Title: Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War, Volume 1
Illustrator: Louis Raemaekers
Editor: James Murray Allison
Release date: October 4, 2010 [eBook #34031]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Anne Storer and the Online
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COMPILED BY
J. MURRAY ALLISON
Editor of Raemaekers’ Cartoons, Kultur in Cartoons,
The Century Edition de Luxe Raemaekers’ Cartoons, etc.
VOLUME ONE
THE FIRST TWELVE MONTHS OF WAR
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
The Century Co.
In all the welter of the tragic upheaval which is shattering institutions once thought immutable, condemning millions to physical death and awakening other millions to spiritual life, making staggering discoveries of unexpected human strength or weakness, thrusting men into fame one day or to oblivion the next, there has been nothing more dramatic than the sudden manifestation of the genius of the Dutchman, Louis Raemaekers, who, as Europe recoiled from the first shock of German barbarity, threw down his brush for his pencil and by the intensity of his spirit aroused the compassion and fired the anger of the world with his cartoons of the Belgian violation.
He, more than any other individual, has made intensely clear to the people the single issue upon which the war is joined. More than cartoonist, he is teacher and preacher, with the vision, faith, and intensity of a St. Francis, a Luther, or a Joan of Arc.
On August 1, 1914, we find him a quiet, gentle man, the son of a country editor, happy in his family, devout, contemplative, loving beauty and peace, contentedly painting the good and lovely things he saw among the tulip-fields and waterways, the cattle and the wind-mills of his own native Holland before the gray-clad millions of the Kaiser burst into the low countries with fire and sword.
Then comes the miracle of his transformation; the idyllic is thrust aside by the hideous reality; beauty is drowned in a bestial orgy of force; and in place of the passive painter arises the fiery preacher; the brush is discarded for the pencil, and the pencil in his hands becomes an avenging sword, because by it millions of people have been aroused to a clear-cut realization of the fact that the issue of this war is no less than Slavery and Autocracy versus Freedom and Democracy.
The very first of his war cartoons indicated the prophetic vision of the man, and gave the first evidence of his inspiration and genius. It is called “Christendom after Twenty Centuries” and shows a bowed and weeping figure crouching under the sword and lash. It was drawn on that fateful day August 1st, 1914. The intensity of emotion shown in this drawing revealed his power for the first time. To Raemaekers himself it came as a vision and a summons. The landscape painter disappeared, and in his place arose a champion of civilization, throbbing with sublime rage and pity, clothed with authority, and invested with a weapon more powerful than the ruthlessness it indicts.
When the stories of the Belgian horror began to circulate in Holland, Raemaekers, like the rest of the humane world, refused to credit them. His own mother was German; he had spent many happy years in Germany; he knew the German peasant as a kindly and happy, if rather stupid fellow; it was incredible that such men could have done the awful things alleged. But the tales persisted, and although the evidence of the wracked and broken refugees who poured into his country by tens of thousands seemed irrefutable, he could not believe it, and readily seized upon the common supposition that the terrible stories were the product of the imagination of an overwrought and panic-stricken people. At length he could remain in doubt no longer, and quietly slipped over the frontier to verify for himself the truth or falsehood of the accusations that had already made Germany guilty of the foulest crimes ever perpetrated in the name of war since the dawn of civilization.
What he actually saw with his own eyes he does not tell. But a hundred of his early cartoons bear witness to the burning impression made upon his soul. Raemaekers, like others who have seen them, cannot speak of these unnamable horrors, but can only express his consuming pity or his white-hot rage in the medium that lies nearest his hand. On one occasion only has he publicly referred to his experiences in Belgium. It was at a dinner given him by the artists and literary men of London at the Savage Club, where, pointing to the portraits and trophies of Peary, Scott, Nansen, Shackleton, and other explorers which hang on the walls, he said: “I, too, have been an explorer, Gentlemen. I have explored a hell, and it was terror unspeakable.”
It did not take long for the High Command in Berlin to learn through its agents in Holland of the impression that was being created in the public mind by Raemaekers’ cartoons. The publication of his first series of cartoons in the Amsterdam Telegraaf, reflecting the unspeakable horror of the atrocities in Belgium and denouncing with burning scorn the Kaiser and his infamous captains, gave such offense to the “All-Highest” in Potsdam that the German Government offered twelve thousand guilders for his body dead or alive! Further magnificent testimony to the hurt he inflicted on our common adversaries lies in the fact that the German Government, not content with offering a reward for his body, induced the Dutch Government to prosecute him for endangering the neutrality of Holland! He was actually tried on this charge, but although he had not spared the burghers and junkers of his own country for what he considered their criminal laxity in the matter of preparedness and their greed in aiding Germany by the smuggling of foodstuffs, etc., across the frontier, the jury acquitted him and the court tacitly confirmed his right to express his opinions.
It was after this that the Cologne Gazette in an editorial addressed to the Dutch people, obviously seeking to intimidate what its government could not suppress, said: “After the war Germany will settle accounts with Holland, and for each calumny, for each cartoon of Raemaekers, she will demand payment with the interest that is her due.” German wrath followed him further. His life was constantly endangered at the hands of German agents infesting Holland, and he had to be always on his guard, especially during his periodical excursions into Belgian territory occupied by the enemy. Even before he crossed to England, his wife received anonymous letters warning her that any ship he might sail on would surely be torpedoed.
As late as November, 1916, an exhibition of his cartoons in Madrid was forbidden by the Spanish Government upon the insistence of the German embassy in that capital.
It is significant to note that these attempted persecutions had an effect directly opposite to that intended. They not only failed to stop the publication of his cartoons but were largely instrumental in drawing the attention of the Allies and neutrals to the great champion that had arisen.
For eighteen months his cartoons had been appearing in the Amsterdam Telegraaf without exciting a more than mild interest outside Holland.
American and British war-correspondents returning to London from Amsterdam talked enthusiastically of the “Great Raemaekers” and a few stray cartoons appeared in the press of London and Paris. But he was practically unknown outside of Holland until Christmas week in December, 1915, a year and a half after his first war-cartoon had appeared.
A two-line advertisement announced his arrival in the British metropolis. “Exhibition of war-cartoons by Raemaekers, Fine Arts Galleries, Bond Street, admission one shilling,” was all it said. While Londoners are generally interested in new artists, Raemaekers appeared at an inopportune time. For one thing, the public had been rather surfeited with war-literature and war-pictures and the work of an unknown foreign artist was scarcely likely to attract them, and for another, it was within a few days of Christmas, everybody was leaving London, and those who remained in town were bent on giving the troops and the war-sufferers as merry a time as possible.
It was quite by chance that the art critic of the London Times visited the Bond Street Galleries a day or so before Christmas, and Raemaekers’ world-wide fame as it exists to-day may be said to date from the day that the Times in a two-column notice said, among other things, “this neutral is the only genius produced by the war.”
The campaign of publicity launched by the Times was taken up by the British and French press. The public flocked to view, and were stunned as they had never been before by the damning record. The cumulative effect of such pictures as “The Shields of Rosselaere,” showing men, women, and children forced to march in front of the German armies, “Men to the right, women to the left,” in which women and children are being beaten with the butts of rifles; “The Exodus from Antwerp,” “The Mothers of Belgium,” “The Widows of Belgium,” and others which revealed unimaginable depths of human agony, impressed the London crowd as by a solemn ritual. They saw with a vividness hitherto unapproached the hideousness of the war, the unequivocal brutality of the German method, and the naked, insatiable greed in the German purpose. Not now could the timidest soul believe that Germany was fighting a war of defense. Here was the fact inescapable that civilization itself was threatened; here was the whole carnival of lust and conquest as mercilessly depicted on the faces of its agents as they themselves had trampled onward to their shocking goal.
The exhibition was crowded daily for twenty weeks. From nine in the morning till six at night the galleries were packed with people of every grade of society. It is not too much to say that no oration, no literature, no art had brought the real meaning of the war home so convincingly to Londoners as these cartoons. Parents who had already given their sons, wives who had given husbands, were strengthened in their resignation and comforted in their sorrow; those who yet had the sacrifice to make were fortified in their resolve. As I have said, the cumulative effect of these hundred and fifty cartoons on the emotions of a people just awakening to and suffering from the desperate realities of the war was almost overwhelming, and many a man and woman quivered and cried under this pitiless revelation of the stupendous suffering that had been and was yet to be.
The exhibition was carried from London to the principal English and Scottish cities, and thence to Paris. Everywhere the story was the same. Crowds flocked to see and heed the artist’s fiery records; statesmen, soldiers, artists did him honor. In London he was received by the Prime Minister and the artistic and learned societies; in Paris he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and given a reception at the Sorbonne—the highest purely intellectual honor that can be bestowed upon any man. France, equally with England, acclaimed him as the new champion of humanity. In the provincial cities of England, as in London, crowds thronged the galleries daily for weeks at a time. In Liverpool alone five thousand persons visited the exhibition in one afternoon; Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh told the same story of the people being aroused and inspirited as though a new evangel had come to tell them that their cause was sacred and their sacrifice not vain.
In a few months his genius was universally recognized and his position as the supreme cartoonist of the war firmly established. And now that he had the appreciation and the scope that were his due, he threw himself into his work with even greater ardor. He made recruiting posters for the army and navy; he depicted the shortage of shells and called on men and women to man the munition factories; he contributed posters to stimulate thrift and industry and contributions to the Government funds; he worked for both the British and the French Red Cross, and for private and public charities innumerable; his pen never flagged. While the wrongs of Belgium had been the first incentive to his genius, he now dealt with the war in all its later phases, and found subjects wherever the blight of Kaiserism traveled—in France, Russia, Serbia, Rumania, Italy, and the Far East; and in the Zeppelin raids, the Armenian massacres, the Belgian and French deportations, the Red Cross outrages, and the submarine infamies.
As a mere material record of industry, Raemaekers’ is probably unique in the world’s history. Since the beginning of the war he has drawn nearly 1000 cartoons. There is not a single phase of the war,—military, naval, or political,—that has not formed a basis for his artistic comment. Some three hundred of the cartoons have been reproduced in facsimile form, and in that state have been exhibited in hundreds of cities throughout the world.
In book form his work exists already in a dozen editions, from the sumptuous edition-de-luxe at one hundred dollars to the popular (British) edition at four cents.
Post-card editions of the cartoons run into many millions; his cartoons have been filmed, exist as lantern-slides, and leading actors and actresses have reproduced them in the form of tableaux. But it is in the world’s press that the greatest distribution has taken place. He is cartoonist to half a hundred newspapers, and literally thousands of different publications have reproduced his pictures at one time or another. He has been translated into a score of languages, the writer having seen one edition in Basque and another in Arabic. In the United States alone his cartoons in one year have reached a newspaper circulation of over 300,000,000, and exhibitions have been held in over one hundred of the leading cities.
And all this gigantic distribution has grown during the two years that have passed since his cartoons were first exhibited in London. It is a record that has never yet been equalled. What is the secret of this man’s appeal to men and women in all stations of life, to people of every creed and nationality? In Europe nearly all, and in America a great many, of the leading writers and thinkers have acclaimed the genius of Raemaekers, but none have been able to tell us why it is that his pictures appeal with equal intensity to the Briton, the Latin, the Slav, and the American. A writer in the Boston Transcript perhaps comes nearest to the truth. He says: “The mantle of Dante has fallen upon Raemaekers; he leads the conscience of the world to-day through an inferno of wrong.”
This world-wide recognition is conclusive testimony to the universality of his genius. Raemaekers appeals to all mankind. The value of his contribution to the cause of civilization in this war lies in the fact that he has seen and depicted with the directness and clarity of genius the truth that the issue is joined between the forces of evil and good. For him there are no other considerations, no qualifications, no compromises. He has but one enemy, and that is the destroyer of peace and civilization; he has but one hero, and that is the defender of them. He sees in war itself no pomp and glitter, but only the burning village, the devastated home, the agonized women and children, and the brave and faithful dead. He depicts militarism as hideous, brutal, coarse, and cunning. His one thought seems to be that those things which all kindly and gentle men and women hold dear and sacred are being trampled upon and threatened by a monstrous wrong; and that the ideals of justice, order, and human liberty which have been established in the conscience of humanity after centuries of painful struggle are in danger of annihilation. In thus narrowing the issue, in thus resolving all doubt, he has, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “rendered the most powerful of the honorable contributions by neutrals to the cause of civilization.” Raemaekers’ name and work will live long after many of the men and their achievements in this war have faded from the general mind. Future generations will look at his cartoons and will find in them at once the cause and the justification of the rising of the world’s free peoples to give their lives for freedom and the safety of democracy.
The historical value of the cartoons have frequently been insisted upon by critics and reviewers and I have been urged to publish them in the form of a cartoon History of the War. The present attempt is the outcome of these suggestions.
It has not been possible to adhere to any very definite method of arrangement. Many of the cartoons were drawn long after the events with which they deal took place, as, for instance, the Wittenberg pictures. The typhus outbreak amongst the prisoners at Wittenberg happened in December, 1914, but the facts were not made public until May, 1916. On the other hand, the cartoon depicting Count von Bernstorff’s dismissal from Washington was published two years before he was handed his passports. It was a cartoon based upon the activities of Dumba. A great number of cartoons, particularly those published during the early months of the war, have no direct historical significance. The Belgian cartoons constitute a general indictment of the German method of warfare, while the Nurse Cavell drawings (Vol. II.) represent a specific comment upon an actual example of that method. The letterpress has been compiled mainly from official communiques and reports, and from the speeches and public statements of the leading men of the belligerents and some of the neutrals. I have also quoted freely from newspapers, magazines, and books, and whenever possible I have made acknowledgment of these sources. My object has been not to explain the cartoons, but to show their great value as historical documents and to make sure, so far as is possible, that the basis of truth upon which they rest shall not be forgotten.
J. Murray Allison.
New York, Christmas Day, 1917.
The cartoons which appear on the following pages up to and including page 86 call for special reference.
They represent Raemaekers’ impression of the behaviour of the German troops in Belgium during the first weeks of the invasion. The great majority of them were drawn long before any Official Reports were published, and not, as would seem natural, as illustrations of the Reports which were eventually published by the Belgian, French, and British Governments. The cartoon on page 86 was drawn after the publication of the British Government’s Official Report. It is important to realise this. It is also necessary to remember that the German atrocities began actually at the moment that the German troops crossed the frontier on the evening of August 3rd and continued in unabated violence until the defeat at the Marne.
After the retreat of the Germans from Paris the German General Staff appear to have altered its cold-blooded policy in Belgium and France. From that moment, when the carefully prepared blow at the heart of France had failed and when the possibility of defeat began to dawn upon the Potsdam mind, organised robbery, murder, arson and rape were discontinued or at least toned down as a feature of German warfare. Whilst that method—the Official Reports of the Allied Governments’ Commissions of Enquiry prove conclusively it was a method—continued, Raemaekers concentrated his pencil upon it and neglected the strictly military and political happenings. That is why I have grouped the Belgian cartoons at the beginning of this volume. They do really represent the first phase of the war. With regard to the extracts that I have selected to face the Belgian cartoons I would ask the reader to remember that they have been taken largely from Official Reports issued after the drawings were published. Raemaekers’ pictorial indictment came first. He was justified later by the sworn evidence of eye-witnesses.
I think perhaps that it is necessary to make these observations in case the letterpress facing the Belgian cartoons should not in many cases be considered quite apt.
J. M. A.
Raemaekers’ first war cartoon, originally published on the first of August, 1914.
On the evening of August 3 the German troops cross the frontier. The storm burst so suddenly that neither party had time to adjust its mind to the situation. The Germans seem to have expected an easy passage. The Belgian population, never dreaming of an attack, were startled and stupefied.
From the very beginning of the operations the civilian population of the villages lying upon the line of the German advance were made to experience the extreme horrors of war. “On the 4th of August,” says one witness, “at Herve I saw at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans; these were the first German troops I had seen. They were followed by a German officer and some soldiers in a motor car. The men in the car called out to a couple of young fellows who were standing about thirty yards away. The young men, being afraid, ran off and then the Germans fired and killed one of them named D.” The murder of this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighborhood, to the indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the organized military execution of batches of selected males.
British Government Committee’s Report.
The wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, can have only one thought—how is he to hack his way through.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg.
Reichstag, August 4, 1915.
With a clear conscience Germany goes to the battlefield.
The Kaiser, August, 1914.
We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the dictates of international law. It is true that the French Government has declared at Brussels that France is willing to respect the neutrality of Belgium, so long as her opponent respects it. We knew, however, that France stood ready for invasion. France could wait, but we could not wait. A French movement upon our flank upon the lower Rhine might have been disastrous. So we were compelled to override the just protest of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg,
Reichstag, Berlin, 4th August, ’14.
Remember that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, the German Emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I am His sword, His weapon and His vicegerent. Woe to the disobedient and death to cowards and unbelievers.
From The Kaiser’s speech to his
soldiers on the way to the front.
Bernhardi: “War is as divine as eating and drinking”
Satan: “Here is a partner for me”
The inevitableness, the idealism, the blessing of war as an indispensable and stimulating law of development must be repeatedly emphasized.
... War is the greatest factor in the furtherance of culture and power. Efforts to secure peace are extraordinarily detrimental as soon as they influence politics.
... Efforts directed toward the abolition of war are not only foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy of the human race.
... In fact, the State is a law unto itself. Weak nations have not the same right to live as powerful and vigorous nations.
“Germany and the Next War.” 1911.
Gen. von Bernhardi.
“Ah! was your boy among the twelve this
morning? Then you’ll find him
among this lot”
When the German cavalry occupied the village of Linsmeau not a man of the civilian population took part in the fighting. Nevertheless the village was invaded at dusk on August 10 and all the male inhabitants were compelled to come forward and hand over whatever arms they possessed. No recently discharged firearms were found. The invaders divided these peasants in three groups, those in one were bound, and 11 of them placed in a ditch, where they were afterwards found dead.
Belgian Gov. Commission’s Report.
In a café, lower down, near the canal, I saw a number of German soldiers, and was successful in having a chat with the inn-keeper, at the farthest corner of the bar. I asked, of course, what they meant by burning the village, and he told me that the Germans had made a number of successful attacks on Fort Pontisse, until at last they had reduced it to silence. They were now so near that they could open the final assault. They were afraid, however, of some ambush, or underground mine, and the Friday before they had collected the population, whom they forced to march in front of them. When they had got quite near they dared not enter it yet, and drove the priest and twelve of the principal villagers before them.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
We ourselves regret deeply that during these fights the town of Loewen has been destroyed to a great extent. Needless to say that these consequences are not intentional on our part, but cannot be avoided in this infamous franc-tireur war being led against us.
Whoever knows the good-natured character of our troops cannot seriously pretend that they are inclined to needless or frivolous destruction.
German General Staff.
Berlin, August, 1914.
The German troops penetrated into Aerschot, a town of 8,000 inhabitants, on Wednesday, Aug. 19, in the morning. No Belgian forces remained behind. No sooner did the Germans enter the town than they shot five or six inhabitants whom they caused to leave their houses. In the evening, pretending that a superior German officer had been killed on the Grand Place by the son of the Burgomaster, or, according to another version of the story, that a conspiracy had been hatched against the superior commandant by the Burgomaster and his family, the Germans took every man who was inside of Aerschot; they led them, fifty at a time, some distance from the town, grouped them in lines of four men, and, making them run ahead of them, shot them and killed them afterward with their bayonets. More than forty men were found thus massacred.
Belgian Gov. Commission’s Report.
“It’s all right. If I hadn’t done it someone else might”
As regards private property, respect among German troops simply does not exist. By the universal testimony of every British officer and soldier I have interrogated the progress of the German troops is like a plague of locusts over the land. What they can not carry off they destroy. Furniture is thrown into the street, pictures are riddled with bullets and pierced by sword cuts, municipal registers burnt, the contents of shops scattered on the floor, drawers rifled, live stock slaughtered and carcasses left to rot in the fields. Cases of petty larceny by German soldiers appear to be innumerable; they take whatever seizes their fancy, and leave the towns they evacuate laden like pedlars. Empty ammunition wagons were drawn up in front of private houses and filled with their contents for despatch to Germany.
I have had the reports of local commissions of police placed before me, and they show that in smaller villages like those of Caestre and Merris, with a population of about 1,500 souls or less, pillaging to the extent of £4,000 and £6,000 was committed by the German troops.
Professor J. H. Morgan in “German
Atrocities,” an Official Investigation.
They sang, shouted and waved their arms. Most of them carried bottles full of liquor, which they put into their mouths frequently, smashed them on the ground, or handed them to their comrades, when unable to drink any more themselves. Each of a troop of cavalry had a bottle of pickles, and enjoyed them immensely.
Other soldiers kept on running into the burning houses, carrying out vases, pictures, plate, or small pieces of furniture. They smashed everything on the cobbles and then returned to wreck more things that would have been destroyed by the fire all the same. It was a revelry of drunken vandalism. They seemed mad, and even risking being burned alive at this work of destruction. Most of the officers were also tipsy; not one of them was saluted by the soldiers.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
“Ain’t I a lovable fellow?”
There is very strong reason to suspect that young girls were carried off to the trenches by licentious German soldiery, and there abused by hordes of savage and licentious men. People in hiding in the cellars of houses have heard the voices of women in the hands of German soldiers crying all night long until death or stupor ended their agonies. One of our officers, a subaltern in the sappers, heard a woman’s shrieks in the night coming from the German trenches near Richebourg l’Avoue; when we advanced in the morning and drove the Germans out, a girl was found lying naked on the ground “pegged out” in the form of a crucifix. I need not go on with this chapter of horrors. To the end of time it will be remembered, and from one generation to another, in the plains of Flanders, in the Valleys of the Vosges, and on the rolling fields of the Marne, the oral tradition of men will perpetuate this story of infamy and wrong.
Professor J. H. Morgan in “German
Atrocities,” an Official Investigation.
“Father, what have we done?”
The municipal Government of Liège remind their fellow citizens, and all staying within the city, that international law most strictly forbids civilians to commit hostilities against the German soldiers occupying the country.
Every attack on German troops by others than the military in uniform not only exposes those who may be guilty to be shot summarily, but will also bring terrible consequences on the leading citizens of Liège now detained in the citadel as hostages by the commander of the German troops.
We beseech all residents of the municipality to guard the highest interests of all the inhabitants and of those who are hostages of the German Army, and not to commit any assault on the soldiers of this army.
We remind the citizens that by order of General commanding the German troops, those who have arms in their possession must deliver them immediately to the authorities at the Provincial Palace under the penalty of being shot.
The Acting Burgomaster,
V. Henault.
Liège, August 8th.
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the prisons of Germany to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At Munsterlagen alone, 3,100 civil prisoners were numbered. History will tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom.
Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess no complete necrology; but I know there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot and that there, under pain of death, their fellow-citizens were compelled to dig their graves. In the Louvain group of communes 176 persons, men and women, old men and sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burned.
Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop
of Malines, Belgium.
In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on fire and many corpses were seen, some in houses, some in back yards, and some in the streets.
Several examples are given below.
Two witnesses speak to having seen the body of a young man pierced by bayonet thrusts with the wrists cut also.
On a side road the corpse of a civilian was seen on his doorstep with a bayonet wound in his stomach, and by his side the dead body of a boy of 5 or 6 with his hands nearly severed.
The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at the blacksmith’s. They had been killed with the bayonet.
In a café a young man, also killed with the bayonet, was holding his hands together as if in the attitude of supplication.
Two young women were lying in the back yard of the house. One had her breasts cut off, the other had been stabbed.
A young man had been hacked with the bayonet until his entrails protruded. He also had his hands joined in the attitude of prayer.
In the garden of a house in the main street bodies of two women were observed, and in another house the body of a boy of 16 with two bayonet wounds in the chest.
British Government Committee’s Report.
It is nothing but fanaticism to expect very much from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war. For the present we know of no other means whereby the rough energy of the camp, the deep impersonal hatred, the cold-bloodedness of murder with a good conscience, the general ardour of the system in the destruction of the enemy ... can be as forcibly and certainly communicated to enervated nations as is done by every great war. Kultur can by no means dispense with passions, vices and malignities.
Friedrich Nietzsche.
In short, the town of Dinant is destroyed. Of 1,400 houses only 200 remained standing. The factories where the laboring population got their bread and butter were wrecked systematically. Many inhabitants were sent to Germany, where they are still kept as prisoners. The majority of the others are scattered all over Belgium. Those who stayed in the towns were starved.
The Belgian Committee has a list of victims. It contains 700 names, and is not complete. Among those killed are seventy-three women, thirty-nine children between six months and fifteen years old.
Dinant has 7,600 inhabitants, of whom ten per cent. were put to death; not a family exists which has not to mourn the death of some victims; many families have been exterminated completely.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
Folk who do not understand them
It is only in war that we find the action of true heroism, the realization of which on earth is the care of militarism. That is why war appears to us, who are filled with militarism, as in itself a holy thing, as the holiest thing on earth.
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 massacred, 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 classes, had taken refuge in Holland and the British Isles.
Times History of the War.
An hour later the women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant, passing 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 masses at other places near the prison. About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass square opposite the convent.
British Government Committee’s Report.
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).
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.
On Sunday, August 23rd, at half past six in the morning, the soldiers of the 108th regiment of the line drove worshippers 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-butts. 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, pronounced no sentence of any sort.
Belgian Gov. Committee’s Report.
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.
“If I find you again looking so sad, I’ll send you to Germany after your father”
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, curés.
At Christmas time I was not perfectly certain what had been the fate of the Curé of Hérent. 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.
The Cathedral of Rheims has many companions in distress. The German army, when it invaded the north of France, destroyed, totally or partially, by bombardment or incendiarism, churches and chapels at Albert, Serres, Vieille-Capelle, Etavigny, Soissons, Hébuterne, Ribécourt, Suippes, Montceau, Barcy, Revigny, Souain, Maurupt, Berry-au-Bac, Mandray, Heiltz-le-Maurupt, Sermaize-les-Bains, Doncières, etc.
From “Is War Civilization?”
By Prof. Christophe Nyrop,
University of Copenhagen.
Four hundred and eighty millions of
francs have been imposed as a war tax
but soup is given gratis
PROCLAMATION
A War Contribution, amounting to 480,000,000 francs, to be paid in monthly installments over the course of a year, is imposed on the population of Belgium.
The payment of these sums devolves upon the Nine Provinces, which are held collectively responsible for the discharge of it.
The two first installments are to be paid up, at latest, on January 15, 1915, and the following installments on the 10th, at latest, of each following month, to the Field Army Treasury of the Imperial Governor-Generalship at Brussels.
In case the Provinces have to resort to the issue of bonds in order to obtain the funds necessary, the form and terms of these bonds will be settled by the Imperial Commissary-General for the Banks in Belgium.
Baron von Bissing,
Governor-General in Belgium.
Brussels, December 10, 1914.
This brutalism by Major Tille of the German Army on a small boy of Maastricht was vouched for by an eye-witness.
CONCLUSIONS
It is proved—
(i.) That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.
(ii.) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.
(iii.) That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being indeed part of a system of general terrorization.
(iv.) That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the white flag.
British Government Committee’s Report.
“Sire, it’s quite easy; for every witness who swears we’ve murdered innocent people we will produce two who will swear they did not see it”
All that I care to say about the Belgian charges is that I have officially informed the State Department in Washington that there is not one word of truth in the statements made to the President yesterday by the Belgian Commission.
Count von Bernstorff, German Ambassador,
at Washington, September 17.
Christian mothers, be proud of your sons. Of all griefs, of all our human sorrows, yours is perhaps the most worthy of veneration. I think I behold you in your affliction. Suffer us to offer you not only our condolence, but our congratulation. Not all our heroes obtain temporal honors, but for all we expect the immortal crown of the elect. For this is the virtue of a single act of perfect charity—it cancels a whole lifetime of sins. It transforms a sinful man into a saint.
Cardinal Mercier,
Archbishop of Malines.
“Where are our fathers?” Belgium, 1914
In Belgium I saw this:
Homeless men, women, and children by thousands and hundreds of thousands. Many of them had been prosperous, a few had been wealthy, practically all had been comfortable. Now, with scarcely an exception, they stood all upon one common plane of misery. They had lost their homes, their farms, their workshops, their livings, and their means of making livings.
I saw them tramping aimlessly along windswept, rain-washed roads, fleeing from burning and devastated villages. I saw them sleeping in open fields upon the miry earth, with no cover and no shelter. I saw them herded together in the towns and cities to which many of them ultimately fled, existing God alone knows how. I saw them—ragged, furtive scarecrows—prowling in the shattered ruins of their homes, seeking salvage where there was no salvage to be found. I saw them living like the beasts of the field, upon such things as the beasts of the field would reject.
Irvin S. Cobb.
New York Times.
December 2, 1914.
Our function is ended when we have stated what the evidence establishes, but we may be permitted to express our belief that these disclosures will not have been made in vain if they touch and rouse the conscience of mankind, and we venture to hope that as soon as the present war is over the nations of the world in council will consider what means can be provided and sanctions devised to prevent the recurrence of such horrors as our generation is now witnessing.
Bryce,
F. Pollock,
Edward Clarke,
Kenelm E. Digby,
Alfred Hopkinson,
H. A. L. Fisher,
Harold Cox,
Concluding words of the Report of the Committee
appointed by
the British Government to investigate alleged German atrocities
in Belgium.
In the first days of the war it was undoubtedly and unfortunately true that prisoners of war taken by the Germans, both at the time of their capture and in transit to the prison camps, were often badly treated by the soldiers, guards or the civil population.
The instances were too numerous, the evidence too overwhelming, to be denied.... From him (U.S. Consul at Kiel) I learned that some unfortunate prisoners passing through the town (in a part of Germany inhabited by Scandinavians) had made signs that they were suffering from hunger and thirst, that some of the kind-hearted people among the Scandinavian population had given them something to eat and drink and for this they were condemned to fines, to prison and to have their names held up to the contempt of Germans for all time.
I do not know of any one thing that can give a better idea of the official hate for the nations with which Germany was at war than this.
James W. Gerard
in “My Four Years in Germany.”
“I was a ‘lifer’; but they found I had so many abilities for teaching civilisation amongst our neighbours, that I am now a soldier”
Crimes against women and young girls have been of appalling frequency. We have proved a great number of them, but they only represent an infinitesimal proportion of those which we could have taken up. Owing to a sense of decency, which is deserving of every respect, the victims of these hateful acts usually refuse to disclose them. Doubtless fewer would have been committed if the leaders of an army whose discipline is most rigorous had taken any trouble to prevent them; yet, strictly speaking, they can only be considered as the individual and spontaneous acts of uncaged beasts.
French Government’s Official Report,
September, 1914.
“Was blazen die Trompeten Moneten heraus?”
Early in September, 1914, the Government made the first War Loan issue. It took the form of £50,000,000 of 5 per cent. Treasury Bonds with a five years’ currency, and a 5 per cent. Loan of undefined amount, irredeemable until 1924. The price of both the Treasury Bills and the Loan was 97½. During the ten days in which the lists remained open, a tremendous propaganda was carried on in the Press—this quotation is typical:
“The victories which our glorious Army has already won in the west and east justify the hopes that now, as in 1870, the expenses and burdens of the war will fall ultimately upon those who have disturbed the peace of the German Empire. But first we must help ourselves. Great interests are at stake.
“German capitalists, show that you are inspired by the same spirit as our heroes, who shed their hearts’ blood in the fight. Germans who have saved money, show that you have saved, not only for yourselves, but also for the Fatherland. German corporations, companies, savings banks, and all institutions which have blossomed and grown up under the powerful protection of the Empire, repay the Empire with your gratitude in this hour of fate. German banks and bankers, show what your brilliant organization and your influence on your customers are able to produce.”
Times History of the War.
Soldiers,—Upon the memorable fields of Montmirail, of Vauchamps, of Champaubert, which a century ago witnessed the victories of our ancestors over Blücher’s Prussians, your vigorous offensive has triumphed over the resistance of the Germans. Held on his flanks, his centre broken, the enemy is now retreating towards east and north by forced marches. The most renowned army corps of Old Prussia, the contingents of Westphalia, of Hanover, of Brandenburg, have retired in haste before you.
This first success is no more than a prelude. The enemy is shaken, but not yet decisively beaten.
You have still to undergo severe hardships, to make long marches, to fight hard battles.
May the image of your country, soiled by barbarians, always remain before your eyes. Never was it more necessary to sacrifice all for her.
Saluting the heroes who have fallen in the fighting of the last few days, my thoughts turn towards you—the victors in the next battle.
Forward, soldiers, for France.
Franchet d’Esperey,
General Commanding the Vth Army.
Montmirail, September 9, 1914.
“What I have most admired in you, Bethmann, is that you have made Socialists our best supporters”
England is playing a perfectly shameful rôle in this war. Even though France were allied to Russia by an unfortunate treaty, England was not so allied! But England, who has ever been jealous of the industrial development of our country, used the violation of our treaty of neutrality with Belgium, which was incurred only in dire need and which was yielded openly and honestly in the Reichstag by the Chancellor, as a pretext to declare war against us.
Philipp Scheidemann,
Socialist ex-Vice-President
of the Reichstag.
The Kaiser: “We will propose peace terms; if they accept them, we are the gainers; if they refuse them, the responsibility will rest with them”
Germany has suggested informally that the United States should undertake to elicit from Great Britain, France, and Russia a statement of the terms under which the Allies would make peace.
The suggestion was made by the Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, to Ambassador Gerard at Berlin as a result of an inquiry sent by the American Government to learn whether Emperor William was desirous of discussing peace, as recently had been reported.
The Associated Press.
Washington, September 17, 1914.
“It is a War of Rapine! On that I take my stand. I cannot do otherwise”
I understand that several members of the Socialist Party have written all sorts of things to the press with regard to the deliberations of the Socialist Party in the Reichstag on August 3 and 4.
According to these reports there were no serious differences of opinion in our party in regard to the political situation, and our own position and decision to assent to war credits are alleged to have been arrived at unanimously.
In order to prevent the dissemination of an inadmissible legend I feel it to be my duty to put on record the fact that the issues involved gave rise to diametrically opposite views within our parliamentary party, and these opposing views found expression with a violence hitherto unknown in our deliberations.
It is also entirely untrue to say that assent to the war credits was given unanimously.
Dr. Carl Liebknecht,
Member of the Reichstag.
September 18, 1914.
“Thou art the man”
The German Government states officially in contradiction of the report made by the Havas Agency that German artillery purposely destroyed important buildings at Rheims, that, on the contrary, orders were given to spare the Cathedral by all means.
Count von Bernstorff.
Washington, September, 1914.
On Sept. 19 the cathedral was fairly riddled by bombs during the entire day, and at about 3:45 the scaffolding surrounding the north tower caught fire. This fire lasted about one hour, and during that time two further bombs struck the roof, setting it also on fire.
The monument, about which no troops were massed, towers above the rest of the town; to avoid it, in view of the uselessness of destroying it and because it was serving as a hospital, would have been an easy matter.
It would seem that the only explanation which can be offered was blind rage upon the part of the besieging army.
Mr. Whitney Warren’s
Official Report to the French Government.
September, 1914.
“It was I who opened fire on Rheims Cathedral”
My dear Sir, how is it possible to fight these people? They seem to have no mercy, no decency. It really seems impossible to know how to meet them.
General Castelnau to
Mr. Whitney Warren.
The bells sound no more in the cathedral with two towers. Finished is the benediction!... With lead, O Rheims, we have shut your house of idolatry!
M. Rudolf Herzog
in Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger. Jan., 1915.
The commonest, ugliest stone put to mark the burial-place of a German grenadier is a more glorious and venerable monument than all the cathedrals of Europe put together.
Gen. von Disfurth
In Hamburger Nachrichten.
Reduce to ashes the basilica of Rheims where Klodovig was anointed, where that Empire of Franks was born—the false brothers of the noble Teutons; burn that cathedral!
Written in the year 1814 by
Jean-Joseph Goerres
in the “Rheinische Merkin.”
In October, 1914, the headquarters of the second German army at St. Quentin had issued an Order regulating the use of fire-squirts ejecting inflammable liquid. A special Corps of Pioneers, attachable to any unit which might need them, had been organized to handle this novel weapon. The Order explained that the instrument could squirt a flame which would cause mortal injury and which, owing to the heat generated, would drive the enemy to a considerable distance. It was recommended particularly for street fighting.
Times History of the War.
In those days the German headquarters gave continuously the order, “To Calais, to Calais,” and the staff considered no difficulties, calculated no sacrifices, in order to achieve success.
What these frenzied orders have cost in human lives history will tell later on.
“The German Fury in Belgium,”
By L. Mokveld.
Then the “seventy fives” were brought up at a gallop and poured a hail of shell at the demoralized German infantry wading frantically through the water towards the canal. Rifles and machine guns joined the work of destruction, and the placid lake between the railway and canal was soon dotted with drowning Germans fallen from the demoralized crowds struggling to reach a haven of safety over the bridges of St. Georges, Schoorbakke, and Tervaete.
The crisis of the battle of the Yser was over; the Germans had made their great effort and had failed.
The Times History of the War.
Battle of the Yser. October, 1914.
William: “Write it down, Schoolmaster. Monday shall be Copper Day; Tuesday, Potato Day; Wednesday, Leather Day; Thursday, Gold Day; Friday, Rubber Day; Saturday, no Dinner Day, and Sunday, Hate Day!”
Take you the folk of the Earth in pay,
With bars of gold your ramparts lay,
Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow,
Ye reckon well, but not well enough now,
French and Russian, they matter not,
A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,
We fight the battle with bronze and steel,
And the time that is coming Peace will seal,
You we will hate with a lasting hate,
We will never forego our hate,
Hate by water and hate by land,
Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
Hate of seventy millions choking down,
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone,
england!
Hymn of Hate, by Ernst Lissauer.
Translation by Barbara Henderson.
New York Times, Oct., 1914.
Take the very first incident of the war, the mine laying by the Königin Luise. Here was a vessel, which was obviously made ready with freshly charged mines some time before there was any question of a general European war, which was sent forth in time of peace, and which, on receipt of a wireless message, began to spawn its hellish cargo across the North Sea at points fifty miles from land in the track of all neutral merchant shipping. There was the keynote of German tactics struck at the first possible instant. So promiscuous was the effect that it was a mere chance which prevented the vessel which bore the German Ambassador from being destroyed by a German mine. From first to last some hundreds of people have lost their lives on this tract of sea, some of them harmless British trawlers, but the greater number sailors of Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing their commerce as they had every right to do. It was the first move in a consistent policy of murder.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
In “The German War.”
The Vlaamsche Stem (Flemish Voice), a Flemish newspaper, was bought by the Germans, whereupon the whole of the staff resigned, as it no longer represented its title.
We shall never sheathe the sword which we have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than she has sacrificed, until France is adequately secured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.
H. H. Asquith,
Prime Minister of England.
November, 1914.
“Do you remember Black Mary of Hamburg?”
“Aye, well.”
“She got six years for killing a child, whilst we get the Iron Cross for killing twenty at Hartlepool.”
This morning a German cruiser force made a demonstration upon Yorkshire coast, in the course of which they shelled Hartlepool, Whitby, and Scarborough.
A number of their fastest ships were employed for this purpose, and they remained about an hour on the coast. They were engaged by patrol vessels on the spot.
During the bombardment, especially in West Hartlepool, the people crowded in the streets, and approximately twenty-two were killed and fifty wounded.
British Admiralty report.
December, 1914.
They were received in apathetic silence (Dec., 1914). The rooms were unlighted, the men were aimlessly marching up and down, some were lying on the floor, probably sickening for typhus. When they got into the open air again Major Fry broke down. The horror of it all was for the moment more than he could bear.
Major Priestly saw delirious men waving arms brown to the elbow with fæcal matter. The patients were alive with vermin; in the half light he attempted to brush what he took to be an accumulation of dust from the folds of a patient’s clothes, and he discovered it to be a moving mass of lice. In one room in Compound No. 8 the patients lay so close to one another on the floor that he had to stand straddle-legged across them to examine them.
What the prisoners found hardest to bear in this matter were the jeers with which the coffins were frequently greeted by the inhabitants of Wittenberg who stood outside and were permitted to insult their dead.
Report of the British Committee.
These medical officers protested with the camp commander against the herding together of the French and British prisoners with the Russians, who, as I have said, were suffering from typhus fever. But the camp commander said, “You will have to know your Allies”; and kept all of his prisoners together, and thus as surely condemned to death a number of French and British prisoners of war as though he had stood them against the wall and ordered them shot by a firing squad. Conditions in the camp during the period of this epidemic were frightful. The camp was practically deserted by the Germans.
At the time I visited the camp the typhus epidemic, of course, had been stamped out. The Germans employed a large number of police dogs in this camp and these dogs not only were used in watching the outside of the camp in order to prevent the escape of prisoners but also were used within the camp. Many complaints were made to me by prisoners concerning these dogs, stating that men had been bitten by them. It seemed undoubtedly true that the prisoners there had been knocked about and beaten in a terrible manner by their guards.
James W. Gerard
in “My Four Years in Germany.”
On January 29, 1915, the first Zeppelin raid upon Paris took place. Twenty-four people were killed outright by the exploding bombs and over 30 were injured. With one exception all the dead and injured were civilians and the majority were women and children.
The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole English Channel, are declared a war zone on and after February 18, 1915.
Every enemy merchant ship found in this war zone will be destroyed, even if it is impossible to avert dangers which threaten the crew and passengers.
Also neutral ships in the war zone are in danger, as in consequence of the misuse of neutral flags ordered by the British Government on January 31, and in view of the hazards of naval warfare, it cannot always be avoided that attacks meant for enemy ships endanger neutral ships.
Shipping northward, around the Shetland Islands, in the eastern basin of the North Sea, and a strip of at least thirty nautical miles in breadth along the Dutch coast, is endangered in the same way.
German Navy Official Communication.
Berlin, February 4, 1915.
The vast majority belong to a class we can depend upon. The others are a minority.
But, you must remember, a small minority of workmen can throw a whole works out of gear. What is the reason? Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes it is another, but let us be perfectly candid. It is mostly the lure of the drink. They refuse to work full time, and when they return their strength and efficiency are impaired by the way in which they have spent their leisure. Drink is doing us more damage in the war than all the German submarines put together.
D. Lloyd George at Bangor.
February 28, 1915.
The Crown Prince: “Isn’t it an enjoyable war?”
William: “Perhaps, but hardly as
much so as I anticipated”
To sum up, the German General Staff has placed upon its record since the beginning of the campaign—apart from the failure of its great plan, which aimed at the crushing of France in a few weeks—seven defeats of high significance, namely, the defeat of the sudden attack on Nancy, the defeat of the rapid march on Paris, the defeat of the envelopement of our left in August, the defeat of the same envelopement in November, the defeat of the attempt to break through our centre in September, the defeat of the coast attack on Dunkirk and Calais, and the defeat of the attack on Ypres.
French Official report, February, 1915.
“We have gained a good bit: our cemeteries now extend as far as the sea”
The wastage of German effectives is easy to establish. We have for the purpose two sources—the official lists of losses published by the German General Staff and the notebooks, letters, and archives of soldiers and officers killed and taken prisoners. These different documents show that by the middle of January the German losses on the two fronts were 1,800,000 men.
These figures are certainly less than the reality, because, for one thing, the sick are not comprised, and, for another, the losses in the last battle in Poland are not included. Let us accept them, however; let us accept also that out of these 1,800,000 men 500,000—this is the normal proportion—have been able to rejoin after being cured. Thus the final loss for five months of the campaign has been 1,300,000 men, or 260,000 men per month.
French Government Official Report.
March, 1915.
Order of the Crown Prince of Bavaria: “You must give those English heavy blows.”
Tommy to prisoners after Neuve Chapelle: “Weren’t they heavy?”
Soldiers of the Sixth Army! We have now the good luck to have also the Englishmen opposite us on our front, troops of that race whose envy was at work for years to surround us with a ring of foes and to throttle us. That race especially we have to thank for this war. Therefore, when now the order is given to attack this foe, practice retribution for their hostile treachery and for the many heavy sacrifices! Show them that the Germans are not so easily to be wiped out of history. Show them that, with German blows of a special kind. Here is the opponent who most blocks a restoration of the peace. Up and at him!
Crown Prince Rupprecht.
After several days of severe fighting the British captured Neuve Chapelle, on the 11th March, 1915. The German loss was estimated at 18,000.
Fired at but unable to reply
We have unfortunately found that the output is not only not equal to our necessities, but does not fulfil our expectations.... I can only say that the supply of war material at the present moment and for the next two or three months is causing me very serious anxiety, and I wish all those engaged in the manufacture and supply of these stores to realize that it is absolutely essential not only that the arrears in the deliveries of our munitions of war should be wiped off, but that the output of every round of ammunition is of the utmost importance and has a large influence on our operations in the field.
Lord Kitchener.
House of Commons, March 15, 1915.
On March 18 a month had passed since the beginning of our sharp procedure against our worst foe. We can in every way be satisfied with the results achieved in the meantime! In spite of all steps taken before and thereafter, the English have everywhere had important losses to show at sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies.
In the innocent exalted island kingdom many a fellow is already striking; why should not even the recruit strike, who is also beginning to get a glimmer of the truth that there are no props in the ocean waves?
The more opponents come before the bows of our ships and are sunk, the better! Down with them to the bottom of the sea; that alone will help! Let us hope that we shall soon receive more such cheerful news.
Vice-Admiral Kirchoff.
Hamburger Framdenblatt.
March 19, 1915.
The strategic retreat of the French Army, the facility with which the German armies were able to advance from August 25 to September 5, gave our adversaries a feeling of absolute and final superiority, which manifested itself at that time by all the statements gleaned and all the documents seized.
At the moment of the battle of the Marne the first impression was one of failure of comprehension and of stupor. A great number of German soldiers, notably those who fell into our hands during the first days of that battle, believed fully, as at the end of August, that the retreat they were ordered to make was only a means of luring us into a trap. German military opinion was suddenly converted when the soldiers saw that this retreat continued, and that it was being carried out in disorder, under conditions which left no doubt as to its cause and its extent.
French Government Official Report.
March, 1915.
“You see, my little Dutch Geese, I am fighting for the freedom of the Seas”
On March 25, 1915, the Dutch vessel Medea, on the way from Valencia to London, was sunk by a German submarine, U 28, near Beachy Head, after the crew had had time to save themselves in the boats. The submarine towed the two boats for a quarter of an hour and then left the occupants to their fate.
The German Government considered that the Declaration of London gave it the right to sink neutral prizes laden with contraband. The Dutch Government held firmly to its standpoint that the destruction of a neutral prize was in all circumstances an illegal act and that the prescription of the Declaration of London allowing, by way of exception, destruction of neutral prizes, could not be regarded as established international law.
Its offer to submit the case to international arbitration was rejected by the German Government.
Times History of the War.
“You laugh, Muller! but there are still people who like them, and besides it gives me exercise”
From the very beginning there was a wholesale distribution of Iron Crosses. Before the war the possession of an Iron Cross was a rare distinction and a cherished memory of the war of 1870. Iron Crosses soon became as plentiful as blackberries. According to official statistics there had up to the end of March, 1915, been distributed five Grand Crosses, 6,488 Iron Crosses of the First Class, and 338,261 Iron Crosses of the Second Class. During the whole of the war of 1870 only 1,304 Iron Crosses of the First Class and 45,791 Iron Crosses of the Second Class had been distributed.
Times History of the War.
“Truth is on the path and nothing will stay her”
A German has written this book. No Frenchman, no Russian, no Englishman.
A German who is unbribed and unbribable, not bought and not for sale.
A German who loves his Fatherland as much as any man; but just because he loves it, he has written this book.
Opening lines of “J’accuse”—a German to Germans—published in Switzerland, April, 1915.
The book sets out to prove that the war had long been planned and prepared by Germany and Austria, not only from the military but from the political point of view.
That it had long been determined to represent this aggressive war to the German people as a war of liberation, since it was known that only thus could the needful enthusiasm be aroused.
That the object of this war is the establishment of German hegemony on the Continent, and in due course the conquest of England’s position as a world power on the principle “Ote-toi de là que je m’y mette.”
“We have better luck with passenger
boats than with war ships, for
they cannot shoot”
On March 28, 1915, the British steamer Falaba was torpedoed by a German submarine. The torpedoes were fired while the crew and passengers were entering the small boats. More than 100 persons, including Mr. Thrasher, an American citizen, perished with the ship.
While some of the boats were still on their davits the submarine fired a torpedo at short range. This action made it absolutely certain that there must be great loss of life and it must have been committed knowingly with the intention of producing that result.
British Official Press Bureau.
April 8, 1915.
At some time between 4 and 5 p.m. (22d April) the Germans started operations by releasing gases with the result that a cloud of poisonous vapor rolled swiftly before the wind from their trenches toward those of the French west of Langemarck, held by a portion of the French Colonial Division. Allowing sufficient time for the fumes to take full effect on the troops facing them, the Germans charged forward over the practically unresisting enemy in their immediate front, and, penetrating through the gap thus created, pressed on silently and swiftly to the south and west.
British Official Eyewitness.
April 27, 1915.
“We shall not allow these wonderful weapons, which German intelligence invented, to grow rusty.”
The Cologne Gazette.
Germany was a signatory to the declaration at the Hague Conference of 1899, and an article in that Declaration ran as follows: “The contracting Powers agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.”
These men were lying struggling for breath and blue in the face. On examining the blood with the spectroscope and by other means, I ascertained that the blueness was not due to the presence of any abnormal pigment. There was nothing to account for the blueness (cyanosis) and struggle for air but the one fact that they were suffering from acute bronchitis, such as is caused by inhalation of an irritant gas. Their statements were that when in the trenches they had been overwhelmed by an irritant gas produced in front of the German trenches and carried toward them by a gentle breeze.
Official Investigation by
Dr. J. S. Haldane, F.R.S.
“Hullo! Potsdam? Did you thank your dear old God for this new success?”
The Royal Highlanders of Montreal, 13th Battalion, and the 48th Highlanders, 15th Battalion, were more especially affected by the discharge. The Royal Highlanders, though considerably shaken, remained immovable on their ground. The 48th Highlanders, who no doubt received a more poisonous discharge, were for the moment dismayed, and, indeed, their trench, according to the testimony of very hardened soldiers, became intolerable.
The Battalion retired from the trench, but for a very short distance and for a very short time. In a few moments they were again their own men. They advanced on and reoccupied the trenches which they had momentarily abandoned....
The sorely tried Battalion (the 13th) held on for a time in dug-outs, and, under cover of darkness, retired again to a new line being formed by reinforcements. The rearguard was under Lieut. Greenshields. But Major McCuaig remained to see that the wounded were removed. It was then, after having escaped a thousand deaths through the long battle of the night, that he was shot down and made a prisoner.
Sir Max Aitken,
in “Canada in Flanders.”
I asked General von Bissing if there was much need for this military tribunal (The Feld Gericht). I shall not forget his reply.
“We have a few serious cases,” he said. “Occasionally there is a little sedition but for the most part it is only needle pricks. They are quiet now. They know why,” and, slowly shaking his head, von Bissing, who is known as the sternest disciplinarian in the entire German Army, smiled.
From an interview given by the
Governor-General of Belgium to
Edward Lyall Fox,
New York Times, April, 1915.
NOTICE!
Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
Imperial German Embassy.
Washington, D. C., April 22, 1915.
Advertisement published in New York newspapers.
The Cunard liner Lusitania was yesterday torpedoed by a German submarine and sank. The Lusitania was naturally armed with guns. Moreover, as is well know here, she had large quantities of war material in her cargo.
Berlin Official Report, May 8, 1915.
This report is not correct. The Lusitania was inspected before sailing, as is customary. No guns were found, mounted or unmounted, and the vessel sailed without any armament.
Collector Port of New York, May 9, 1915.
The sinking of the British passenger steamer Falaba by a German submarine on March 28, through which Leon C. Thrasher, an American citizen, was drowned; the attack on April 28 on the American vessel Cushing by a German aeroplane; the torpedoing on May 1 of the American vessel Gulflight by a German submarine as a result of which two or more American citizens met their death; and, finally, the torpedoing and sinking of the steamship Lusitania, constitute a series of events which the Government of the United States has observed with growing concern, distress, and amazement.
From United States Note to Germany,
May 13, 1915.
“Are they crying ‘Mother’—or ‘Murder’?”
This represents not merely piracy, but piracy on a vaster scale of murder than old-time pirates ever practiced. This is the warfare which destroyed Louvain and Dinant and hundreds of men, women, and children in Belgium. It is a warfare against innocent men, women, and children traveling on the ocean, and our own fellow-countrymen and countrywomen, who are among the sufferers.
It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from taking action in this matter, for we owe it not only to humanity, but to our own national self-respect.
Col. Theodore Roosevelt.
May 7, 1915.
Whatever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls having no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, that men, women and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare.
United States Government’s
Note to Germany.
“It is the Hour, come”
We find that this appalling crime was contrary to International law and the conventions of all civilized nations, and we therefore charge the officers of the said submarine, and the Emperor of the Government of Germany, under whose orders they acted, with the crime of wilful and wholesale murder before the tribunal of the civilized world. We desire to express our sincere condolence with the relatives of deceased; the Cunard Company; and the United States of America, so many of whose citizens perished in this murderous attack on an unarmed liner.
The unanimous verdict of the Irish jury at
the inquest of the “Lusitania” victims.
Some German achievements in the first months of the Great War:
The violation of Belgium and Luxemburg.
Massacre of civilian populations in Belgium and France.
Bombardment by warships of open towns.
Murder of civilians by air raids.
Murder of civilians on the high seas.
The introduction of liquid fire and poison gas.
Enslavement of conquered civilian communities.
Without a drop of blood flowing, and without the life of a single Italian being endangered, Italy could have secured the long list of concessions which I recently read to the House—territory in Tyrol and on the Isonzo as far as the Italian speech is heard, satisfactions of the national aspirations in Trieste, a free hand in Albania, and the valuable port of Valona.
Von Bethmann-Hollweg.
Reichstag, May 28, 1915.
Italy: “You would make me believe that
I shall have my cub given back to me,
but I know I shall have to fight for it”
The discussion continued for months from the first days of December to March, and it was not until the end of March that Barion Burian offered a zone of territory comprised within a line extending from the existing boundary to a point just north of the City of Trent.
In exchange for this proposed cession the Austro-Hungarian Government demanded a number of pledges, including among them an assurance of entire liberty of action in the Balkans. Note should be made of the fact that the cession of the territory around Trent was not intended to be immediately effective as we demanded, but was to be made only upon the termination of the European War.
Signor Sonnino.
Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
May 25, 1915.
“Twenty years and more you’ve forced
me to wear this chain”
For the guardianship, therefore, of these treaties the government of the kingdom of Italy found itself constrained to notify the Imperial Austrian Government on the fourth of this month, May, 1915, that it must withdraw all of its proposals of agreement, denounce the treaty of the alliance, and declare its own liberty of action. Nor, on the other hand, was it more possible to leave Italy in isolation without security and without prestige, just at the moment in which the history of the world was taking on a decisive phase.
Everything else we must forget from this moment, and remember only this: to be Italians, to love all Italy with the same faith and fervor. The forces of all must be cemented into one single heart; only one single will must guide all toward the wished for end; and force, and art, and will must find their expression one, alive, and heroic in the army and navy of Italy and in the august leader who conducts them toward the destiny of the new history.
Antonio Salandra.
President of the Ministerial Council.
Rome. May 20, 1915.
Neither Serbia nor Russia, despite a long and costly war, is hated. Italy, however, or rather those Italian would be politicians and business men who offer violence to the majority of peaceful Italian people, are so unutterably hated with the most profound honesty that this war can produce.
The Frankfurter Zeitung, May 25, 1915.
Italy: “Indeed she is my sister”
Giuseppe Garibaldi with a corps of Italian soldiers went to the defense of the French Republic in the war of 1870 against the Prussians, performing heroic deeds at Dijon worthy of an epopee.
Ricciotti Garibaldi, living son of the Hero, with a corps of Italian volunteers went to the defense of Greece against Turkey in 1897, performing heroic deeds worthy of an epopee at Domokos.
Peppino Garibaldi, living son of Ricciotti, with a corps of Italian volunteers went to the defense of the French Republic in the present war against Germany, performing heroic deeds worthy of an epopee in the Argonne.
From “Why Italy entered the Great War.”
Luigi Carnovale.
“But Mother had done nothing wrong,
had she, Daddy?”
The first Zeppelin attack on London was made on the evening of the last day of May, 1915. Zeppelins passed over Colchester at 10 o’clock, and at twenty-three minutes past ten the people in one of the poorest and most crowded quarters of East End were startled to find bomb after bomb, mainly of incendiary type, dropping among them. A large number of civilians including many women and children were killed.
By shell from sea, by bomb from air,
Our greeting shall be sped,
Making each English homestead
A mansion of the dead.
And even Grey will tremble
As falls each iron word;
“God punish England, brother?
Yea! Punish her, O Lord!”
A Hymn of Hate by Herr Hochstetter.
Translated by
Capt. G. Valentine Williams.
London Daily Mail.
IS YOUR CONSCIENCE CLEAR?
Ask your conscience why you are staying comfortably at home instead of doing your share for your King and Country.
1. Are you too old?
The only man who is too old is the man who is over 38.
2. Are you physically fit?
The only man who can say honestly that he is not physically fit is the man who has been told so by a Medical Officer.
3. Do you suggest you cannot leave your business?
In this great crisis the only man who cannot leave his business is the man who is himself actually doing work for the Government.
If your conscience is not clear on these three points your duty is plain.
ENLIST TO-DAY
God Save the King
Newspaper advertisement in
British Press, May, 1915.
The women of Great Britain will never forget what Belgium has done for all that women hold most dear.
In the days to come mothers will tell their children how a small but great-souled nation fought to the death against overwhelming odds and sacrificed all things to save the world from an intolerable tyranny.
The story of the Belgian people’s defense of freedom will inspire countless generations yet unborn.
Emmeline Pankhurst,
in “King Albert’s Book.”
“Next time I’ll wear a German Helmet and
plead ‘Military Necessity’”
The German went into this war with a mind which had been carefully trained out of the idea of every moral sense or obligation, private, public, or international. He does not recognize the existence of any law, least of all those he has subscribed to himself, in making war against women and children.
All mankind bears witness to-day that there is no crime, no cruelty, no abomination that the mind of man can conceive which the German has not perpetrated, is not perpetrating, and will not perpetrate if he is allowed to go on.
These horrors and perversions were not invented by him on the spur of the moment. They were arranged beforehand. Their outlines are laid down in the German war book. They are part of the system in which Germany has been scientifically trained. It is the essence of that system to make such a hell of countries where their armies set foot that any terms she may offer will seem like heaven to the people whose bodies she has defiled and whose minds she has broken of set purpose and intention.
Rudyard Kipling,
at Southport, England, June, 1915.
In June the Germans once more turned to the East and the North-East Coast. On June 4, 1915, there was a raid, doing some slight damage; and two days later there was another, by far the most serious of any that had yet happened. The raiders succeeded in reaching a town on the East Coast during the night and bombed it at their leisure. One large drapery house was struck and was completely wrecked, the entire building—a somewhat old one—collapsing. Some working-class streets were very badly damaged, a number of houses destroyed, and many people injured. It was one of the peculiarities of this raid that, unlike most of the others, all the people injured were struck while indoors. The total casualties here were twenty-four killed, about sixty seriously injured, and a larger number slightly injured.
Times History of the War.
“He was a brave ‘Zepp,’ he had already killed over one hundred women and children”
The outrage (see preceding page) was quickly avenged by a young British naval airman, Flight Sub-Lieut. R. A. J. Warneford, in one of the most brilliant aerial exploits of the war.
On the morning of June 7 at 3 a.m. he encountered a Zeppelin returning from the coast of Flanders to Ghent, and chased it, mounting above it and sailing over it at a height of 6,000 feet. Zeppelin and aeroplane exchanged shots, and when the Zeppelin was between one and two hundred feet immediately below him he dropped six bombs on it. One bomb hit the Zeppelin fairly, causing a terrific explosion, and setting the airship on fire from end to end. Warneford’s aeroplane was caught by the force of the explosion and turned upside down, but he succeeded in righting it before it touched the ground. He was forced to alight within the German lines. Nevertheless he restarted his engine, though not without great difficulty, and in due course returned to his station without damage. Only the framework of the Zeppelin was left, the crew being all burned or mangled, and the body of the machine being completely destroyed.
Times History of the War.
Moses II. leads his chosen people through
the channel to the promised (Eng.) land
From a military or political or economic point of view one should look at the matter (the capture of Calais) with the eyes of Great Britain and define the Calais idea as a possibility for a seafaring continental power to conduct a war against Great Britain from the continental coast channel and with all military resources while holding open communication between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
Count von Reventlow.
June, 1915.
“I have carried out everything in accordance with our compact at Vereeniging”
On July 9, 1915, a despatch from General Botha was published stating that he had brought his campaign in South-West Africa to a triumphant close, and had received the unconditional surrender of Governor Sietz and the German forces of 3,500 men. The campaign, commencing in February, had lasted five months. The patriotic devotion of General Botha and the loyalty of the great majority of the Dutch people to the cause of the British Empire were a magnificent vindication of the Liberal Cabinet’s policy of reconciliation after the close of the South African war.
The self-governing Colonies in the British Empire have at their disposal a ‘militia,’ which is sometimes only a process of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theatre of war.
Von Bernhardi, 1911.
Our thoughts naturally turn to the splendid efforts of the Oversea Dominions and India, who, from the earliest days of the war, have ranged themselves side by side with the Mother Country. The prepared armed forces of India were the first to take the field, closely followed by the gallant Canadians—who are now fighting alongside their British and French comrades in Flanders. In the Dardanelles the Australians and New Zealanders—combined with the same elements, have already accomplished a feat of arms of almost unexampled brilliancy. In each of these great Dominions new and large contingents are being prepared, while South Africa, not content with the successful conclusion of the arduous campaign in South-West Africa, is now offering large forces to engage the enemy in the main theatre of war.
Lord Kitchener, Guildhall speech, July 9, 1915.
There are now in training or in the field 350,000 troops of the overseas dominions alone, while this country, on estimate, has at least 2,775,000 men in the field or in training.
Sir Gilbert Parker, July, 1915.
Rightly or wrongly, we have in the past devoted our energies and our intelligence, not to preparations for war, but to that social progress which makes for the happiness and contentment of the mass of our people. And this, no doubt, is the reason why other nations imagine that we, as a nation of shopkeepers, are too indolent and apathetic to fight for and maintain these priceless liberties won by the men who laid the foundation of our vast empire.
But they are entirely mistaken in forming any such estimate of the temperament or determination of our people. Great Britain hates war, and no nation enters more reluctantly upon its horrible and devastating operations; but at the same time no nation, when it is driven to war by the machinations of its foes who desire to filch from it or from its co-champions of liberty any portion of their inherited freedom, is more resolved to see the matter through, at whatever cost, to a successful issue.
Sir Edward Carson, British Attorney-General.
Statement on first twelve months of war.
The only peace which the republic can accept is that which guarantees the security of Europe and which will permit us to breathe and to live and to work to reconstruct our dismembered country and repair our ruins, a peace which will effectively protect us against any offensive return of the Germanic ambitions.
The present generations are accountable for France to posterity. They will not permit the profanation of the trust which their ancestors confided to their charge. France is determined to conquer; she will conquer.
President of the French Republic.
From speech on the conclusion of the
first year of war.
German Oculist, trying on spectacles:
“What do you read now?”
Dutchman: “Deutschland über Alles.”
German Oculist: “That is right: that
pair exactly suits you.”
“Oranje Boven” is the Dutch cry which answers to the German “Deutschland über Alles.”
The cartoons reproduced upon the opposite and following pages are selected examples of the series drawn for and published in “The Amsterdam Telegraaf,” at the time when Holland was invaded by an army of spies and secret agents who carried on a vast system of pro-German propaganda. These cartoons represent Raemaekers’ reply.
It was during the publication of these pictures that a price was set upon his head by the German Government, and he was charged by the Dutch Government, at the instance of the representatives of the Central Powers with “endangering the neutrality of Holland,” a form of persecution which had an effect quite opposite to that intended, as it resulted only in drawing the attention of the Allies and other Neutrals to the power and significance of Raemaekers’ cartoons, which was followed by a much wider distribution of his work.
“Madam, your soldiers will get splendid Prussian uniforms and Your Majesty will have a place of honour in the retinue of the Kaiser”
The Driver: “You are a worthy Dutchman. He who lies in that grave was a foolish idealist”
“At least we shall get posts as gamekeepers when Germany takes us after the war”
German Eagle: “Come along, Dutch chicken, we will easily arrange an agreement.”
The Dutch chicken: “Yes, in your stomach.”
“I shall have to swallow you up if only to prevent those English taking your Colonies”
Germany’s idea of what it would make of it for Holland
