8. The Belgian Baby without Hands

Not only did the Belgian baby whose hands had been cut off by the Germans travel through the towns and villages of Great Britain, but it went through Western Europe and America, even into the Far West. No one paused to ask how long a baby would live were its hands cut off unless expert surgical aid were at hand to tie up the arteries (the answer being, a very few minutes). Everyone wanted to believe the story, and many went so far as to say they had seen the baby. The lie was as universally accepted as the passage of the Russian troops through Britain.

One man whom I did not see told an official of the Gttholic Society that he had seen with his own eyes German soldiery chop off the arms of a baby which clung to its mother’s skirts.

“ The Times ” Correspondent in Paris, August 27, 1914.

On September 2, 1914, The Times Correspondent quotes French refugees declaring: “ They cut the hands off the little boys so that there shall be no more soldiers for France.”

Pictures of the baby without hands were very popular on the Continent, both in France and in Italy. Ltf Kive Rjouge had a picture on September 18, 191J, and on July 26, 1916, made it still more lurid by depicting German soldiers eating the hands. Le Journal gave, on April 30, 1915, a photograph of a statue of a child without hands. But the most savage of all, which contained in it no elements of caricature, was issued by the Allies for propaganda purposes and published in Critica, in Buenos Ayres (reproduced in the Sphere, January 30, 1925). The heading of the picture was, “ The Bible before All,” and under it was written: “ Suffer little children to come unto Me.” The Kaiser is depicted standing behind a huge block with an axe, his hands darkly stained with blood. Round the block are piles of hands. He is beckoning to a woman to bring a number of children, who are clinging to her, some having had their hands cut off already.

Babies not only had their hands cut off, but they were impaled on bayonets, and in one case nailed to a door. But everyone will remember the handless Belgian baby. It was loudly spoken of in buses and other public places, had been seen in a hospital, was now in the next parish, etc., and it was paraded, not as an isolated instance of an atrocity, but as a typical instance of a common practice.

In Parliament there was the usual evasion, which suggested the story was true, although the only evidence given was “ seen by witnesses.”

Mr. a. K. Lloyd asked the First Lord of the Treasury whether materials are available for identifying and tracing the survivors of those children whose hands were cut off by the Germans, and whose cases are referred to by letter and number in the Report of the Bryce Committee ; and, if so, whether he will consider the possibility of making the information accessible, confidentially or otherwise, to persons interested in the future of these survivors ?

Sir G. Cave : My Right Hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. In all but two of the individual cases in which children were seen by witnesses mutilated in this manner, the child was either dead or dying from the treatment it had received. In view of the fact that these 8o FALSEHOOD IN WAR-TIME children were in Belgium, which is still in German occupation, it is unlikely that they could now be traced, and any attempt to do so at this time might lead to the further persecution of the victims or their relatives.

Mr. Lloyd : Were there not other cases brought over here to hospital ?

Sir G. Cave : Not the cases to which the Hon. Member’s question refers.

House of Commons, December 19, 1916.

Sometimes the handless person was grown up. A Mr. Tyler, at a Brotherhood meeting in Glasgow on April 17, 1915, said he had a friend in Harrogate who had seen a nurse with both her hands cut off by Germans. He gave the address of his informant. A letter was at once addressed to the friend at Harrogate, asking if the statement was correct, but no reply was ever received.

But the most harrowing and artistically dressed version of the handless child story appeared in the Sunday Chronicle on May 2, 1915.

Some days ago a charitable great lady was visiting a building in Paris where have been housed for several months a number of Belgian refugees. During her visit she noticed a child, a girl of ten, who, though the room was hot rather than otherwise, kept her hands in a pitiful little worn muff. Suddenly the child said to the mother: “ Mamma, please blow my nose for me.” “ Shocking,” said the charitable lady, half-laughing, half-severe, “ a big girl like you, who can’t use her own handkerchief.” The child said nothing, and the mother spoke in a dull, matter-of-fact tone. “ She has not any hands now, ma’am,” she said.

The grand dame looked, shuddered, understood. “ Can it be,” she said, “ that the Germans-? ” The mother burst into teats. That was her answer.

Signor Nitti, who was Italian Prime Minister during the war, states in his memoirs :

THE BELGIAN BABY WITHOUT HANDS 8i To bring the truth of the present European crisis home to the world it is necessary to destroy again and again the vicious legends created by war propaganda. During the war France, in common with other Allies, including our own Government in Italy, circulated the most absurd inventions to arouse the fighting spirit of our people. The cruelties attributed to the Germans were such as to curdle our blood. We heard the story of poor little Belgian children whose hands were cut off by the Huns. After the war a rich American, who was deeply touched by the French propaganda, sent an emissary to Belgium with the intention of providing a livelihood for the children whose poor little hands had been cut off. He was unable to discover one. Mr. Lloyd George and myself, when at the head of the Italian Government, carried on extensive investigations as to the truth of these horrible accusations, some of which, at least, were told specifically as to names and places. Every case investigated proved to be a myth.

Colonel Repington, in his Diary of the World War, vol. ii, p. 447, says :

I was told by Cardinal Gasquet that the Pope promised to make a great protest to the world if a single case could be proved of the violation of Belgian nuns or cutting off of children’s hands. An inquiry was instituted and many cases examined with the help of the Belgian Cardinal Mercier. Not one case could be proved.

The former French Minister of Finance, Klot2, to whom at the beginning of the war the censorship of the Press was entrusted, says, in his memoirs {De la Guerre a la Paix, Paris, Payot, 1924) :

One evening I was shown a proof of the Figaro, in which two scientists of repute asserted and endorsed by their signatures that they had seen with their own eyes about a hundred children whose hands had been chopped off by the Germans.

F

In spite of the evidence of these scientists I entertained doubts as to the accuracy of the report and forbade the publication of it. When the editor of the Figaro expressed his indignation, I declared myself ready to investigate, in the presence of the American Ambassador, the matter that would stir the world. I required, however, that the name of the place where these investigations had to take place should be given by the two scientists. I insisted on having these details supplied immediately. I am still without their reply or visit.

But this lie obtained such a hold on people’s imagination that it is by no means dead yet. Quite recently a Liverpool poet, in a volume called A Medley of Song, has written the following lines in a “ patriotic ” poem :

They stemmed the first mad onrush of the cultured German Hun, Who’d outraged every female Belgian And maimed every mother’s son.