OFFENCES AGAINST CHILDREN, OLD PEOPLE AND PRIESTS

The plea of reprisals is no more valid in the case of children, old people and priests than it is in the case of women. All these classes of people have a right to consideration and to absolute respect from the invader. Every crime committed against them can bear no other name than wanton cruelty.

In the foregoing pages we have seen how children were killed with their mothers, and old women were outraged and killed. We must now unfold the chapter of crimes against the weak and against those whose character should have saved them from the violences of war. Ill-treatment, imprisonment, wounds, murder, torture—all these we hardly like to think that children, the personification of weakness and innocence, have had to suffer. Such has been the cruelty of the German troops in the field, that what has moved all men’s interest and compassion has, in several cases, only urged them on the more readily to violence.
Belgian and French Children ill-treated, wounded and killed

We have already told the story of the ill-treatment to which six to eight thousand people, who were packed together standing in the riding-school and had to pass the night there, were exposed at Louvain. A number of children were included in these. Several endured[118] great hardships, and the youngest died in their mothers’ arms. At Dinant, in the slaughter which took place, several children were massacred.

In other cases we see that children were exposed to exceptional acts of violence. “On the way back from Tirlemont,” writes the special correspondent of the Times (29th August, 1914), “I met a little girl of eleven years old, who was stumbling and groping before her as if blind. A stroke of a lance had laid open her cheek and her eye. A poor peasant woman, her face wet with tears, told me that her husband had been killed in her presence by German horsemen, that two of her children, who were under nine years of age, had been trampled by their horses and that two others were missing. And this” (concluded the English journalist) “is not an isolated case; it is an example of what happens day by day in the areas occupied by the German soldiers, and, I regret to say, it is only an example among hundreds which have been attested beyond any possibility of doubt.”

Instances abound, and the following are a selection. At Louguyon, out of 153 people who were shot on the 23rd, 24th and 25th August by soldiers of the 102nd and 112th Prussian regiments, there were twelve children.

At Bantheville (Meuse), young Felix Miquel, aged about fifteen years, who had hidden behind a heap of wood so that he might not be arrested, got a violent sabre thrust from the soldier who discovered him, which split his lips; afterwards, as he was being led away, when he tried to hide in a wood, he stumbled against a sentinel, who with a bayonet stroke cut off a joint of his left hand.

At Mouchy Humières (Oise) a little four-year-old[119] girl, who belonged to a family living in Verdun, was wounded on the 31st August by a German soldier. On the way from Bouligny to Mourière (Meuse) a child of fifteen years was shot in the groin as she was passing quietly by a wood in which a German patrol was concealed.

At Spontin, near Dinant, fearful reprisals were carried out because a poacher had killed a Prussian officer, and children of all ages were shot or butchered with their mothers.

In the outskirts of Malines many corpses of children were found on the spot where the Germans had left them unburied. At Morfontaine, near Longwy, two children of fifteen were shot for having warned the French gendarmes of the arrival of the enemy. At Gerbeviller a young girl named Parmentier, who was barely seven years old, was also shot. At Dinant, too, several children met with the same fate. At Aerschot the burgomaster’s two children were shot; the murder of the little girls Luychx and Ooyen, aged twelve and nine years, both of whom were shot, was also confirmed. Pierre Nothomb quotes the case of two little children two years old, named Neef and Deekers, who were massacred at Testelt. Sometimes the despicable torturers added obscenity to cruelty. At Bertrex a grown-up brother and sister were killed and, when the penalty was paid, their bodies were put naked, clasping each other as if they had been embracing.
Children tortured by Germans

At Hofstade, said Pierre Nothomb, a lad of less than fifteen years was found with hands crossed behind his back and his body pierced with bayonet thrusts.[120] At Pin, near Izel, two young boys saw the Uhlans coming; the latter took them as they passed, and made them run, with hands bound, between their galloping horses. Their dead bodies were found an hour afterwards in a ditch; as an eye-witness said, their knees were “literally worn out”; one had his throat cut and his breast laid open; each had a bullet in his head. At Schaffen a lad was bound to a shutter, sprinkled with petrol, and burnt alive. The soldiers who marched on Antwerp took a butcher’s cleaver at Sempst; they seized a little servant boy, cut off his legs, then his head, and roasted him in a burning house. At Lebbeke-les-Termonde, Frans Mertens and his comrades, Van Dooren, Dekinder, Stobbelaer and Wryer, were bound arm to arm; their eyes were gouged out with a pointed weapon, then they were killed by rifle shots.

In France, at Dompierre-aux-Bois, the children who were wounded in the bombardment of the church found themselves left to their agony, without attendance and without food. The dead bodies of two children who had been killed by bayonet thrusts were found at Neuville-en-Artois. At Vingras a little girl of eight years was thrust into the flames with her parents, whose farmhouse had been set on fire. At Sommeilles the dead body of a child of eleven was found with its foot cut off. At Triaucourt the wretches burnt a two-year-old child.

In Serbia similar outrages were committed. M. Reiss, Professor of Lausanne University, has proved that children of two months old were massacred. “I found children in common ditches who were not more than two or three years old. Amongst the 109 hostages of Lechnitza who were shot in front of a ditch[121] which had previously been dug out, and which was not less than twenty metres long, there were some children of not more than eight years old.”
German Admissions

We read above the admission of a soldier of the Prussian Guard, Paul Spielmann, about the massacre of a village which “had been in telephonic communication with the enemy.” Among those who were massacred he adds that there were three children. “I saw this morning (2nd September) four little boys carrying on two sticks a cradle in which was a child of five to six months old. All that is fearful to behold. Blow for blow. Cannon for cannon. Everything was given up to pillage.

“… I saw also a mother with her two little ones; one had a great wound on the head and the other had its eye gouged out.”

The German soldier, Karl Johann Kaltendshner, Ninth Company of the Regiment of Count Bülow Tervuenwist, who deserted and fled to Holland, and whose statements in the Telegraaf we have already quoted, tells the following story: “I have seen children in tears, clinging to their defenceless mothers’ skirts, coming out of a threshing-mill where they had sought shelter, and I have seen how these mothers and their children were killed in cowardly and cold-blooded fashion. Although we were compelled, under penalty of death, to obey all the orders of our officers, I have seen some of my companions who joyfully performed their melancholy work of massacre. At a certain moment I was myself required to shoot two boys, aged fifteen and twelve years old respectively, whose father had already been killed. I had not the heart to do[122] it, and I had lowered my arm, expecting to be executed myself, when one of my comrades, jeering at my sentimentality, saved me by pushing me aside and himself firing on the two children. The eldest fell stark dead, and the second, who got a bullet in the back, was dispatched with a revolver shot” (Temps, 3rd January, 1915).
Outrages on Old People

At every place where the civil population was brutally treated, outraged or shot en masse—at Louvain, at Dinant—no exception was made in the case of old folk. People of seventy and eighty years of age had to bear forced marches, to remain standing in packed masses, where they were kept for whole nights, at the risk of death, as was the result for a large number. But, in addition to these common instances, outrages of a peculiar kind are not wanting. At Rebais-en-Brie an old man of sixty-nine years old, Auguste Griffaut, was struck with blows of the fist on the head, and finally wounded by a revolver shot. At Sablonnières another old man of the same name, Jules Griffaut, aged sixty-six, was tending his cows in an enclosed field when a German soldier, who was at the rear of a column, fired on him. In Belgium an old man of seventy years, formerly steward to M. Davignon, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Belgium, was shot by the Germans because to the first question that the latter put to him he replied that he was deaf, which was true.

Another was shot without mercy at Montmirail because he tried to protect a widow, named Naudé, who was in danger of being outraged by a non-commissioned officer.

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At Lamath, in Lorraine, an old man called Louis, aged seventy years, was shot. At Domèvre-sur-Vezouze Adolphe Claude, aged seventy-five years, met with the same fate. At Lunéville an old alderman, Théophile Martin, aged sixty-three years, was commanded by an officer to come out of his house with his two daughters. As soon as they came out the old man saw from the revolvers and guns that were levelled at him that he was about to be killed. The young girls threw themselves on their knees and begged the Germans to spare their father’s life. It was in vain. Shots rang out and the old man fell. Again at Lunéville, M. édouard Bernard, municipal councillor, aged sixty-five years, who had six sons at the front, was arrested. He was hardly allowed time to dress himself. He was taken away, and it is not known what became of him. M. Charles Chérer, husbandman, aged sixty-four, first cousin to M. Lébrun, ex-minister, got four bullets in his body. As none of the wounds which they made was mortal, the Uhlans dispatched him with revolver shots.

At Nomény M. Petitjean, aged eighty-six years, was struck as he was sitting in his armchair by a bullet which cracked his skull, and a German took pleasure in doing violence to the dead body (vide p. 148).

Finally, the number of old people who were taken away as hostages or simply deported to Germany was very large. Of that we shall speak in a subsequent chapter, but let us only note here that among the hostages who were taken away to Vareddes four old men were shot or bludgeoned with the butt-ends of rifles, their names being Jourdaine (73 years old), Liévin (61), Ménil (65) and Milliardet (78 years).

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Torture of Old People

On the 26th August, not far from Malines, the dead body of an old man was found bound by the arms to a beam in the ceiling of his farmhouse. The body was completely burnt, except the head, arms and feet.

At Triaucourt, in France, an old man of seventy, Jean Lecouturier, was thrown into the flames of a burning house.

At Champuis, Jacquemin was bound to his bed by a non-commissioned officer, and left in this state without food for three days. He died some days afterwards. At Lavigneville (Meuse), on the 23rd September, MM. Woimbée, aged sixty-one years, and Fortin, aged sixty-five years, both farmers, were arrested in their own homes on the plea that they were francs-tireurs. Now, Woimbée had had his foot shattered two months before, and Fortin, who was afflicted with chronic rheumatism, had for long been unable to walk without the help of a stick. The Germans carried them off in their working garb, without allowing them to take any other clothes, and attached them to a convoy which contained about thirty soldiers who had been taken prisoner. Fortin, who could not get on, was bound by a rope, the ends of which were held by two horsemen, and, notwithstanding his infirmity, he had to keep up with the horses. As he fell every minute, he was struck with lances to compel him to get up again. The wretched man, covered with blood, besought them in mercy to kill him. At last Woimbée obtained permission to carry him to the village of Saint-Maurice-sous-les-C?tés, with the help of several of our soldiers. There the Germans made the two old men go into a[125] house, compelled them to remain standing for two hours face to the wall and arms crossed, whilst they themselves rattled their arms noisily so as to make their victims believe they were going to shoot them. At last they decided to let them lie on the ground, and gave them a little bread and water. For more than twenty-four hours Woimbée and Fortin had had no food.

In Poland, at Andrief, the Germans, displeased because they had only got a little money from the alderman of the town, closed up the latter, M. Krassinsky, aged seventy years, in his house and set fire to it.
Outrages on Priests

The crimes committed in Belgium and France against the priests deserve separate treatment.

The German newspapers and the Emperor alleged, in justification of these acts, that at the beginning of hostilities the curés and nuns of the invaded regions had abused their spiritual authority over the civil population by ro............