1 The writer’s chief contributions to the Bryce Report will be found on pages 190, etc., of the Committee’s Appendix [cd. 7895.]

2 Published by the German Foreign Office under the title of “Die vÖlkerrechtswidrige FÜhrung des belgischen Volkskriegs.” The abbreviation “G. W. B.” will be used in the notes to this chapter.

3 The Reports have been translated, but not the evidence. I am indebted to M. Mollard for providing me with copies of the latter, to which reference is made below.

4 Speech in the Reichstag, August 4th, 1914. But, so far as I know, no one in this country has noticed that the absolute inviolability of Belgium, under all circumstances and without exception, has been laid down in the leading German text-book on International Law, which declares that such treaties are the great “landmarks of progress” in the formation of a European polity, and that the guarantors must step in, whether invited or uninvited, to vindicate them. “Nothing,” it is added, “could make the situation of Europe more insecure than an egotistical repudiation by the great States of these duties of international fellowship.”—Holtzendorff Handbuch des VÖlkerrechts III. (Part 16), pp. 93, 108, 109.

5 Regulations, Arts. 1 and 2.

6 cf. Von Bieberstein at the Hague Conference of 1907, “The international law which we wish to create should contain only those clauses the execution of which is possible from a military point of view.” (Actes et Documents I., page 282.)

7 Holtzendorff, IV., 385.

8 Ibid., IV., 374. This is an important admission in view of what the Germans allege to have happened in Belgium.

9 German White Book: Introductory Memorandum.

10 German White Book: Introductory Memorandum.

11 Belgian Grey Book (Correspondance Diplomatique relative À la Guerre de 1914), No. 8 (dated July 29th, 1914).

12 Ibid., No. 2 (July 24th, 1914).

13 British Blue Book (Great Britain and the European Crisis), Nos. 85 and 122.

14 G. W. B. (Appendix C), General Report on Dinant.

15 Ibid., Introductory Memorandum.

16 G. W. B., Appendix 51.

17 Ibid., Appendix 53.

18 G. W. B., Memorandum.

19 Ibid., Appendix 59.

20 G. W. B., Appendix 56.

21 Ibid., Appendix 63.

22 Ibid., Appendix 56.

23 G. W. B., Appendix B.

24 This is the normal figure of such German units according to the basis of calculation arrived at, after careful inquiry, by our own Headquarters Staff.

25 G. W. B., Appendix B 1.

26 G. W. B., Appendix 29.

27 Ibid., No. 22.

28 See the Appendix to the Bryce Report, pages 25-29. Any one who reads the depositions of the Belgian witnesses there set out, and compares them with the depositions of the German soldiers in the White Book cannot fail to be struck by certain notable differences in quality. The Belgian witnesses never generalise, they betray no malice, and they mention instances of German forbearance. The exact converse is true of the German evidence. Lord Bryce’s Committee came to the conclusion that they “have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation.” (Report, page 20.) See also the Eleventh Belgian Report (Rapports officiels, page 137).

29 G. W. B., Appendix C. Summary and also C 5, 7, 10, 31, 35, 40, 44 for references in the text.

30 G. W. B., Appendix C.

31 C 44.

32 C (Summary Report).

33 C 51.

34 The story of Aerschot is peculiarly horrible. It was here that the priest was placed against the wall with his arms raised above his head; when he let them fall through weariness, the German soldiers brought the butt-ends of their rifles down upon his feet. He was kept there for hours, and as German soldiers passed they used him as a lavatory and a latrine until he was covered with filth. Eventually they shot him. This is but one of many such horrors (see the Bryce Report, Appendix, pages 29, 46. See also the fourth and fifth Belgian Reports). The German White Book admits (Appendix A 2) that “every third man was shot.”

35 Appendix A 5.

36 Appendix A 3.

37 The 1st Company of the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Neuss Mobile Landsturm.

38 Belgian Collected Reports, Tenth Report, page 127.

39 Bryce Report (popular edition), pages 29-36. And see the diary, No. 14 of Appendix to Bryce Report recording the shooting of German troops by other German troops; to the same effect another diary quoted on page 41 of Bryce Report.

40 “No other troops were stationed at Louvain on that day.”—(D 8.)

41 See the Sixth Belgian Report and, in particular, the Proclamations issued at Hasselt, Namur, Wavre, GrivegnÉe, and Brussels.

42 See, in particular, Les Violations des lois de la Guerre par l’Allemagne, issued by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pages 77, 92, 99, 100, 101, 119.

43 Press Bureau (Belgian communiquÉ), March 18th. The German authorities substituted the word “convention” for “conversation,” in order to convict Belgium of a secret treaty with England.

44 Foreign Office communiquÉs of May 20th and July 5th.

45 The case of the Ophelia.

46 P. P. Cd. 7595.

47 The case of the Iberia (Times Law Report, November 11th, 1915). It is not the only one.

48 The International Review, published in Zurich, and controlled by a Committee consisting almost entirely of German Professors. Its title is obviously fraudulent. The June issue (page 14) contains an article of ingratiating impudence by a German psychologist discrediting all reports of atrocities, and, in order to prove their unreliability and justify the policy of the Review in excluding them when they emanate from British, French, or Belgian sources, it attempts to disprove them all. On page 32 the writer refutes circumstantially the stories that German soldiers had had their eyes gouged out.

49 Note transmitted on July 8th to the American Minister by Herr von Jagow.

50 Proclamations issued at Namur and Wavre.—(Sixth Belgian Report.)

51 Ibid Proclamation issued at GrivegnÉe. See also Les Avis, Proclamations, et Nouvelles de la Guerre allemandes affichÉs a Bruxelles, for a copy of which I am indebted to my friend Colonel E. D. Swinton, D.S.O. (“Eye-witness.”)

52 The reader should also study the diaries given in the Bryce Appendix, in the French official volume Les Violations, and in Professor Bedier’s Les Crimes Allemands: expressions of pity are as rare as exultations that “We live like God” are frequent.

53 The full story will never be known, but the Russian Report, the Second French Report, the Belgian Reports (especially the Tenth), and the narrative of Major Vandeleur, published by the Foreign Office as a White Paper, together with the Report of the American Minister published on November 20th, 1915, may be referred to.

54 The instances which follow are taken from official reports. I may add another illustration here published for the first time. A German soldier, recording the story of how the maire of a French town was torn from his home and carried off by the troops, writes: “In spite of his protests we put him into our company and made him march with us. He called us names and shouted and protested, and kept us all in good spirits.”

55 The Munchner Neueste Nachrichten, October 7th, 1914.

56 Press Bureau (Belgian communiquÉs), August 5th.

57 French official communiquÉs, October 12th, August 1st.

58 Velut e conspectu libertas tolleretur (Tacitus, Agricola, Chapter 24).

59 What I have here written is, without exaggeration, the substance of the Manifesto issued by the German Professors in August last. For the text, see the Morning Post, August 13th and 14th. And to the same effect is the speech of the Imperial Chancellor in the Reichstag a few days later (for report, see The Times, August 21st).

60 Long ago—in 1870—Fustel de Coulanges pointed out that the crime which, to use the words of our law, “is not to be named among Christians,” flourished in Berlin as it flourished nowhere else, and the immorality of latter-day Germany was the subject of a mournful lamentation by Treitschke in his old age. An acute student of modern Germany, Dr. Arthur Shadwell, also remarks on the low commercial morality of German merchants (see the Nineteenth Century and After for August, 1915).

61 It is a curious fact, attested by the evidence of a large number of British and French soldiers who have been in action, that the German soldier often exhibits the most abject fear when confronted individually with the bayonet, going down on his knees, and whining “Kamerad,” “Mercy,” and such like lachrymose appeals.

62 Bryce Appendix, “Depositions taken by Professor Morgan,” page 195.

63 Belgian Reports (Tenth Report), page 119. To the same effect the British and French Reports, passim.

64 Admiralty Memorandum, August 21st. Commander’s report on the stranding of E13.

65 See Belgian Reports and Bryce Report.

66 The writer has brought together a number of such passages in his preface to the German War Book. For others see Les Usages de la Guerre et la doctrine de l’Etat-Major Allemand, by Professor Charles Andler (Paris, 1915). Also Chapter I. of “Les CruautÉs Allemandes, Requisitoire d’un neutre,” by LÉon Maccas (Paris, 1915). And more especially the extremely valuable book published, at the moment of going to press, by an eminent French scholar, the Marquis de Dampierre, L’Allemagne et le Droit des Gens, a copy of which has just reached me.

67 Sorel, Essais d’histoire et de critique, p. 271.

68 German Proclamation of August 27th, 1914, at Wavre (Belgian Reports, No. 6, page 82). In the Proclamation at Namur of August 25th, 1914, the German commandant, von Bulow, warns the inhabitants against “the horrible crime” of compromising by their conduct the existence of the town and its inhabitants!

69 Ibid., page 81.

70 See p. 123.

71 Holtzendorff, IV., 378.

72 French Reports, Rapports et Proces-verbaux, p. 40.

73 cf. the reply of the Roman Senate to the offer of a German chief to poison Arminius, “Responsum esse non fraude neque occultis, sed palam et armatum populum Romanum hostes suos ulcisci.” Tacit., Ann., II., p. 88.

74 See the British White Paper of September 21st, 1915; “Austrian and German papers found in possession of James F. J. Archibald, Falmouth, August 30th, 1915.”

75 Professor Salmond in the Law Quarterly Review.

76 Mr. Justice Bailhache in the King v. the Superintendent of Vine Street Police Station. “The courts are entitled to take judicial notice of certain notorious facts. Spying has become the hall-mark of German Kultur.” September 7th, 1915.

77 It is, however, impossible to include within the limits of this book the whole of the unpublished material at my disposal.

78 The term “soldier” is used throughout this article in the sense adopted in the Army Annual Act, i.e., as meaning N.C.O.s and privates.

79 The outrages committed in the districts now in the occupation of the British armies have not been reported upon by the French Commission, and the ground so traversed in this article is therefore new.

80 Von der Goltz.

81 One might go further and say that the Geneva Convention, which has hitherto been universally regarded as a law of perfect obligation and which even the German Staff in the German War Book affects to treat as sacred, is perverted to an instrument of treachery. The emblem of the Red Cross was used to protect waggons in which machine-guns were concealed. And since this article was written a German hospital ship, the Ophelia, has been condemned, on irrefutable evidence, by our Prize Court as having been used for belligerent purposes. Such things throw a very lurid light on the German conception of honour.

82 Similar evidence has been supplied to me by a French officer attached to the Fifth Division of the British Expeditionary Force. See Chap. III., Part I., No. 56.

83 See Chapter III., Part I., and, in particular, Nos. 39 to 43.

84 The German officers spoke Hindustani. Doubtless they knew, as I have found they often know, the identity of the British regiments opposite their positions and were attached there for the express purpose of dealing with Indians. But in no case, so far as I know, were their attempts to seduce our Indian troops successful.

85 This diary is now in the possession of my friend the Marquis de Dampierre, who is about to publish it and numerous others, together with fac-similes of the originals.

86 The passage suggests that our wounded were killed, but it is not conclusive. “Noch lebenden,” i.e., “still living,” would appear to mean the wounded found in our trenches and unable to escape with the others. The fact of some prisoners being taken does not dispose of the suspiciousness of the passage.

87 Brenneisen is now a prisoner in England. The diary was a most carefully kept one. Since I first published it, it has been republished by the French authorities.

88 What follows refers principally to the portion of Northern France now occupied by the British troops. The case of Belgium has been sufficiently dealt with by the Committee.

89 See Chap. III., Section 2.

90 Ibid., Section 3.

91 After the outrage they dragged the girl outside and asked if she knew of any other young girls (“jeunes filles”) in the neighbourhood, adding that they wanted to do to them what they had done to her. See Chap. III. (2) No. 4.

92 Presumably La Couture.—J. H. M.

93 I have suppressed the names of the witnesses for fear of their relatives, if any, in German hands being subjected to vindictive measures. Also in the case (selected from some twenty similar cases equally authenticated) of rape I have omitted certain details which seem to me too disgusting for publication.—J. H. M.

94 Note.—This diary is a laconic example of a hundred such village tragedies. According to the Eleventh Belgian Report (page 133), twenty-six priests and monks were shot in Namur alone. And see the pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier (ibid., page 165) on what he calls “this sinister necrology.” In his own diocese alone (that of Malines) he records thirteen priests as having been killed. According to a German soldier the guilt of priests was established by the fact that church-bells often rang!—(Bryce Appendix, page 163).

95 This savage credulity found its sequel in the murder of many unoffending priests not only in Belgium but in France. I quote one case from the depositions in my possession:

“Marie B——, soeur du curÉ de Pradelles, a dÉclarÉ ‘Les Allemands rodant dans le village out enlevÉ la personne de mon frÈre M. l’AbbÉ HÉlÉodore Bogaert, curÉ de cette paroisse, et l’ont fusillÉ au cimetiÈre de Strazeele sans aucun motif le 9 octobre vers 1 heure et demie du matin.’”

96 These documents have been placed in my hands by the General Headquarters Staff. In accordance with the procedure adopted in the Bryce Report, and for military reasons, I have suppressed the names of the British regiments referred to and of their officers and men.—J. H. M.

97 This and the two following depositions are selected from a number of statements, mostly by Russian prisoners in German hands, who succeeded in escaping to the British lines. The statements (b) and (c) by these Russian soldiers are confirmed by the statement (a) which was volunteered by a German soldier, Stephan Grzegoroski, taken prisoner by the British troops. It is hardly necessary to point out that the employment of prisoners of war upon military works and their exposure to fire constitute a flagrant breach, not only of the Hague Regulations, but of the unwritten laws and usages of war.—J. H. M.

98 These two men escaped on December 8th, 1915, and reached the British Lines.—J. H. M.

99 “German Atrocities: An Official Investigation.” By J. H. Morgan, M.A., late Home Office Commissioner, with the British Expeditionary Force, Barrister-at-Law of the Inner Temple, and Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of London. (T. Fisher Unwin.)