Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War Volume I Part 4

PROF. WERNER SOMBART.

During the three months of invasion, more than 21,000 houses had been burnt down in five alone of the nine provinces of Belgium, and a far greater number pillaged--more than 16,000, for instance, in the single Province of Brabant. Of the civilian population, between 5,000 and 6,000 men, women, and children had been ma.s.sacred, some singly and some in batches, some by clean killing and some after lingering tortures, some in frenzy and some in cold blood, but all with the object of terrorization and with that result. Fleeing before the terror, many hundreds of thousands of Belgians, especially of the middle and upper cla.s.ses, had taken refuge in Holland and the British Isles.

_Times History of the War._

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_DINANT: "I SEE FATHER"_

An hour later the women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant, pa.s.sing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison the witness saw three lines of bodies which he recognized as being those of neighbors. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. There were about 120 bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay there till eight o'clock in the morning. On the following day they were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in Germany.

Unarmed civilians were killed in ma.s.ses at other places near the prison.

About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a gra.s.s square opposite the convent.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE'S REPORT.

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_MATER DOLOROSA_

The inhabitants fled through the village (near Blamont). It was horrible. The walls of houses are bespattered with blood and the faces of the dead are hideous to look upon. They were buried at once, some sixty of them. Among them many old women, old men, and one woman pregnant--the whole a dreadful sight. Three children huddled together--all dead. Altar and arches of the church shattered. Telephone communication with the enemy was found there. This morning, Sept. 2, all the survivors were driven out; I saw four little boys carrying on two poles a cradle with a child some five or six months old. The whole makes a fearful sight. Blow upon blow! Thunderbolt on thunderbolt! Everything given over to plunder. I saw a mother with her two little ones--one of them had a great wound in the head and an eye put out.

_From the Diary of_ GEFREITER PAUL SPELLMAN, _Capt. First Brigade of Infantry Guard_ (_Prussian Guards_).

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_IS IT YOU, MOTHER?_

A corporal named Houston narrated that while he lay wounded on the ground, after the battle of Soissons, he saw a young English soldier lying near him, delirious. A German soldier gave the poor lad water from his flask. The young Englishman, his mind wandering, said, "Is it you, mother?" The German comprehended, and to maintain the illusion, caressed his face with a mother's soft touch. The poor boy died shortly afterwards and the German soldier, on getting to his feet, was seen to be crying.

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_MEN TO THE RIGHT, WOMEN TO THE LEFT_

On Sunday, August 23rd, at half past six in the morning, the soldiers of the 108th regiment of the line drove wors.h.i.+ppers of the Premonstratensian Church, separated the men from the women, and shot about fifty of the former through the head. Between seven and nine o'clock there was house to house looting and burning by soldiers who chased the inhabitants into the street. Those who tried to escape were shot off-hand.

At about nine o'clock the soldiers drove all who had been found in the houses in front of them by means of blows from their rifle-b.u.t.ts. They crowded them together in Place d'Armes, where they kept them until six o'clock in the evening. Their guards amused themselves by telling the men repeatedly that they would soon be shot.

At six o'clock a captain separated the men from the women and children.

The women were placed behind a line of infantry. The men had to stand alongside a wall; those in the first row were told to sit on their haunches, the others to remain standing behind them. A platoon took a stand right opposite the group. The women prayed in vain for the mercy of their husbands, their sons, and their brothers; the officer gave the order to fire. He had not made the slightest investigation, p.r.o.nounced no sentence of any sort.

_Belgian Gov. Committee's Report._

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_A PITIFUL EXODUS_

In many groups were to be seen old, old people, grandfathers and grandmothers of a family, and these in their shaking frailty and terror, which they could not withstand, were the more pitiable objects in the great gathering of stricken townsfolk. This pathetic clinging together of the family was one of the most affecting sights I witnessed, and I have not the slightest doubt that in the mad rush for refuge beyond the borders of their native land many family groups of this sort completely perished.

All day and throughout the night these pitiful scenes continued, and when I went down to the quayside early Thursday, when the dawn was throwing a wan light over this part of the world, I found again a great host of citizens awaiting their chance of flight.

_London Daily Chronicle on The Fall of Antwerp.

October 11, 1914._

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_SYMPATHY_

"_If I find you again looking so sad, I'll send you to Germany after your father_"

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_WE WAGE WAR ON DIVINE PRINCIPLES_

The names of the priests and monks of the diocese of Malines, who, to my knowledge, were put to death by the German troops, are as follows: Dupierreux, of the Company of Jesus; Brother Sebastien Allard, of the Society of St. Joseph; Brother Candide, of the Society of the Brothers of Our Lady of Pity; Father Vincent, Conventual Carette, a professor; Lombaerts, Goris de Clerck; Dergent, Wouters, Van Bladel, _cures_.

At Christmas time I was not perfectly certain what had been the fate of the _Cure_ of Herent. Since then his dead body has been discovered at Louvain and identified.

_From a letter from_ CARDINAL MERCIER, _to The Kreischef of District of Malines._ _December, 1914._