WHEN THE HUNS BROKE LOOSE

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 209, 17 May 1915, Page 2

WHEN THE HUNS BROKE LOOSE

RAPINE AND MURDER RAMPANT. VISCOUNT BRYCE'S KEPOP.T. SLAUGHTER OF CIVILIANS. LONDON, May 13. Viscount Bryce'a report is based on 1,200 depositions. All were taken by men with legal experience, and who had been instructed not to "lead" witnesses but to impress on them the necessity of careful and precise evidence. They rejected evidence tainted by excitement and, over-strained emotions, also hearsay exceptwhen confirmed by direct testimony. The atrocities commenced on August •ith, when 50 men escaping from a burning house at Herve were taken outside the town and shot. Even children were killed. Forty others were shot at Helen. There was wholesale slaughter at Micheroux and Soumanns. These outrages were due to German exasperation at the resistance of Fort Fleron, which was barring the main road to Liege. They were enraged at their losses, and suspicious of the temper of civilians, and thinking to cow the Belgian nation, German officers and men speedily accustomed themselves to slaughtering civilians. A German diary shows that the soldiers gave themselves up to debauchery. In the streets of -Liege they raped fifteen to twenty women in open daylight upon tables in the Place de 'Universale.

The higher military authorities encouraged the stories that German soldiers' eyes had been gouged out. that there had been, treacherous murders, and that food had been poisoned. The tales had been dinned into the ears of the troops for the sake of justifying the measures taken to terrify the population. Individual acts of brutality were very widely committed, but the gravest charge against Germany is that of killing civilians, which was part of a deliberate plan. If a line be drawn from the Belgian frontier to Liege and continued to Charleroi, and a second line drawn from Liege to Malines, among this irreg ular figure most of the systematic outrages were committed;

The first series of outrages was connected with the unexpected resistance of Liege. The slaughter from the 19th to the end of August was due to later Belgian resistance. Outrages were general while Von Bulow and Von Hansen were attacking Namur and Dinant. An outbrust of cruelty followed the Belgian victory at Malines. The committee was especially impressed by the shocking outrages ou smaller villages, showing that after the troops had been encouraged in thefr career of terroism, they became more savage and more brutal, and committed wild excessess in regions not subject to observation. Many bodies o* dead women found in Malines had bay onet wounds, and in several cases breasts were cut off. Girls were dragged into fields and stripped and violated. Some were bayoneted. A child of three was found nailed to a farmhouse by the hands and feet. When fifteen hundred people of Aeshot marched to Louvain some fell by the roadside. An officer on a bicycle shouted: f'Shoot them." The devastation of Louvain was n holocaust to the population, due to the German desire to wreak vengeance after their defeat. There was no evidence that the inhabitants fired on the Germans, though there was proof that Germans fired on Germans. Some officers said they were acting with great unwillingness, but would be executed if they did not obey. Diaries show that the first regiment of Foot Guards took 1000 prisoners on August 24, and shot 500.

There was a case where children were roped together and used as a military screen. Three soldiers went in action carrying young children for protection against flank fire.

The report concludes: Prussian officers regard the war as a sort of sacred mission. Ordinary morality is superseded by a new standard justifying anything, which conduces to success, however shocking or revolting. : The doctrine proclaimed by heads of the army has permeated the officers and even affected the privates, leading them to justify killing non-combatants and accustoming them to slaughtering women and children.

The doctrine is plainly set out in a German officiaLmonograph upon "The Usages of War."