Part 13 (1/2)
During the night following the unsuccessful _coup de main_ against Liege, a Zeppelin attacked the town and dropped bombs. ”On Thursday, August 6th, at 3.30 a.m. Z6 returned from an air-cruise over Belgium.
The airs.h.i.+p took a conspicuous part in the attack on Liege, and was able to intervene in a markedly successful manner. Our first bomb was dropped from a height of 1,800 feet, but failed to explode. The s.h.i.+p then sank to 900 feet above the city, and a non-commissioned officer dropped twelve more bombs, all of which exploded, setting the city ablaze in several places.”[96]
[Footnote 96: German official report in the _Berliner Tageblatt_, August 10th.]
An Austrian who was in the town afterwards described the attack in the _Grazer Tagespost_. According to this witness it was already daylight when the airs.h.i.+p appeared, and the effect of the bombs was truly awful.
In view of the circ.u.mstance that it was already light, Germany cannot put forward the defence that the bombs were intended for the twelve forts which surround Liege at a distance of some miles.
This is the earliest official record of an attack upon civilians--and it came from the German side! The crew of Z6 were the recipients of a tremendous ovation on their return, while the news of this dastardly murder was received with jubilation throughout the German Empire. In Luneville fifteen civilians were killed by airs.h.i.+p bombs two days earlier; shortly afterwards followed the attack by airs.h.i.+p on civilians in Antwerp.
The author has before him about one hundred different newspaper reports, alleging the most awful barbarism on the part of the Belgians. Among the numerous statements that Germans were murdered, only two names are mentioned, and both these men are alive to-day; the one is Herr Weber, proprietor of an hotel in Antwerp.
”We have now received full details of the murder of the German, Weber.
He had fled from his pursuers and hidden himself in a cellar. As the raging mob could not find him they burnt sulphur in the house, which caused Weber to break into a violent fit of coughing. This betrayed his hiding-place; he was dragged out and murdered.”[97]
[Footnote 97: _Hamburger Fremdenblatt_, August 12th, and simultaneously in many other journals. On the following day the _Vorwarts_ announced that Herr Weber had returned to Germany in the company of their own correspondent.]
”The German pork-butcher, Deckel, who had a large business in Brussels, was attacked in his house by a crowd of Belgian beasts because he had refused to hang a Belgian flag before his shop; with axes and hatchets the mob cut off his head and hewed his corpse in pieces.”[98]
[Footnote 98: _Kolnische Volkszeitung_, August 10th.]
A few days later the _Berliner Tageblatt_ informed its readers that Herr Deckel was residing in Rotterdam, and had suffered no harm whatever.
Readers who are acquainted with the official record of brutal crimes committed year by year in Germany and the haughty contempt for civilian rights which the whole German army has consistently shown in the Fatherland, during the orderly times of peace, will require little imagination to conceive that this same army would show still less consideration for civilians in a country which they were wrongfully invading.
The German Press during the last thirty years, as well as many books published in the Fatherland, contains ample proof of German brutality at home, and above all, of the legal brutality of German non-commissioned and commissioned officers. How can Germany expect the world to believe, that these same men, were transformed into decent human beings by the mere act of stepping over the Belgian frontier?
Granted that vulgar elements of the Belgian population did transgress, there still remains incontrovertible evidence that almost unheard-of kindness was shown to the invading army, and that Germans had displayed brutal insolence to Belgians before a state of war had been declared.
Nearly every single letter from soldiers, published in German papers, records the fact that in the villages through which they pa.s.sed they were given water, wine and food, while payment was in many cases refused.
It is part of Germany's policy to blacken Belgium's character in order to justify her own ruthlessness--naturally Wolff's Agency was one of the princ.i.p.al tools to that end.
”Much as we condemn the excesses of the Belgians, still we must not wreak vengeance on the whole nation as a section of our Press demands.
Have not harmless and defenceless foreigners been terribly ill-treated in Germany without distinction of s.e.x? Have not shops and restaurants been demolished in hundreds, wherever a French word was to be met? And the rage of the German ma.s.ses has found an outlet not only against foreigners, but against good German patriots and even German officers.”[99]
[Footnote 99: _Leipziger Volkszeitung_, August 12th. This journal as well as the _Frankische Tagespost_ names Wolff's Agency as their authority in more than one issue.]
The same journal on the preceding day deplored that ”we ourselves are not free from guilt.” It recounts how German reservists, when leaving Antwerp and Brussels, had sung their national songs in a loud, provocative manner, and taunted the bystanders with such remarks as: ”In three days we shall be here again!”
According to the same authority German residents had insulted the populace by displaying their national flag; and German employers had been among the first to discharge employees of their own nationality, without salary in lieu of notice, thus increasing the difficulties of German residents in Belgium.
German official p.r.o.nouncements are much more reticent in their judgment on these allegations of Belgian cruelties. None the less the Berlin Government must be held responsible for them being scattered throughout the land. After Germany's official representative had returned from Brussels to Berlin he made a statement to the Press. Considering that von Below was in the Belgian capital at the time, his views are instructive.
He expressed his great astonishment that such things should have happened, and a.s.serted that up till the very last minute he had been treated with the greatest kindness and politeness. Neither he nor any of his Legation Staff had experienced the slightest unpleasantness.
Further, von Below expressed the conviction that only single instances of such excesses had occurred and these were a result of the quarrelsome Walloon character. No village _fete_ pa.s.ses off among them without such outbreaks, accompanied by bloodshed.[100]
[Footnote 100: This may be true, but von Below could have said the same with absolute truth of German village fairs, _Kirmesse_, etc.--Author.]
German papers of August 15th reported this official version, and four days later a proclamation was issued by State Secretary Dr. Delbruck, calling upon all persons who had been ill-treated in Belgium to report themselves, so that the ”numerous” newspaper reports could be confirmed or refuted. The result of the inquiry has never been published.
From a number of witnesses who testified whole-heartedly to Belgian kindness, one will suffice. A lady reported her adventures in the _Vorwarts_ of September 6th, from which the following sentences have been gleaned. ”Even if it is true that Germans were subjected to inconsideration and ill-treatment during their flight from Belgium, still there are hundreds of Germans who, like myself, met with generous sympathy and unstinted help.