Part 4
A. BALFAY, Consulat du Royanne de Belgique. District War Refugee Committee for Belgians. March 11, 1915.
Horace Green, a war correspondent, who spent many weeks in Belgium during the early stages of the war, in his book, “The Log of a Noncombatant,” issued by the Houghton Mifflin Company, devotes the last chapter to a discussion of atrocities. Concluding that the stories of atrocities have been exaggerated a hundred fold, Mr. Green says:
The reports of unprovoked personal atrocities have been =hideously exaggerated=. Wherever one real atrocity has occurred, it has been multigraphed into a hundred cases. Each, with clever variation in detail, is reported as occurring to a relative or close friend of the teller. For campaign purposes, and particularly in England for the sake of stimulating recruiting, a partisan press has helped along the concoction of lies.
In every war of invasion there is bound to occur a certain amount of plunder and rapine. The German system of reprisal is relentless; but the German =private as an individual is no more barbaric= than his brother in the French, the British, or the Belgian trenches.
In the “Atlantic Monthly” for October, 1917, Prof. Kellogg, of the American Belgian Relief Commission, while severely arraigning Germany’s treatment of Belgium, expressly states that he came across no instance of Belgian children with their hands cut off or women with breasts mutilated.
Ernest P. Bicknell, Director of Civilian Relief, American Red Cross, in an article in “The Survey” in 1917, writes as follows:
The world is familiar with stories of the atrocities charged against the German army in Belgium. In our travels in Belgium many of these stories came to our ears. In time we came to feel that a fair consideration of these reports required a careful discrimination between the conduct of individual German soldiers, and those operations carried on under the direction of army officers in accordance with a deliberately adopted military policy.
Approaching this subject in accordance with this idea, we should classify the stories of mutilations, violations of women, killing of women and children, etc., as belonging in the category chargeable against individuals of reckless and criminal character, who when opportunity offers, will gratify their lawless passions. The stories of individual atrocities in Belgium, which have shocked the world, we found difficult to verify. While it is probable that such atrocities were occasionally committed, I personally came in contact with no instance of that character during my travels about Belgium; nor did I discuss this subject with any person who had himself come in contact with such an instance.
In my opinion the verdict of history upon the conduct of the German army in Belgium will give little heed to these horrifying stories of individual crime.
Testimony along the same line is furnished by Father Duffy, chaplain of the 165th Infantry; the War Refugee Committee in London, George Bernard Shaw, General Pershing, General March and many others of equal standing, and furnishes an array of evidence that is strangely opposed to that of Mrs. Harjes, the wife of the partner of J. P. Morgan, that she personally saw Belgian children with their hands cut off, and of Cardinal Mercier, who stirred the heart of humanity when he declared that “forty-nine Belgian priests were tortured and put to death by the Germans during the occupation.” It is a matter of record, however, that General Bissig, Governor General of Belgium during the occupation, forbade the Belgians to keep song birds that had been bereft of their eyes to make them sing better. The order concludes: “The wilful blinding of birds is an act of cruelty which I cannot under any circumstances tolerate.”
Five reputable American correspondents on September 6, 1914, after tracing the German army in its invasion of 100 miles, sent a message to the American people that “we are unable to report a single instance (of atrocities) unprovoked.... Everywhere we have seen Germans paying for purchases and respecting property rights as well as according civilians every consideration.... To the truth of these statements we pledge our professional and personal word.” The statement was signed by James O’Donnell Bennett and John T. McCutcheon, of the Chicago “Tribune;” Roger Lewis, of the Associated Press; Irvin S. Cobb, of the “Saturday Evening Post,” and Harry Hansen, of the Chicago “Daily News.”
It has been said that Lord Bryce signed the official atrocity report and that his honored name raises it above suspicion. Lord Bryce is an old man and it is inferred that he signed the report in good faith without, however, having looked into the truth or falsity of the statements himself, accepting the word of others who were using him for their nefarious purpose, the intention being to incite American public opinion to action in behalf of the Allies. For Lord Bryce is flatly contradicted by the following cable message from London, taken from the daily papers of September 15, 1914:
(Lord Bryce subsequently modified his position by a denial of the truth of the report as presented.--Ed.)
London, Sept. 14, 3:23 P. M.--Premier Asquith told the House of Commons today that official information had reached the Ministry of War concerning the repeated stories that German soldiers had abused the Red Cross flag, killed and maimed the wounded, and killed women and children, as had been alleged so often in stories of the battlefields.
Joseph Medill Patterson: The Hague, September 11--To the Chicago “Tribune:” I firmly believe that all stories put out by the British and French of tortures, mutilations, assaults, etc., of Germans are utterly rubbish.
A flat denial of the atrocity stories was furnished by a Washington dispatch to the New York “World,” five months after the invasion of Belgium. The report contained the substance of an official finding by the British government and was turned over to Ambassador Walter H. Page for transmission to Washington upon the request of the American government. When Dr. Edmund von Mach subsequently requested the State Department for information about the finding, after returning one evasive reply, Secretary Lansing left Dr. von Mach’s letters unanswered and the report has never been made public. Following is the Washington report referred to:
Washington, Jan. 27. (Special to the “World”)--Of the thousands of Belgian refugees who are now in England not one has been subjected to atrocities by German soldiers. This in effect is the substance of a report received at the State Department from the American Embassy in London. The report states that the British government thoroughly had investigated thousands of reports to the effect that German soldiers had perpetrated outrages on the fleeing Belgians. During the early period of the war, columns of the British newspapers were filled with these accusations. Agents of the British government, according to the report from the American Embassy at London, carefully investigated all of these charges; they interviewed alleged victims and sifted all the evidence. As a result of the investigation the British Foreign Office notified the American Embassy that the charges appeared to be based upon hysteria and natural prejudice. The report added that many of the Belgians had suffered severe hardships but they should be charged up against the exigencies of war rather than the brutality of the individual German soldier.
According to advices from Switzerland, under date of July 9, 1916, the paper “Italia” printed the following:
“Assisted by the Papal state department, the congregation of Catholic church officials instituted a searching inquiry into the reported German atrocities in Belgian convents, first among the Belgian prioresses resident in Rome, next among the Belgian nuns passing through, all of whom unanimously deny having any knowledge of the alleged atrocities. Bishop Heylen, of Namur, who was among those examined, declared that the reports referred to were lacking in every essential of truth. Possibly an isolated case had occurred without his knowledge, but certainly nothing beyond this. Cardinal Mercier, who was also interviewed, spoke of three cases based upon hearsay. The Congregation deplored the spread of exaggerated reports lacking all semblance of truth and expressed its satisfaction with the results of the investigation.”
To the last it was a favorite pastime to charge the Germans with wanton destruction of towns. Ample contradiction could easily be offered if space permitted. Thus William K. Draper, Vice Chairman of the New York County Chapter of the American Red Cross, is quoted in the New York “Times” of July 13, 1919: “A pitiful part of this destruction is the realization that much of it was caused by French artillery, the troops being forced to demolish the towns while being occupied and used by the Germans.”
The whole web of lies and the conditions underlying the scheme are conclusively exposed in “The Tragedy of Belgium,” by Richard Grasshof, (New York: C. E. Dillingham Co.)
The Belgian atrocities were purposely conceived and exaggerated for two reasons:
1. To camouflage the fact that against all rules of civilized warfare, the Belgians of Louvain and several other towns, claiming protection as civilians, awaited an opportune time to institute a massacre of German soldiers who had entered and been stationed there approximately a week in apparently good relations with the population.
2. It was expected that Germany and Austria would be surely invaded under the joint impact of the forces of Russia, France, Belgium, Servia, Montenegro, England and Japan. In that event the world would hear no end of Cossack, Servian and Montenegran atrocities committed on German women and children, as in the Balkan campaign. England had called into the field the Indians, Maoris, Zulus and other savage blacks and yellow skins; France had called the Moroccan natives and the Senegalese tribesmen, blacks who hang around their necks strings adorned with the ears and noses of their fallen foes.
Forseeing that the ravages of these uncivilized warriors would excite the anger of the world against the Allies, if they ever crossed into German territory, that their deeds would bring the curses of the universe upon England’s head, it was resolved to anticipate all possible criticism and reproach by being the first to charge atrocities against their enemies and thus to negative all counter charges, or to say that they were merely retaliatory measures adopted in reprisal for barbarous acts committed against their own men. The Allies never crossed the German lines, save in East Prussia, nor the Austrian-Hungarian border save in Galicia, and here the Cossack reign, short as it was, proved the shrewd wisdom of English and French foresight; 700,000 homes were wantonly destroyed in Galicia alone. Its lawlessness beggars description; but humanity was not staggered because the mind of the world had been drugged by fatal infusions of falsehood about Belgian babies and women maimed and brutalized by “German barbarians.”
Prof. John W. Burgess, Charles Carleton Coffin (“The Boys of ’61”) and others have shown that precisely the same hysterical lies were circulated throughout England and the world by Englishmen during the American Civil War, the same kind of atrocities being charged against the Union Army.
No paper has been more aggressive in charging the Germans with atrocities than the New York “Times.” In its issue of April 17, 1865, it said:
“=Every possible atrocity appertains to this rebellion. There is nothing whatever that its leaders have scrupled at. Wholesale massacres and torturings, wholesale starvation of prisoners, firing of great cities, piracies of the crudest kind, persecution of the most hideous character and of vast extent, and finally assassination in high places--whatever is inhuman, whatever is brutal, whatever is fiendish, these men have resorted to. They will leave behind names so black, and the memory of deeds so infamous, that the execration of the slave-holders’ rebellion will be eternal.=”
The late James G. Blaine quoted Lord Malmesbury of date February 5, 1863, as accusing the Union troops guilty of “horrors unparalleled even in the wars of barbarous nations.”
All efforts to counteract the avowed campaign of misrepresentation were denounced as the acts of men in the pay of the Kaiser or irreclaimable pro-Germans determined to lend aid and comfort to the enemy, and subjected any one attempting them to the penalties contained in the Espionage Act. In interpreting the act, as applied to the liberal press, Postmaster General Burleson was quoted as follows:
“There are certain opinions and attitudes which will not be tolerated by the Post Office Department. For instance, such papers have sought to create in the minds of our citizens of German birth or descent the impression that Germany is fighting a defensive war; that the accounts of Belgian atrocities ... are all English or American lies.”
To gainsay such an edict was to risk imprisonment for a term of twenty years.
=Bancroft, George--Treaty with Germany--Vancouver Boundary Line.=--The very cordial relations which subsisted between the United States and Germany from the days of Frederick the Great were carefully nurtured by the great men succeeding the establishment of the republic, as shown elsewhere by the comments of President Adams on the treaties with Prussia, and were strongly cemented by the aid extended the Union by Germany during the Civil War, as acknowledged by Secretary Seward and prominent members of the United States Senate. One of the most active promoters of this friendship was America’s foremost historian, George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, and father of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, minister to Great Britain and subsequently to Prussia and Germany (1867-74).
It was through his efforts and friendly personal relations with Bismarck that a memorable agreement came into existence which established the right of immigrant German Americans to renounce their old allegiance and accept an exclusive American citizenship, exempting them from performing military service should they return to their native land. The effect of this agreement was more important than appears, as it was the first time that by a formal act the principle of renunciation of citizenship at the will of the individual was recognized. Beyond this, it led to a complete change of policy on the part of Great Britain by upsetting the old doctrine, “once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” The immediate good result was the renunciation by England of her claim to indefeasible allegiance, and to the right to impress into the British service a former British subject who had become an American citizen, a claim which had contributed to bring about the War of 1812.
Nor was this all that Bancroft accomplished. The Northwestern boundary, having been settled by treaty, Bancroft, while United States Minister in Great Britain, had perceived an incipient effort of a great English interest to encroach on the territory which had been acknowledged by the treaty to be a part of the United States.
By and by the importunities of interested persons in England, who possessed a great party influence, began to make themselves heard, and the British government by degrees supported the attempt to raise a question respecting the true line of the boundary of the Northwest and finally formulated a perverse claim of their own, with a view of obtaining what they wanted as a compromise.
The American administration had of course changed, and the President and his cabinet, having had no part in the negotiations, agreed to refer the question to an arbiter. They made the mistake of consenting that the arbiter, if there was uncertainty as to the true boundary line, might himself establish a boundary of compromise. The person to whom the settlement of the dispute was to be referred was the president of the Swiss Republic.
The American Secretary of State chanced to die while the method of arrangement was still inchoate. Bancroft at once wrote to the new Secretary, urging him not to accept a proposal of compromise, because that would seem to admit an uncertainty as to the American title, and to sanction and even invite a decision of the arbiter in favor of a compromise, and would open the way for England, under an appearance of concession, to obtain all that she needed.
Being at the time minister to the court of Prussia, he advised the government to insist on the American claim in full, not to listen to a proposal of compromise, but to let each party formulate its claim, and to call on the arbiter to decide which was right, and urged it to select for that arbiter the Emperor of Germany.
The Department of State at once consented that the arbiter should be the Emperor of Germany, and left the whole matter of carrying out the American argument to Bancroft. The conduct of the question, the first presentation of the case, as well as the reply to the British, were every word by him, and the decision of the Emperor was unreservedly in favor of the United States. (Prof. William M. Sloane, in “The Century,” for January, 1887.)
Bancroft has been pronounced one of the greatest historians of the past century; he was one of the most distinguished statesmen of his time, and as former minister to London and a student at Göttingen and minister to Germany, he was qualified as no other famous American to form an appraisal of German, French and English policies, especially in regard to ourselves. We may be pardoned, therefore, in taking more than a cursory interest in some expressions which occur in a letter of Bancroft’s, addressed to Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State, and written at Berlin during the Franco-Prussian war.
In summing up his reasons for preferring Germany over England and France, he says: “If we need the solid, trusty good will of any government in Europe, we can have it best with Germany; because German institutions and ours most resemble each other; and because so many millions of Germans have become our countrymen. This war will leave Germany the most powerful State in Europe, and the most free; its friendship is therefore most important to us, and has its foundation in history and in nature.” (“Life and Letters of George Bancroft,” by M. A. De Wolfe Howe, II, 245.)
=Baralong.=--An English pirate ship commanded by Capt. William McBride, which sailed under the American flag, with masked batteries, and sank a German submarine which had been deceived by the Stars and Stripes and the American colors painted on both sides of her hull. On August 19, 1915, the “Nicosian,” an English ship loaded with American horses and mules and with a number of American mule tenders aboard, was halted by a German submarine about 70 miles off Queenstown. The men took to the boats and the U-boat was about to sink the “Nicosian” when a ship flying the American flag came alongside. Without suspecting anything, the submarine allowed the ship to approach, when suddenly the American flag was lowered and the English ensign hoisted, and a destructive fire was opened on the U. The latter soon sank. Half a dozen German sailors swam alongside of the “Nicosian” and clambered on deck, concealing themselves in the holds and engine rooms as the English followed them aboard. They were dragged out and murdered in cold blood. The German captain swam toward the “Baralong” and held up his hand in token of surrender but while in the water was first shot in the mouth and then repeatedly hit by bullets aimed at him by the English, and killed without compunction. The story of the “Baralong” is one of the most brutal in the history of the seas and illuminates the inhuman character of English warfare toward a weaker foe in the most glaring light. The history of the tragedy first came to light through a letter written by Dr. Charles B. Banks, the veterinary surgeon aboard the “Nicosian,” to relatives in Lowell, Mass., giving some of the gruesome details as follows: “A number of German sailors were swimming in the water. Some swam to our abandoned ship and climbed up to the deck. Shots from the patrol boat (the ‘Baralong’) swept several from the ropes. We were taken aboard the patrol boat, and then the boat steamed slowly around our ship while the marines shot and killed all the Germans in the water. As we had left three carbines and cartridges aboard the ‘Nicosian,’ we had reason to believe the Germans had found them. So marines went on our ship and killed seven men there. We were then towed to port.” The infamous wretch who performed this murder, Capt. McBride, later wrote a letter to the captain of the “Nicosian,” warning him not to speak of the affair, and requesting that the Americans aboard especially be cautioned to keep the matter from the public. But one of the American mule tenders made an affidavit to the truth at Liverpool and forwarded it to the American Embassy in London and three others made affidavit to the same facts on their return to New Orleans. The affidavits were sent to the State Department, but neither President Wilson nor Secretary Lansing complied with the request of the German Ambassador to demand an inquiry into the misuse of the American flag, and the cold-blooded murder of German sailors. Dr. Bank’s letter was published in the N. Y. “Times” of September 7, 1915, but that paper was among the most active in preventing an investigation.
=Berliner, Emile.=--One of the most important inventors in the United States, distinguished for his improvements of the telephone; born at Hanover, Germany, May 20, 1851; came to the United States in 1870. Invented the microphone and was first to use an induction coil in connection with the telephone transmitters; patentee of other valuable inventions in telephony. Invented the Gramophone, known also as the Victor Talking Machine, for which he was awarded John Scott Medal and Elliott Crosson Gold Medal by Franklin Inst. First to make and use in aeronautical experiments light weight revolving cylinder internal combustion motor, now extensively used on aeroplanes.