Their Crimes | Page 8

Nomeny later on, must be put down to the acts of unnatural brutes." The soldier says, "At five o'clock regimental orders were received to kill every male inhabitant of Nomeny, and to raze everything to the ground; we forced our way into the houses." Here is a more detailed account of a massacre near Blamont. "All the villagers fled: it was terrible; their beards thick with blood, and what faces! They were dreadful to look at. The dead were all buried, numbering sixty. Among them were many old men and women, and one unfortunate woman half confined--the whole being frightful to look at. Three children were clasped in each other's arms, and had died thus. The Altar and the vaulting of the church were destroyed because there was a telephone[11] communicating with the enemy. This morning, 2nd September, all the survivors were expelled. I saw four small boys carrying away on two sticks a cradle containing a baby of five or six months. All this is dreadful to see. Blow for blow: thunder against thunder! Every thing is given up to pillage. I also saw a mother with her two children; one had a big wound on the head, and one eye knocked out."
FOOTNOTES:
[8] They have decorated the pirates who sank the Lusitania. They glory in the crime, and have even struck a commemorative medal in its honour.
[9] In this case, and many of the following ones, the reader is requested to note, and remember, the motive for the murders.
[10] This cruel treatment of the Abb�� Dergent, priest of Gelrode, near Louvain, is reported by a neutral witness, Father G., a student at Louvain. The German soldiers accused the Belgian priests of every conceivable crime; the Assistant-Priest of Sainte-Gertrude (Louvain), who was remonstrating with a soldier, received this reply: "We are Catholics too, but you are pigs and black devils." In Belgium about one hundred of the clergy were massacred. Note further that in this unfortunate country doctors were particularly ill-treated; thirty-seven being shot in the small parishes, while more than one hundred and fifty disappeared altogether from large towns.
[11] To whom did it belong, and where was it? Telephones exist in every district of Meurthe-et-Moselle. Besides, our army installed field telephones which were not all destroyed at the time of their retreat. It is a most foolish pretext, yet where can one find a more stupid one than this? A German official communiqu��, in order to prove that the general rising of the people had been organized for a long time, declares, "that dep?ts of arms were installed, where each rifle bore the name of the man for whom it was intended." It is absolutely clear that this applies to arms taken from civilians by order of the local authorities in Belgium and France, and deposited at the Town Hall, every weapon bearing the name of its owner. Would they have taken that for an arsenal? No, stupid as they may be, they are not so foolish as that. They feign stupidity simply because they know very well that the conscience of the civilized world is beginning to be moved.

OUTRAGES ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN
We might write a long and heartbreaking chapter on this pitiful subject, but let the following suffice. The Report of the French Commission of Enquiry concludes with these words, "Outrages upon women and young girls have been common to an unheard-of extent." No doubt the bulk of these crimes will never come to light, for it needs a concatenation of special circumstances for such acts to be committed in public. Unfortunately and only too often these circumstances have existed, e.g., at Beton-Bazoches and Sancy-les-Provins, a young girl, and at St. Denis-les-Rebaix, a mother-in-law and a little boy of eight years old, and at Coulommiers a husband and two children, were witnesses to outrages committed on the mother of the family. Sometimes the attacks were individual and sometimes committed by bodies of men, e.g., at Melen-Labouxhe, Margaret W. was violated by twenty German soldiers, and then shot by the side of her father and mother. They did not even respect nuns.[12]
They did not even spare grandmothers (Louppy-le-Chateau, Vitry-en-Perthois ...).
Nor did they respect children.... At Cirey, a witness (a University professor), whose statements one of us took down a few days after the tragedy, cried to a Bavarian officer, "Have you no children in Germany?" All the officer said in reply was, "My mother never bore swine like you."
Now and then they let themselves loose on a whole family; at Louppy, the mother and her two young girls aged thirteen and eight, respectively, were simultaneous victims of their savagery.
The outrages sometimes lasted till death. At Nimy, the martyrdom of little Irma G. lasted six hours till death delivered her from her sufferings. When her father tried to rescue