Chapter 8

At E again there are two small woods; these were both captured on the 26th, but the trenches in the northern one had been mined, and the French had no sooner seized them than they were blown up. At F there was another small redoubt; part of this was taken on the 19th from the east, but the work was not finally captured till the 27th, when 240 corpses were found in it. On the extreme west, at G, is a wood which has twice been unsuccessfully attacked. On the first occasion troops got into the wood, but a severe snowstorm prevented the artillery from continuing to assist them, and they were driven out. The second was an attempt to surprise the enemy at 2 A.M. on the 25th; this also failed. A third attack was made on March 7 and was successful; the French line now runs through the wood.

The above will serve to show the tenacity which is required for an operation of this kind. Up to the present the French have made steady and continuous progress, and their success may be best judged from the fact that they have not been forced back on any day behind the line they held in the morning, despite innumerable counter-attacks. And this is not merely a question of ground, but one of increasing moral superiority, for it is in the unsuccessful counter-attacks that losses are heavy, and these and the sense of failure affect the morale of an army sooner or later.

Will the French push through the line? Will a hole be made, or is the enemy like a badger, who digs himself in rather faster than you can dig him out? I cannot tell; it would indeed be an astonishing measure of success for a first attempt, and the enemy may require a great deal more hammering at many points before he has definitely had enough at any one point. But these operations have brought the day closer, and turn our thoughts to the time when we shall be able to move forward, and one finds the cavalrymen wondering whether perhaps they, too, will get their chance.

The Germans Concrete Trenches

By F.H. Gailor, American Rhodes Scholar of New College, Oxford

[From The London Daily Mail, March 24, 1915.]

At the kind invitation of General Longchamps, German Military Governor of the Province of Namur, I spent two days with him going along the country in and behind the firing line in Northern France from near Rheims to the small village of Monthois, near Vouziers, on the Aisne.

About five miles out of Monthois we came to the artillery positions of the Germans. We could see the flashes of the guns long before we reached the hills where they were placed, but when we came up and dismounted the position was most cleverly concealed by a higher hill in front and the heavy woods which served as a screen for the artillery. I noticed many holes where the French shells had burst, and the valley to the north looked as if some one had been experimenting with a well digger. One 21-centimeter shell had cut a swath about 100 yards long out of the woods on the hill where we dismounted. The trees were twisted from their stumps as if a small cyclone had passed, and one could realize the damage the shells could do merely by the displaced air.

We went on forward into the valley on foot and stopped about two hundred yards in front and to the left of where the German guns were firing. There, although of course we could not see the French position, we could hear and see their shells as they exploded. They were firing short, one of the officers told me, because they thought the Germans were on the forward hill. He could see one of the French aeroplanes directing their fire, but I could not make it out. We stayed there listening to the shells and watching the few movements of German batteries that were taking place. A party of officers hidden by the trees were taking observations and telephoning the results of the German fire and, no doubt, of the French fire in the German trenches. There was no excitement; but for the noise the whole scene reminded me of some kind of construction work, such as building a railroad.

After about an hour, when nothing had happened, one began to realize that even such excitement may become monotonous and be taken as a matter of course. One of the officers told me that the Germans had been there since the beginning of October and that even the trenches were in the same position as when they first came.

Certainly the trenches seem permanent enough for spending many Winters. A number of them have now been built of concrete, especially in that swampy part near the Aisne where they strike water about three feet underground. The difficulty is in draining out the water when it rains.

Some of the trenches have two stories, and at the back of many of them are subterranean rest houses built of concrete and connected with the trenches by passages. The rooms are about seven feet high and ten feet square, and above the ground all evidence of the work is concealed by green boughs and shrubbery so that they may escape the attention of the enemy's aeroplanes.

With the noise and the fatigue, the men say it is impossible to sleep naturally, but they become so used to the firing and so weary that they become oblivious of everything even when shells are falling within a dozen yards of them. They stay in the trenches five days and then get five days' rest. In talking to the men one feels the influence on them of a curious sort of fatalism--they have been lucky so far and will come through all right. One sees and feels everywhere the spirit of a great game. The strain of football a thousand times magnified. The joy of winning and boyish pleasure in getting ahead of the other fellows side by side with the stronger passions of hatred and anger and the sight of agony and death.

We talked to some of the little groups of men along the road who were going back to their five days in the trenches. Of course all large units are split up so as not to attract attention. They were all the same, all sure of winning, and all bearded, muddy, and determined. I could not help thinking of American football players at the end of the first half. These men seemed all the same. I have no recollection of a single individual. The "system" and its work has made a type not only of clothes but of face. Their answers to the usual questions were all the same, and one felt in talking to them that their opinions were machine-made. Three points stood out--Germany is right and will win; England is wrong and will knuckle under; we hate England because we are alike in religion, custom, and opinion, and it is the war of kindred races. Everywhere one met the arguments and stories of unfairness and cruelty in fighting that have appeared in the English papers, but with the names reversed. English soldiers had surrendered and then fired; had shot from beneath a Red Cross flag or had killed prisoners. The stories were simple and as hackneyed as most of those current in England.

The concrete rest houses were interesting. Most of them have furniture made from trees "to amuse us and pass the time." Both officers and men use the same type of house, though discipline forbids that the same house be used by both officers and men. The light in these houses is bad and the ventilation not all that it should be, but they are extremely careful about sanitation, and everywhere one smells disinfectants and sees evidence of scrupulous guarding against disease. Oil and candles are scarce and the "pocket electric" that all the men and officers carry does not last long enough for much reading. There are always telephone connections, but in most cases visits are impossible save by way of the underground passages and the trenches.

One officer described the life as entirely normal; another said, in speaking of a Louis XV. couch which had been borrowed from a near-by château and was the pride of a regiment, "Oh! we are cave-dwellers, but we have some of the luxuries of at least the nineteenth century."

The Major Commandant at Rethel showed me a letter from a friend demanding "some easy chairs and a piano for his trench house," and the Major said, "I hear they have music up on the Yser, but the French are too close to us here!"

All that I saw of the German Red Cross leads me to believe that it is adequate and efficient. At Rethel we saw a Red Cross train of thirty-two cars perfectly equipped. The cars are made specially with open corridors, so that stretchers or rubber-wheeled trucks may be rolled from one car to another. The berths are in two tiers, much like an American sleeping car, and each car when full holds twenty-eight men. There is an operating car fully equipped for the most delicate and dangerous cases; in fact, when we saw the train at Rethel it had stopped on its way to Germany for an operation on a man's brain.

The Spirits of Mankind

By Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States

The conviction that great spiritual forces will assert themselves at the end of the European war to enlighten the judgment and steady the spirits of mankind was expressed by President Wilson in an address of welcome delivered at the Maryland annual conference of the Methodist Protestant Church at Washington on April 8, 1915. The text of his address appears below.

These are days of great perplexity, when a great cloud of trouble hangs and broods over the greater part of the world. It seems as if great, blind, material forces had been released which had for long been held in leash and restraint. And yet underneath that you can see the strong impulses of great ideals.

It would be impossible for men to go through what men are going through on the battlefields of Europe and struggle through the present dark night of their terrible struggle if it were not that they saw, or thought that they saw, the broadening of light where the morning should come up and believed that they were standing each on his side of the contest for some eternal principle for right.

Then all about them, all about us, there sits the silent, waiting tribunal which is going to utter the ultimate judgment upon this struggle, the great tribunal of the opinion of the world; and I fancy I see, I hope that I see, I pray that it may be that I do truly see, great spiritual forces lying waiting for the outcome of this thing to assert themselves, and are asserting themselves even now to enlighten our judgment and steady our spirits.

No man is wise enough to pronounce judgment, but we can all hold our spirits in readiness to accept the truth when it dawns on us and is revealed to us in the outcome of this titanic struggle.

It is of infinite benefit that in assemblages like this and in every sort of assemblage we should constantly go back to the sources of our moral inspiration and question ourselves as to what principle it is that we are acting on. Whither are we bound? What do we wish to see triumph? And if we wish to see certain things triumph, why do we wish to see them triumph? What is there in them that is for the lasting benefit of mankind?

For we are not in this world to amuse ourselves with its affairs. We are here to push the whole sluggish mass forward in some particular direction, and unless you know the direction in which you want to go your force is of no avail. Do you love righteousness? is what each one of us ought to ask himself. And if you love righteousness are you ready to translate righteousness into action and be ashamed and afraid before no man?

It seems to me, therefore, that it is worth suggesting to you that you are not sitting here merely to transact the business and express the ideals of a great church as represented in the State of Maryland, but you are here also as part of the assize of humanity, to remind yourselves of the things that are permanent and eternal, which if we do not translate into action we have failed in the fundamental things of our lives.

You will see that it is only in such general terms that one can speak in the midst of a confused world, because, as I have already said, no man has the key to this confusion. No man can see the outcome, but every man can keep his own spirit prepared to contribute to the net result when the outcome displays itself.

"What the Germans Say About Their Own Methods of Warfare"

By Joseph Bedier, Professor in the College de France

[From an article in the Revue de Paris for January, 1915.]

I purpose to show that the German armies cannot altogether escape the reproach of violating on occasion the law of nations. I shall establish this by French methods, through the use of documents of sound value.

My texts are genuine, well vouched for, and I have taken pains to subject them to a critical examination, as scrupulous and minute as heretofore in times of peace I expended in weighing the authority of some ancient chronicle, or in scrutinizing the authenticity of some charter. Perhaps this care was born of professional habit, or due to a natural craving for exactness, but in either case it is a voucher for the work, which is meant for all comers--for the passer-by, for the indifferent, and even for my country's foes. My wish is that the veriest looker-on, idly turning these pages, may be confronted only with documents whose authenticity will be self-evident, if he is willing to see, and whose ignominious tale will reach his heart, if ye have a heart.

I have, moreover, sought for documents not only incontestably genuine but of unquestioned authority. Accusation is easy, while proof is difficult. No belligerent has ever been troubled to find mountains of testimony, true or false, against his enemy; but were this evidence gathered by the most exalted magistrates, under the most solemn judicial sanction, it must unfortunately long remain useless; until the accused has full opportunity to controvert it, every one is free to treat it as false or, at the best, as controvertible. For this reason I shall avoid resting the case upon Belgian or French statements, though I know them to be true. My purpose has been to bring forward such testimony that no man living, be he even a German, should be privileged to cast a doubt upon it. German crimes will be established by German documents.

These will be taken mainly from the "War Diaries," which Article 75 of the German Army Regulations for Field Service enjoins upon soldiers to keep during their marches, and which were seized by the French upon the persons of their prisoners, as military papers, as authorized by Article 4 of The Hague Convention of 1907. The number of these is daily increasing, and I trust that some day, for the edification of all, the complete collection may be lodged in the Germanic section of manuscripts in the National Library. Meantime, the Marquis de Dampierre, paleographer and archivist, graduate of the Ecole des Chartes, is preparing, and will shortly publish, a volume in which the greater part of these notebooks will be minutely described, transcribed, and clarified. Personally, I have only examined about forty of them, but they will answer my purpose, by presenting relevant extracts, furnishing the name, rank, and regiment of the author, with indications of time and place. Classification is difficult, mainly because ten lines of a single text not infrequently furnish evidence of a variety of offenses. I must take them almost at random, grouping them under such analogies or association of ideas or images as they may offer.

I.

The first notebook at hand is that of a soldier of the Prussian Guard, the Gefreiter Paul Spielmann, (of Company I, First Brigade of the Infantry Guard.) He tells the story of an unexpected night alarm on the 1st of September in a village near Blamont. The bugle sounds, and the Guard, startled from sleep, begins the massacre, (Figs. 1 and 2:)

The inhabitants fled through the village. 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.

Deserved repression, remarks this soldier: "They had telephone communication with the enemy." And yet, we may recall that by Article 30 of The Hague Convention of 1907, signed on behalf of H.M. the Emperor of Germany, "no collective penalty, pecuniary or other, shall be proclaimed against a population, by reason of individual acts for which the population is not responsible _in solido_." What tribunal during that dreadful night took the pains to establish this joint participation?

II.

The unsigned notebook of a soldier of the Thirty-second Reserve Infantry (Fourth Reserve Corps) has this entry:

Creil, Sept. 3.--The iron bridge was blown up. For this we set the streets on fire, and shot the civilians.

Yet it must be obvious that only the regular troops of the French Engineer Corps could have blown up the iron bridge at Creil; the civilians had no hand in it. As an excuse for these massacres, when any excuse is offered, the notebooks usually note that "civilians" or "francs-tireurs" had fired on the troops. But the "scrap of paper" which Germany subscribed--the Convention of 1907--provides in its first article "the laws, the rights, and the duties are not applicable solely to the army, but also to militia and bodies of volunteers" under certain conditions, of which the main one is that they shall "openly bear arms;" while Article 2 stipulates that "the population of an unoccupied territory, which on the approach of the enemy spontaneously takes up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to organize as provided in Article I, shall be considered as a belligerent, if they bear arms openly and observe the laws and customs of war."

In the light of this text, the bearing of the barbarous recitals which follow may be properly estimated:

(a) Notebook of Private Hassemer, (Eighth Corps, Sept. 3, 1914, at Sommepy, Marne.)--Dreadful butchery. Village burned to the ground; the French thrown into the burning houses, civilians and all burned together.

(b) Notebook of Lieut. Kietzmann, (Second Company, First Battalion, Forty-ninth Infantry,) under date of Aug. 18, 1914, (Fig. 3.)--A short distance above Diest is the village of Schaffen. About fifty civilians were concealed in the church tower, and from there fired on our troops with a _mitrailleuse_. All the civilians were shot.

[It may here be noted, for the sake of precision, that the First Report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, Antwerp, Aug. 28, Page 3, identifies some of the "civilians" killed at Schaffen on the 18th of August; among them, "the wife of François Luyckz, 45 years of age, with her daughter _aged 12, who were discovered in a sewer and shot_"; and "the daughter of Jean Ooyen, 9 years of age, who was shot"; and "André Willem, sacristain, who was bound to a tree and _burned alive_."]

(c) Notebook of a Saxon officer, unnamed, (178th Regiment, Twelfth Army Corps, First Saxon Corps,) Aug. 26.--The exquisite village of Gué-d'Hossus (Ardennes) was given to the flames, although to my mind it was guiltless. I am told that a cyclist fell from his machine, and in his fall his gun was discharged; at once the firing was begun in his direction, and thereupon all the male inhabitants were simply thrown into the flames. It is to be hoped that like atrocities will not be repeated.

This Saxon officer had, nevertheless, already witnessed like "atrocities." The preceding day, Aug. 25, at Villers-en-Fagne, (Belgian Ardennes,) "where we found grenadiers of the guard, killed and wounded," he had seen "the curé and other inhabitants shot"; and three days previous, Aug. 23, at the village of Bouvignes, north of Dinant, he had witnessed what he thus describes:

Through a breach made in the rear we get access into the residence of a well-to-do inhabitant and occupy the house. Passing through a number of apartments, we reach a door where we find the corpse of the owner. Further on in the interior our men have wrecked everything like vandals. Everything has been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description. They have been shot at such short range that they are almost decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places. The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent, from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent is about to be set fire to; it may, however be ransomed if it surrenders the guilty ones and pays a ransom of 15,000 francs.

We shall see as we proceed how these notebooks complement one another.

(d) Notebook of the Private Philipp, (from Kamenz, Saxony, First Company, First Battalion, 178th Regiment.) On the day indicated above--Aug. 23--a private of the same regiment was the witness of a scene similar to that just described; perhaps, the same scene, but the point of view is different.--At 10 o'clock in the evening the First Battalion of the 178th came down into the burning village to the north of Dinant--a saddening spectacle--to make one shiver. At the entrance to the village lay the bodies of some fifty citizens, shot for having fired upon our troops from ambush. In the course of the night many others were shot down in like manner, so that we counted more than two hundred. Women and children, holding their lamps, were compelled to assist at this horrible spectacle. We then sat down midst the corpses to eat our rice, as we had eaten nothing since morning. (Fig. 4.)

Here is a military picture fully outlined, and worthy to compete in the Academy of Fine Arts of Dresden. But one passage of the text is somewhat obscure and might embarrass the artist--"Women and children, holding their lamps, were compelled to assist at this horrible spectacle." What spectacle?--the shooting, or the counting of the corpses? To get some certainty on this historic point, the artist should question that noble soldier--the Colonel of the 178th.

His work of that night, however, was in accord with the spirit of his companions in arms, and of his chiefs. We may assure ourselves of this by consulting the Sixth Report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry upon, the violation of the rules of the law of nations (Havre, Nov. 10, 1914) and the ignoble proclamations placarded by the Germans throughout Belgium. I will content myself with three short extracts.

Extract from a proclamation of General von Bülow, placarded at Liège, Aug. 22, 1914:

The inhabitants of the city of Andenne, after having protested their peaceful intentions, were guilty of a treacherous surprise upon our troops. It was with my consent that the General in Chief set fire to the whole locality, and that about one hundred persons were shot.