Their Crimes | Page 5

and speaks of "pure vandalism" on the part of his companions in arms. And again, a musician writes, "Throwing of incendiary grenades into the houses; a military concert in the evening--'Nun danket alle Gott'! (Now thank we all our God)." Finally, a Bavarian: "The village (Saint-Maurice, Meurthe-et-Moselle) was surrounded, and the soldiers posted one yard apart so that no one could escape. Then the Uhlans set fire to the place, one house after the other. No man, woman, or child could possibly escape. Only the cattle were removed in safety, because cattle have some value. Anyone trying to escape was shot. Everything in the village was destroyed." We shall see presently that they even went so far as to burn ambulances.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] They destroyed by fire the Library at Louvain, with its 200,000 volumes and its incomparable treasures. By means of shells and fire they have injured in one place, totally destroyed in another, wonders of art that were an integral part of our human heritage; our Cathedrals at Rheims, Arras, Ypres, &c.
[5] Belgium alone accounts for about 20,000.
[6] This fact is quoted in the admirable book by Captain A. de Gerlache, entitled "Belgium and the Belgians during the War," published by the firm of Berger-Levrault.
[7] See note at foot of page 31. (this is foot-note 11)

MURDER
Not having sufficient space for a complete catalogue, we shall here simply mention the judicial murders of Miss Cavell, Eugene Jacquet, Battisti, and others, in order to honour the memory of those noble victims. For the same reason, as they are now well known to everyone, we content ourselves with merely recalling the criminal torpedoing of the Lusitania,[8] Ancona, Portugal, Amiral-Ganteaume.... all merchant steamers, without any military character whatever, employed in carrying passengers of every nationality, and the last-named crowded with refugees.
We may pass over the crimes committed from a distance, so to speak, on unfortified towns, with fieldpieces, long-range guns, aeroplanes, and Zeppelins, merely noting that the Germans were the first to fire shells into the centre of towns indiscriminately. If they made an exception, it was to aim at the cathedral square, when people were leaving after Mass, as at Nancy, or into the market-place at the time when women are busiest, as they did at Lun��ville.
We only mention here such outrages as were committed at close quarters with hand-weapons, bayonets or rifles. The list is a long one. Will the exact number of victims ever be known? In Belgium alone it has been proved that up to now more than 5,000 civilians have been assassinated: grown men, old people, women and children. They slaughtered their victims sometimes one by one, sometimes in groups, often in masses. They were not content only with killing. At one place they organised round the massacre such tragic scenes, and at another displayed such refinements of cruelty, that reason falters in face of their acts, and asks what terrible madness has brought this race to such low depths? Is it possible? Yes, it is. Judge by the following examples:--
At For��t, the village schoolmaster was shot for refusing to trample under foot the national flag, torn down from the front of the school.[9] At Schaffen, A. Willem was tied to a tree and burnt alive, and two other unfortunate men were buried alive. Madame Luykx and her little girl, 12 years old, were shot together in a cellar. J. Reynders and his young nephew, 10 years of age, were both shot in the street. At Sompuis, an old man named Jacquemin, aged 70, was bound to his bed by an officer and left there without food for three days, dying soon after his release.
A Westphalian prisoner states, "The commanding officer ordered us to shoot two women, and we did so. One of them was holding a child by the hand, and in falling she dragged the child over with her. The officer gave orders to shoot the child, because it could not be left alone in the world." At Rouves, a Government clerk refused to tell a Bavarian officer the numbers of the French regiments in the neighbourhood. The officer killed him with two shots from his revolver. At Cr��zancy, another officer shot with his own hand young Lesaint, 18 years old, "to prevent his being a soldier later on." At Emberm��nil, Madame Masson was shot for having, in absolute good faith, given some wrong information. As she was obviously in a state of pregnancy they made her sit down on a bench to meet her fate. At Ethe, two priests were shot "for having buried some weapons." At Marqu��glise, a superior officer ordered the arrest of four young fugitives. Learning that two of them came from Belgium, he exclaimed, "The Belgians are filthy people," and without more ado took his revolver and shot them one after the