src="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@47088@47088-h@images@plate9.jpg" alt="" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/> Plate 9.

We had arrested three civilians, and suddenly a good idea struck me. We placed them on chairs and made them understand that they must go and sit on them in the middle of the street. On one side entreaties, on the other blows from the butt-end of a gun. One gets terribly hardened after a while. At last they were seated outside in the street. I do not know how many prayers of anguish they said; but they kept their hands tightly clasped all the time. I pitied them; but the devise worked immediately. The shooting at us from the house at the side stopped at once; we were able to occupy the house in front, and became masters of the principal street. Every one after that who showed himself in the street was shot. The artillery, too did good work during this, and when towards seven in the evening, the brigade advanced to free us, I was able to report that “St Dié is free of the enemy”.

As I learnt later on, the ... regiment of reserve which had entered St Dié more from the north had had similar experiences to ours. The four civilians that had been made to sit in the street had been killed by French bullets. I saw them myself, stretched out in the middle of the street, near the Hospital.

V

Article 28 of the Hague Convention of 1907, signed by Germany, runs thus “It is forbidden to pillage a town or locality even when taken by assault.” Article 47 runs: “(In occupied territory), pillage is forbidden”.

This is how the armies of Germany interpret these articles.

Private Handschuhmacher (of the 11 battalion of Jägers, reserve) writes in his diary:

“8^th August 1914. Gouvy, (Belgium). There as the Belgians had fired on German soldiers we at once pillaged the Goods Station. Some cases, eggs, shirts and all eatables were seized. The safe was gutted and the money divided among the men. All securities were torn up.”[18]

This took place on the fourth day of the war and enables us to understand why in a technical article on the Military Treasury (der Zahlmeister im Felde) the Berliner Tageblatt of the 26^th Nov. 1914 (1 Supplement) notices as a mere incident an economic phenomenon which is however curious: “As it is a fact that far more money orders are sent from the theatre of operations to the interior of the country than vice versa ...” «Da nun aber erfahrungsgemäss viel mehr Geld vom Kriegsschauplatz nach der Heimat gesandt wird ...».

But as, according to the common practice of the German armies, pillage is but the prelude to incendiarism, non-commissioned-officer Hermann Levith (of the 160^th Regt. VIII^th Army Corps) writes:

“The enemy had occupied the village of Bièvre and the skirts of the wood. The 3^rd Company advanced in first line. We carried the village and pillaged and burnt nearly all the houses.”[19]

And P^te Schiller (133 Inf. XIX^th Corps) writes:

“It was at Haybes (Ardennes) on the 24^th of August that we had our first battle. The 2^nd Battalion entered the village, searched the houses sacked them and burnt all those from which shots had been fired.”[20]

Private Seb. Reishaupt (3 Bavarian Inf. 1^st Bavarian Corps) writes:

“Parux (Meurthe-et-Moselle) is the first village we burnt; then the dance began: villages one after the other; by field and meadow on bicycle to the ditches by the roadside, there we ate cherries.”[21]

They vie with one another in stealing, they steal everything and anything, and they keep a record of their loot: “Schnaps, Wein, Marmelade, Zigarren” so writes this plain soldier; and the smart officer of the 178^th Saxon, who at first was indignant at the “Vandalismus” of his men, confesses in his turn, that the 1^st of September at Rethel, he stole “in a house near the Hôtel Moderne, a splendid mackintosh and a camera for Felix”. Without distinction of grade, nor of arms, nor of Corps, they steal, and even in the ambulances the doctors steal. Here is an example from the diary of Private Johannes Thode (4. Reserve-Ersatz Regiment):

“Brussels 5. 10. 14. A motor arrives at the hospital with booty, a piano, two sewing machines, a lot of albums and all sorts of other things.”[22]

Two sewing machines, as «booty» (Kriegsbeute). Stolen from whom? No doubt from two humble Belgian women. And for whom?

VI

I must admit that out of the forty diaries I have examined, there are six or seven that tell of no exactions, either from hypocritical reticence or because certain regiments wage war less vilely. And I even know of three diaries, whose authors, as they narrate sordid details, are astonished, moved to indignation, saddened. I shall withhold their names, because they deserve our consideration, and to spare them the risk of being one day blamed or punished. The first, P^te X ..., who belongs to the 65^th Inf. of the Landwehr, says of some of his fellow comrades (Plate 10):

“They do not behave like soldiers, but like common thieves, highwaymen and robbers, and are a disgrace to our regiment and our army.”[23]

The second, Lt Y ..., of the 77^th Inf. Reserve, says:

“No discipline ... The Pioneers are not worth much; as for the artillerymen they are a gang of robbers.”[24]

Plate 10.

And the third, Private Z ..., 12^th Inf. Reserve (1 Corps Reserves) writes (Plate 11):

“Unfortunately, I am obliged to mention something which ought never to have happened; but there are even in our army ruffians who are no longer men, swine to whom nothing is sacred. One of them entered a sacristy that was locked, in which was the blessed sacrament.