Their Crimes | Page 8

inhabitants defies all description; not a house is left standing. We have
dragged out of every corner all survivors, one after another, men,
women, and children, found in a burning cloister, and have shot them
'en masse.'"
The following depositions on the massacres at Nomeny are made by
prisoners, one a Bavarian officer in the Reserve, the other a private in
the same regiment. The lieutenant says: "I gathered the impression that
it was impossible for the officers at Nomeny to prevent such acts. As
far as I can judge, the crimes committed there, which horrified all the
soldiers who were at 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 Abbé 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 communiqué, in order to prove that the general
rising of the people had been organized for a long time, declares, "that

depôts 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-Château,
Vitry-en-Perthois