[56]
Undefended Towns bombarded by the Germans

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.
Bombardment of Pont-à-Mousson

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.[57] 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.
Bombardment of Douai

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.
Bombardment of Lille

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[58] 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’H?pital 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.

[59]
Bombardment of Belgrade

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.
Bombardments without Notice

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[60] 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.
Towns bombarded behind the Lines

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[61] 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.
Bombardment of Malines and Lierre

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;[62] 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[63] 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.
Bombardment of Mars-la-Tour

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.
Bombardment of étain

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 Fran?aises at étain).

[64]
Bombardment of Albert

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.
Bombardment of Nancy

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.[65] Four employees of the Eastern Railway Company were wounded.”
First Bombardment of Reims

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!”

[66]
Second Bombardment of Reims (18th to 20th September)

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[67] 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[68] 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.”
Damage to the Cathedral of Reims

According to the report of the Commission of Inquiry, which had as President the French Under-Secretary for Fine Arts, and whose task............