23. Atrocity Stories

War is, in itself, an atrocity. Cruelty and suffering are inherent in it. Deeds of violence and barbarity occur, as everyone knows. Mankind is goaded by authority to indulge every elemental animal passion. But the exaggeration and invention of atrocities soon becomes the main staple of propaganda. Stories of German “ frightfulness ” in Belgium were circulated in such numbers as to give ample proof of the abominable cruelty of the German Army and so to infuriate popular opinion against them. A Belgian commission was appointed, and subsequently a commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Bryce, who was chosen in order that opinion in America, where he had been a very popular ambassador, might be impressed. Affidavits of single witnesses were accepted as conclusive proof.

At best, human testimony is unreliable, even in ordinary occurrences of no consequence, but where bias, sentiment, passion, and so-called patriotism disturb the emotions, a personal affirmation becomes of no value whatsoever.

To cover the whole ground on atrocity stories would be impossible. They were circulated in leaflets, pamphlets, letters, and speeches day after day. Prominent people of repute, who would have shrunk from condemning their bitterest personal enemy on the evidence, or rather lack of evidence, they had before them, did not hesitate to lead the way in charging a whole nation with every’ conceivable brutality and unnatural crime. T/>e Times issued “ Marching Songs,” written by a prominent Eton master, in which such lines as these occurred :

He shot the wives and children.

The wives and little children;

He shot the wives and children.

And laughed to see them die.

One or two instances of the proved falsity of statements made by people under the stress of excitement and indignation may be given.

It was reported that some thirty to thirty-five German soldiers entered the house of David Tordens, a carter, in Sempst; they bound him, and then five or six of them assaulted and ravished in his presence his thirteenyear-old daughter, and afterwards fixed her on bayonets. After this horrible deed, they bayoneted his nine-year-old boy and then shot his wife. His life was saved through the timely arrival of Belgian soldiers. It was further asserted that all the girls in Sempst were assaulted and ravished by the Germans.

The secretary of the commune, Paul van Boeckpourt, the mayor, Peter van Asbroeck, and his son Louis van Asbroeck, in a sworn statement made on April 4, 1913, at Sempst, declared that the name given to the carter, David Tordens, was quite unknown to them; that such a person did not live in Sempst before the war and was quite unknown in the commune; that during the war no woman or child under fourteen was killed in Sempst, and if such an occurrence had taken place they would certainly have heard of it.' Another report published was that at Ternath the Germans met a boy and asked him the way to Thurt. As the boy did not understand them, they chopped off both his hands.

• Quoted in Truth: “ A Path to Justice and Reconciliation,” by “Vetax.”

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Statement by the Mayor of Ternath, Dr. Poodt, on February ii, 1915 :

“ I declare there is not a word of truth in it. I have been in Ternath since the beginning of the war, and it is impossible that such an occurrence should not have been reported to me ; it is a pure invention.”

After the publication of the various reports, five American war correspondents issued the following declaration:

To let the truth be known, we unanimously declare the stories of German cruelties, from what we have been able to observe, were untrue. After having been with the German Army for two weeks, and having accompanied the troops for over one hundred miles, we arc not able to report one single case of undeserved punishment or measure of retribution. We are neither able to confirm any rumours as regards maltreatment of prisoners and non-combatants. Having been with the German troops through Landen, Brussels, Nivelles, Buissiere, Hautc-Wiherie, Merbes-le-Chateau, Sorlesur-Sambre, Beaumont, we have not the slightest basis for making up a case of excess. We found numerous rumours after investigation to be without foundation. German soldiers paid everywhere for what they bought, and respected private property and civil rights. We found Belgian women and children after the battle of Buissiere to feel absolutely safe. A citizen was shot in Merbes-le-Chateau, but nobody could prove his innocence. Refugees, who told about cruelties and brutalities, could bring absolutely no proof. The discipline of the German soldiers is excellent; no drunkenness. The Burgomaster of Sorle-sur-Sambre voluntarily disclaimed all rumours of cruelties in that district. For the truth of the above we pledge our word of honour as journalists.

{Signed) Roger Lewis, Associated Press; Irwin Cobb, Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia Public Ledger, Philadelphia ; Harry Hansen, Chicago Daily News, Chicago ; James O’Donnell Bennett, Chicago Tribune; John T. McCutcheon, Chicago Tribune, Chicago.

In the issue of the New York World of January 28, 1915, appeared the following dispatch ;

Washington, January 27/A.—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. The report states that the British Government had investigated thousands of reports to the effect that German soldiers had perpetrated outrages on fleeing Belgians. During the early period of the war columns of British newspapers were filled with the accusation. Agents of the British Government, according to the report of the American Embassy in London, carefully investigated all these charges; they interviewed the 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 hardships, but they should be charged up against the exigence of war rather than to brutality of the individual German soldiers.

The following passage occurs in a review by the New York Times Literary Supplement of March 19, 1918, of “ Brave Belgians,” by Baron C. Buttin, to which Baron de Brocqueville, the Belgian Minister of War, contributed a preface commending its truth and fairness:

The work gives eye-witness accounts of the first three months of the invasion of Belgium, and is made up of reports told by various people who did their share in that extraordinary resistance—colonels, majors, and army chaplains, lieutenants, etc. There is scarcely a hint of that “ bugbear,” German atrocities, or the nameless or needless horrors described in the report of the Bryce Commission.

An amazing instance of the way atrocity lies may still remain fixed in some people’s minds, and how an attempt may be made to propagate them even now, is afforded by a letter which appeared as recently as April 12, 1927, in the Evening Star, Dunedin, New Zealand. The writer, Mr. Gordon Catto, answering another correspondent on the subject of atrocities, wrote :

My wife, who in 1914-15 was a nurse in the Ramsgate General Hospital, England, actually nursed Belgian women and children refugees who were the victims of Hun rapacity and fiendishness, the women having had their breasts cut off and the children with their hands hacked off at the wrists.

Here was almost first-hand evidence noting both time and place. An inquiry was accordingly addressed by a lady investigator to the Secretary of the Ramsgate General Hospital, and the following reply was received :

Ramsgate General Hospital, 4, Cannon Road, Ramsgate, 11. 6. 27.

Dear Madam, 1 am at a loss to know how the information about atrocities to women and children, committed by the German soldiers, could have originated in respect to Ramsgate, as there were no such cases received.

Yours faithfully, (Signed) Sydney W. Smith.

An instance of a man being genuinely misled by the information given him, not having any desire himself to propagate lies, can be given in the case of a Baptist minister of Sheffield, who preached on atrocities. On February 28, 1915, preaching in Wash Lane Baptist Chapel, Letchford, Warrington, he told the congregation that there was a Belgian girl in Sheffield, about twelve years old, who had had Iier nose cut off and her stomach ripped open by the Germans, but she was still living and getting better.

On inquiry being made as to whether he had made this statement, he replied :

I have written to our Belgian Consul here for the name and address of the girl whose case 1 quoted at Letchford. If all I hear is true, it is far worse than I stated.

I am also asking for another similar instance, which I shall be glad to transmit to you if, and as soon as, I can secure the facts.

The Belgian Consul, in a letter of March i ith, wrote :

Although I have heard of a number of cases of Belgian girls being maltreated in one way and another, I have on investigation not found a particle of truth in one of them, and I know of no girl in Sheffield who has had her nose cut off and her stomach ripped open.

1 have also investigated cases in other towns, but have not yet succeeded in getting hold of any tangible confirmation.

The minister accordingly informed his correspondent:

I am writing a letter to my old church at Letchford to be read on Sunday next, contradicting the story which I told on what seemed to be unimpeachable authority. 1 am glad I did not give the whole alleged facts as they were given to me.

With many thanks for your note and inquiry.

It is to be feared, however, that his first congregation, satisfied with pulpit confirmation of the story, circulated it beyond the reach of the subsequent denial.

Atrocity stories from the foreign Press could scarcely be collected in a library. A glance through any foreign newspaper will show that hardly a page in hardly an issue is free from them. In Eastern Europe they were particularly horrible. They were the almost conventional form of journalistic expression on all sides. The brutalization of the European mind was very thoroughly carried out. But moral indignation and even physical nausea were checked by the surfeit of horrors and the blatant exaggerations. There can be no more discreditable period in the history of journalism than the four years of the Great War.

A neutral paper {Nietove Courant), published at The Hague, summed up the effect of propaganda on January 17, 1916 :

. . . The paper war-propaganda is a poison, which outsiders can only stand in very small doses. If the belligerents continue to administer it the effect will be the opposite to that expected. So it goes with the stream of literature on the Cavell case, and the varied forms in which the Baralong poison is presented to us. We leave it with a certain disgust, after tasting it, and are only annoyed at the bitter after-taste—the promised reprisals. . . .