m BINDING Vol. Ill The binding design on this volume is an authorized facsimile of the original art binding on the official British copy of the Ver^ sailles Peace Treaty, which was signed by King George V and deposited in the Archives of the British Government. 1 Iflti 7 * Vinkme of the Lusitania ^*^A Gernmn picture issued in \\ commemoration of the disaster ' Painting by ClauS fcergtn (?WP m W mfci THE GREAT EVENTS OF THE GREAT WAR A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE SOURCE RECORD OF THE WORLD'S GREAT WAR. EMPHASIZING THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS. AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES IN THE ACTUAL WORDS OF THE CHIEF OFFICIALS AND MOST EMINENT LEADERS NON-PARTISAN NON-SECTIONAL NON-SECTARIAN COORDINATE WITH "THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS" AND ARRANGED UPON THE STANDARD SYSTEM OF THE NATIONAL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION AS ESTABLISHED UNDER THE COUNSEL OF THE LEADING SCHOLARS OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. WITH OUTLINE NARRATIVES. INDICES, CHRONOLOGIES. AND COURSES OF READING ON SOCIOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS AND INDIVIDUAL NATIONAL ACTIVITIES EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D I DIRECTING EDITOR WALTER F. AUSTIN, LL.M. With a staff of specialists VOLUME III 3s tlfje jSatiottal Slumttt b3 COPYRIGHT, I920, By THE NATIONAL ALUMNI CONTENTS VOLUME III — 1915 Germany's Year of Triumph PAGE An Outline Narrative of The Building of Germany's Empire of Middle Europe xiii CHARLES F. HORNE I The "Prussian Terror" in France Official Slaughter and "the Great Pillage" . . 1 WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN, the former Kaiser. BISHOP HENRY CLEARY, of New Zealand. PREFECT L. MIRMAN, chief Civil Magistrate of the invaded Region. II Turkey Loses the Caucasus {January 4) The Russian Victory of Sarikamish ... 38 ROBERT MACHRAY, Military Authority on the Near East. III The U-Boat War on Commerce (Feb. 4) Germany's Defiance of the Neutral Nations . 49 PRINCE VON BULOW, former Imperial Chancellor of Germany. ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ, organizer of the U-boat warfare. WILLIAM ARCHER, the noted British author. IV Neuve Chapelle (March 10) The First Great Artillery Assault . . -65 COUNT CHARLES DE SOUZA, the renowned French military authority. FRANK R. CAN A, F.R.G.S., British publicist. BERLIN POPULAR MAGAZINE ACCOUNT. V The Naval Disaster of the Dardanelles (March 18) Turkey Proves the British Fleet is not Invincible . 79 HENRY MORGENTHAU, U. S. Ambassador to Turkey. HENRY W. NEVINSON, British military expert. VI The Surrender of Przemysl (March 22) Austria Loses her Last Eastern Stronghold . . 93 GENERAL ALEX. KROBATIN, Austrian Minister of War. STANLEY WASHBURN, official British observer at the front. DIARY OF A RUSSIAN OFFICER, vii viii CONTENTS v>a<;ic VII The "Battle of the Passes" (March 23- April 16) Russia Reaches the Peak of her Success Against Austria . . . . . .106 COUNT CHARLES DE SOUZA, the renowned French military authority. OCTAVIAN TASLAUANU. a Rumanian officer under Austria. GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS, the Russian Commander. MAJOR E. MORAHT, the German military critic. VIII Germany Protests Against American Munition Sales (April 4) She Demands a Revision, in her Favor, of Neu- trality Laws . . . . -125 BARON STEPHEN BURIAN, Austria's Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1915. ROBERT LANSING, U. S. Secretary of State. IX The Canadians Defy the First Gas Attack (April 22) The Second Battle of Ypres . . . 137 OFFICIAL GERMAN PRESS REPORT. ' GENERAL SIR JOHN FRENCH, the British Commander. SIR MAX AITKEN, Member of the Canadian Parliament. X The Armenian Massacres (April-December) The Last Great Crime of the Turks . . .154 LORD BRYCE, former British Ambassador to the U. S. DR. MARTIN NIEPAGE, German teacher in Asia Minor. DR. HARRY STURMER, German diplomat in Constantinople. XI Dunajec: the Breaking of the Russian Front (May 1) The Triumph of German Artillery . .177 GENERAL VON MACKENSEN, the German Commander in the Field. GENERAL KROBATIN, Austrian Minister of War. GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS, The Russian Commander in the Field. STANLEY WASHBURN, British Official Observer with the Russians. XII The Sinking of the Lusitania (May 7) Germany and the United States at Open Clash . 187 LORD MERSEY, Judge at the Official Examination. GOTTLIEB VON JAGOW, German Minister of Foreign Affairs. PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON. CONTENTS XIII Britain Democratized under Lloyd George (May 25) . The Munitions Crisis ..... JULES DESTREE, a noted French author. GEORGES CLEMENCEAU, Prime Minister of France. IX PACK 201 XIV Italy joins the Allies (May 23) The Italian "People's War" on Austria . EMPEROR FRANZ JOSEF, of Austro-Hungary. VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, Chancellor of Germany in 1015. ANTONIO SALANDRA, Prime Minister of Italy in 1915. 214 XV The Fall of Warsaw (Aug. 4) Russia Loses her Whole Outer Line of Defense GENERAL VON DER BOECK, German infantry general and critic. MARGARETE MUNSTERBERG, condensing German official accounts. PRINCESS CATHARINE RADZIWILL, of Russia. 229 XVI Britain's Failure at the Dardanelles (Aug. 6-10) The Anzacs Lose the Main Assault at Sari-hair LORD KITCHENER, British Minister of War in 1015. SIR IAN HAMILTON, British Commander at the Dardanelles. ELLIS BARTLETT, British eye-witness. LEMAN VON SANDERS, German General commanding in Turkey. 252 XVII Germany's Secret Attack upon America (Sept. g) Disclosure of Criminal Methods Employed Against Neutrals . . . . . .274 ROBERT LANSING, U. S. Secretary of State. CONSTANTIN DUMBA, Austrian Ambassador to the U. S. PROF. E. E. SPERRY, official publicist for the U. S. Government. XVIII The Big Allied Offensive in the West (Sept. 25- Oct. 6) The Battles of Champagne and Loos . COUNT CHARLES DE SOUZA, French military authority. COLONEL A. M. MURRAY, British military critic. FRENCH GOVERNMENTAL STATEMENT. GERMAN GOVERNMENTAL STATEMENT. A GERMAN OFFICER PARTICIPATING. 302 CONTENTS PAGE XIX Russia's Desperate Rally (Sept.-Oct.) The Czar takes Personal Command of His Armies 316 NICHOLAS II, Czar of Russia. OFFICIAL RUSSIAN BULLETIN. AN HUNGARIAN OFFICER IN THE ATTACK. EDWIN GREWE. British authority on Eastern Europe. XX Bulgaria Joins the Central Powers {Oct. 11) She Seeks the Destruction of Serbia . . .324 A. MENSHEKOFF. RussiaD patriotic leader. PRINCESS CATHARINE RADZIWILL, of the Russian Court. WASSIL RADOSLAVOFF, Prime Minister of Bulgaria. ITALIAN PRESS DISPATCH. XXI The Crushing of Serbia (Oct. 6-Nov. 30) The Heroic Struggle against Hopeless Odds . 341 VLADISLAV SAVIC. Serbian scholar and soldier. ROBERT MACHRAY, Military authority on the Near East. XXII Execution of Edith Cavell (Oct. 12) Teutonic Obstinacy in its Ugliest Mood . . 359 MAITRE DE LEVAL. Belgian lawyer. BRAND WHITLOCK. U. S Minister in Belgium. HUGH GIBSON, Secretary to the U. S. legation. REV. H. S. GAHAN, British chaplain in Brussels. DR. A. ZIMMERMANN, afterward^German Minister of State. XXIII The Middle-Europe Empire Established (Nov. 5) A German Railroad from Berlin to Constantinople 372 HARRY PRATT JUDSON, President of the University of Chicago. R. W. SETON-WATSON, Lecturer of London University. MANIFESTO OF THE GERMAN "INTELLECTUALS." DR. LUDWIG STERN, German publicist. XXIV The Serbian Exodus (Nov.-Dec.) The Awful Winter Flight Across the Mountains . 394 HENRI BARBY, French eye-witness. FORTIER JONES, American eye-witness. DR. NIERMEIJER, President of the Holland Investigating Committee. ANTHONY ANTHANASIADOS, Serbian eye-witness. KOSTA NOVAKOVITCH. Secretary of United Labor Unions of Serbia. XXV Poland's Agony (Nov.-Dec.) . . . .411 FREDERICK C. WALCOTT. U. S. Member of Polish Relief Commission. M. TROMPCZYNSKI, Polish Member of Prussia's Legislature. ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME Ill The Lusitania {page 187) Painting by Claus Bergen. • • PAGE Frontispiece The Winter-long Battle for the Carpathians Painting by Anton Hoffmann. . 106 The United Defense Crayon by Lucien Jonas. • • . 141 Germany in the Air Painting by M. Zeno Diemer. • • • 303 XI 1915 GERMANY'S YEAR OF TRIUMPH AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S GRIM EMPIRE OF MIDDLE EUROPE BY CHARLES F v HORNE THE year of 191 5 was one of sore amazement to western Europe. In 1914 Germany had failed; her plan for conquering Europe by one swift blow had been met by a France more strong, a Britain more alert, a Russia more loyal, than she had reckoned on. But in 191 5 the Allies' leaders misread and misjudged this Germany as completely as she had misjudged them, and with results almost equally disastrous. They seemed to think that Germany, having struck with her utmost force, had exhausted her forty years of preparation and was now helpless. They assumed that they had only to "carry on," only to continue the same effort as before, and soon she would be entreating mercy at their feet. Therein they underrated both the German power and the German temper. The whole German people now gave them- selves up to winning the War at any cost. To the mere mili- tary colossus of 19 14 there succeeded in 19 15 a national colossus far mightier, less brutal, but more patiently and sternly terrible. The German people as individuals almost ceased to exist. Every one was set to labor for the State, either in the army itself or in preparing its munitions. Fam- ily life became a minor matter, as did personal business. The little manikins no longer moved or thought or even dreamed as human beings; they were become mere cogs in the mighty war-machine which was to establish the German supremacy over Europe. It is worth noticing that European victory, and no longer world victory, was the purpose of this less blatant Germany xiii xiv AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF of 191 5. World victory was now quite frankly laid aside as too large an attempt. It was to be the goal of a later war, for which this one was to prepare the foundations. The valiant army of France, the unconquerable navy of Britain, the ever-replenishing hordes of Russia, these had proven too strong to be destroyed at once. So Germany concentrated on making the most of what she had already partly accom- plished, the extension of her power over a newly created empire including all middle Europe. The plans of her leaders for establishing this empire were shrewdly laid. The Germans recognized, more clearly than the Allies, the nature of the deadlock on the French front. What this deadlock really meant was not that Ger- many was growing feebler, but that the new devices for defensive war had so outranked new measures for attack that a lesser army in the trench line could hold back a stronger one. Advance must be a matter of a few feet or rods, won only at a cost impossible to pay, even in cheapest "cannon- fodder." Hence, inverting her purpose of the preceding campaigns, Germany in 19 15 planned to remain on the de- fensive in the West, while she won the War in the East. In the West her purpose became civic rather than mili- tary. She set herself to consolidate her rule over Belgium and the captured parts of northern France in the hope that these might ultimately become a part, and a submissive part, of her Mid-Europe Empire. Her governors therefore tram- pled underfoot all civilian protests within the conquered re- gion. They governed these lands in the same spirit as they had ravaged them. Their motto was still that no other peo- ple could possess any rights when these came in conflict with German wishes. 1 In the military strife in the West, Ger- many planned merely to hold her trench line as cheaply as she could ; while France and Britain, kept in hot anger by her treatment of the captured provinces, exhausted their strength against her defenses. Meanwhile in the East, her new em- pire was to be expanded and consolidated by her fiercest war- fare. 1 See § I, "The Prussian Terror in France," by the Kaiser, Bishop Cleary, etc. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xv THE SWINGING PENDULUM OF VICTORIES With this end in view, Germany began the year by en- couraging Turkey to a vigorous attack on Russia, so as to deplete the Russian strength. Enver Pasha, the vainglori- ous Turkish leader, was persuaded to undertake an Asiatic campaign against the Russians in Armenia and the Caucasus. This resulted in brilliant Russian victories. 1 They were disastrous to the Turks, but not at all so to Germany, whose control over her Ally was thereby increased. Also Russian strength was distracted from the main front, the Polish front, where Germany's own attack was later to be made. In similar fashion, Russia unwittingly played the Ger- man game, by devoting herself to a gigantic and most heroic attack upon the Austrian forces in the Carpathian moun- tains. Here for months was fought the remarkable "Battle of the Passes." All through the bitter eastern winter of 19 14-15, the Russians struggled onward, high above the line of constant snow, to force their way over the Carpa- thian mountain passes and so enter Hungary and break the last shadow of Austria's power. Nature fought against them even more than the fiery Hungarians, who were. now bat- tling not for conquest but for their homes. Yet even against Nature the Russians pushed on. They won the crest of the mountain range; they were ready for the plunge into the land beneath; and it was spring at last, the fateful first of May, 1915. 2 Up to that first of May the pendulum of the war seemed still swinging in the Allies' favor. Russia had won three great victories : in the Caucasus, in the Carpathians, and a third in the surrender of Przemysl (pra-mel), the one strong fortress which had held out against her in Galicia. The Austrian army in Przemysl surrendered on March 22nd, surrendered to starvation after six months of siege, the only old-time lengthy siege of the War. 3 Everywhere, the strug- gle in the East seemed to promise Russian victory; and everywhere in the Allied countries hope ran high. 1 See § II, "Turkey Loses the Caucasus," by Machray. ' See § VII, "Battle of the Passes," by De Souza, Duke Nicholas, etc. 8 See § VI, "Surrender of Przemysl," by Gen. Krobatin, etc. xvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF This was in spite of the first serious setback in the Dar- danelles, which had given Turkey breathing space, time to recover her courage after the defeat in the Caucasus and become once more convinced of her own and German su- periority. In March a combined French and British war- fleet had attempted to force the strait of the Dardanelles, the Turks' guarded passage between Europe and Asia. Its conquest would have captured Constantinople, and crushed all Turkey at a blow. Almost, the bold scheme succeeded. We know now that with a little more effort it would have succeeded; but it failed. The ships were driven back; and the reanimated Turks gathered an army and munitions, and made enthusiastically ready to resist any future attack. They applauded themselves as being the only people who had "proved that the British fleet was not invincible." 1 Meanwhile, the early spring had also seen a lack of Ally success on the Western trench line. France and Britain were both hopeful of beating back the Germans there. The French tried it in March in the Champagne district, west of the Argonne forest, but without success. Next, the British at Neuve Chapelle ( noov-sha-pel ) made an even larger ef- fort, with even less result. For the Neuve Chapelle assault British munition factories had been working all the winter making a store of projectiles, to be used in one huge ar- tillery attack such as the world had never known before. This, on March ioth, was hurled against the Germans. The bombardment was tremendous, awesome; it lasted for three days of tumult. Then the British infantry rushed upon the battered trench-line hoping to break through, capture the dazed remnant of the defenders, and then attack the other German positions from the rear. But they had overcounted the effect of the great bombardment. Other German de- fenses, other troops, were ready behind the foremost trenches ; and soon the British were brought to a halt in costly failure. 2 It was no part of Germany's plan to seem too passive 1 See § V, "Naval Disaster of the Dardanelles," by Ambassador Morgenthau, etc. 1 See § IV, "Neuve Chapelle," by De Souza, etc. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xvii in the West. Shortly after Neuve Chapelle, she launched a cautious offensive of her own against Ypres. Here for the first time she tried that new and hideous weapon, poison gas. On April 22nd, she directed a deadly cloud of this against the point where the French and British trenches met. A French regiment facing the full strength of the gas was practically annihilated, hundreds of men perishing in awful torture. The British portion of the line was held by the Canadian troops ; and these, encountering the poison less di- rectly, were able to survive and even at last to beat back the German infantry assault that followed hard upon the gas. The whole War contained nothing more terrible than the launching of this new form of agonizing destruction, nor more splendid than the heroism with which it was met. 2 Soon afterward the Germans tried another similar device, the flame thrower, by which they hurled a stream of burn- ing oil against their foes. The fire started conflagrations everywhere it fell. But against this also the Allied soldiers held firm, nor did the fire prove practical of employment in large quantities. Moreover, hasty inventions were contrived to meet the gas assaults. Thus defense soon reasserted itself as stronger than attack. The Western struggle was again at deadlock by the first of May. A MIGHTIER WARFARE BEGUN AT THE DUNAJEC On that fateful date Germany launched her own real main attack, the one for which she had been preparing all winter. How the German High Staff must have smiled at the French and British bombardments in Champagne and at Neuve Chapelle! How they must have congratulated them- selves upon their own superiority ! They too had been pre- paring a bombardment, and it was such a monster one as made that of Neuve Chapelle seem the effort of a child. It was directed against the Russian army on the Dunajec (doo'- nah-jek) River, in Austria's province of Galicia just south of the Polish border : that is, about midway of the long Eastern battle line. It did what the Britons had hoped to do 2 See § IX, "Canadians Defy the First Gas Attack," official German and British reports. xviii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF with their bombardment ; it fairly wiped out the Russian forces who encountered it. The German infantry then moved forward, seized the Russian lines at Gorlice, and brought the great guns onward for another attack. This Battle of the Dunajec, or of Gorlice, was the beginning of the great German drive on Russia, "Von Mackensen's bat- tering-ram," as it was called. The Russians could find no defense against it. None seemed possible. 1 The long Russian line was thus broken in the center. The victors to the southward in the battle of the Carpathian passes had to turn back from the Hungarian invasion, lest their line of supplies be broken and themselves entrapped. That was why Germany had been so willing that the Rus- sians should expend their best blood in the Carpathians ; she knew she could check that advance the moment Mackensen was ready. She had thus saved Austria a second time. All through May and June that dreadful "battering-ram" kept on advancing through Galicia. Russian soldiers by the hundred thousands strove to bar its passage by the mere weight of human bodies. They perished in numbers un- counted and uncountable. Przemysl was recaptured by the advancing Germans and Austrians on June 3rd. Lemberg, the Galician capital, was regained June 22nd. It had fallen to the Russians in the great battle of the preceding Septem- ber; and for almost a year they had retained over Galicia a rule more complete, and far more kindly, than that of the Germans over Belgium. By July 1st the great Mackensen drive seemed slowing up, but by that time practically all Galicia was once more in Austro-German hands, a restored province of the rapidly developing Mid-Europe Empire. ITALY ENTERS THE WAR A further check was put, at least to Austria's share in the Russian drive, by what was perhaps the main event of the year, Italy's entrance into the War. 2 This was formally announced on May 23rd, and was followed by a rapid Italian advance across the Italo-Austrian frontier in the Alps and along the Isonzo River. The Teutons, however, refused to 1 See § XI. "Dunajec," by Gen. Mackensen, Duke Nicholas, etc. * See § XIV, "Italy Joins the Allies," by Franz Josef, Salandra, etc. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xix become unduly anxious over this attack. They trusted to the strong natural barrier of mountains to hold the Italians in check, and sent there only the weaker Austrian reserves, the regiments of the "Landstrum" or older men. For a year the Landstrum held the Italians fairly in check, while Aus- tria still used her main strength against her former foes, Russia and Serbia. This sudden entry of Italy into the struggle was an event not clearly understood at the time, especially in neutral lands, where there was a tendency to regard it as a mere selfish grasping after territory, an attempt to get in line with the victorious Allies and so share their spoils. Such views were only possible because the European situation was misun- derstood. Distant neutral peoples still labored under the illusion that Germany had exhausted herself at the Marne; and they had been told that the spring battles of Neuve Chapelle and Ypres had been great Ally triumphs, proofs of an ever-increasing superiority of force. They pictured the Germans at home as exhausted, starving and despairing. Of the new national colossus which had prepared the munitions for the tremendous Mackensen drive they had no conception whatever. That drive was to them but another of the see- saw movements on the Eastern front; no one foresaw that it was the beginning of Russia's destruction. The Allies' leaders, however, were under no misconcep- tion as to the terrible meaning of the astounding artillery battle of the Dunajec. In it they foresaw Verdun and all the other tremendous battles of 191 6. Italy knew well that she was entering on a struggle of life and death. German prop- agandists had done everything possible to keep her neutral ; but, as her leaders grimly stated their position, a victorious Germany would surely trample Italy under foot despite every promise. The only future that awaited her in that direction was one of vassalage such as had already been forced upon Austria. So she might better make her fight for freedom now, while she had great allies to help her, than be driven to a hopeless struggle afterward, alone. In other words, Italy was at last awake to the full mean- ing of the German world-menace. The scales had fallen xx AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF from her eyes, as they were to fall from those of America two years later; and the entry of the one into the War was of somewhat the same character as that of the other. THE AROUSAL OF DEMOCRACY AGAINST GERMANY Indeed Italy's step was but a part of that general arousal, that intensifying of effort, with which Western Europe met the realization of Germany's increasing power. Now came the real nationalization of the Great War. France to be sure could increase her effort but little. From the first she had recognized this as a struggle to the death, and had sum- moned every Frenchman to her aid. Britain, however, had so far fought in her old dogged but leisurely fashion. In May, 191 5, after the news of the Dunajec, she underwent a revolution. 1 It was a quiet, orderly revolution, typically British, ap- proved of by all classes. Nevertheless it meant the com- pletest change. The country had always been an oligarchy, that is it had been ruled by its upper classes, now it became a democracy. Lloyd George, the Welsh lawyer, leader and trusted friend of the working classes, was taken into the central group of rulers. Later he was to become Prime Min- ister; for the moment he was made Minister of Munitions, and his special business was to draw all the civilian, popula- tion into the making of war munitions. The famous war hero, Lord Kitchener, was already busy building up a great army ; and when at last volunteering failed, the nation turned sturdily to conscription, a method of State control over the liberty of the individual which Britons had always held in abhorrence. They had declared it the distinguishing mark between autocracy and their own freedom. Now, however, the whole nation had been hardened to a temper matching that of France and Germany. They meant to have an army and munitions to equal these of the Dunajec. There was to be no more dallying with the War. It was to be fought with the strength of every Briton. Perchance British determination would never have reached this height had it not been for the new and fero- 1 See § XIIT, "Britain Democratized," by Destree and Clemenceau. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xxi cious methods of warfare adopted by the Germans both overhead and underseas. These were all part of Germany's mistaken policy of "fright fulness" which was at last to unite the world against her. She began with warship raids on British seacoast resorts in the autumn of 1914. These could have no direct result beyond the destroying of a small amount of private property and the slaying of some dozens of civil- ians, defenseless folk who by every principle of International Law or common humanity should have been spared and even protected. The whole question was as to the moral effect of such destruction. Were the Britons really, as the German schools had taught, a nation of "shopkeepers," who would figure these bombardments as a simple matter of profit and loss, and decide that war under such conditions was a poor investment to be sold out promptly to escape further cost? Of a similar nature were the airplane raids which began against both France and Britain late in 19 14, and the Zeppelin raids which began early in 191 5. With these Germany at first anticipated a real military advantage, such as the de- struction of munition factories, stored munitions, railroads, or even bodies of troops. Such a hope, however, must have been soon abandoned. The important military centers were too well protected; their destruction from aircraft proved infinitesimal. Soon the German airplanes and Zeppelins were, quite frankly, bombing Paris and London and lesser towns at random as an expression of "frightfulness," doing as much promiscuous damage as they could to private prop- erty and to civilian lives. To these assaults the Allies, being less prepared with aircraft, could at first make no response in kind. The French, as soon as they possessed the means, responded with similar raids ori Germany. The British, however, endured the con- tinued "strafing" with grim scorning for almost two years before they would even admit the necessity of checking it by reprisals. Not until the last year of the War did Ger- many come forward with a proposal that such aerial at- tacks should be abandoned by both sides. It was she who at last adopted the shopkeeper's reasoning she had attributed xxii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF to Britain. The weight of retributive attacks had become so heavy that Germany decided that for her the slaughter of civilians no longer paid. THE SUBMARINE ATTACK ON COMMERCE The new submarine warfare adopted by Germany in 19 1 5 was an even graver defiance of humanity and of In- ternational Law. So far as the latter is concerned, it is of course true that there were no submarines when the inter- national law, as to capture and destruction of ships at sea, was agreed to by Germany in common with other nations. It is therefore conceivable that Germany might logically and even humanely have rejected the old law and proclaimed more satisfactory ones of her own. But here, as in all of her defiances of humanity, she simply rejected all righteousness and plunged into elemental ferocity. Her first large step in this direction was taken in February, 1915. 1 Up to that time, as we have seen, Germany had used her submarines as other nations might have used them, to combat warships. In this legitimate field, in addition to the previously told triumph of Lieutenant Weddigen, she on February 1, 191 5, sank a British battleship, the Formidable; and later in the War one French and two other British bat- tleships were thus destroyed, though none of them were of the huge "dreadnaught" class. But these successes were too few and too costly to be worth the effort and the loss involved. In direct warfare the submarine did not pay. Moreover, the British blockade, gradually increasing in se- verity, was a serious menace to Germany. So the German Government resolved to use its U-boats in a new way, as commerce destroyers; and on February 5th she made an- nouncement of this to the world. Under old established sea law a merchant ship could not be destroyed until it had been actually boarded and exam- ined to make sure it was an enemy ship or carrying "con- traband goods," and until ample provision had been made for the safety of the civilian crew. Such a course was obvi- 1 See § III, "The U-boat War on Commerce," by von Biilow, von Tirpitz, etc. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xxiii ously impossible to a tiny and fragile submarine. If it even approached an enemy merchant ship it might be captured or destroyed. In the later years of the War, larger subma- rines carried heavy guns of their own; but the early U-boats depended solely on the deadly torpedo, which must be launched from a distance. Hence the U-boat captain could not even tell which ships were enemies, since these would probably pretend neutrality. Germany met the problem by announcing that she would sink all merchant ships that approached her enemies' coasts. This meant obviously the shooting or drowning of many French and British sailors who had been protected by the older laws. Such was indeed the grim result; and the sea slaughter that followed would in itself sufficiently explain that general tensing of the Allies' purpose which has been pointed out as characteristic of the spring of 191 5. For neutral nations the new German U-boat warfare meant an even more serious situation. It was the cause which was finally to drag into the War not only the United States but Brazil and China and several other neutrals, and was to breed against Germany an abiding hatred among Nor- wegians, Dutch, and those other small neutrals who, because of their immediate proximity to Germany's fright fulness, dared not openly defy her. No Power had ever before, even in war time, destroyed neutral vessels, or slain neutral citizens on the high seas. Except for pirates the neutrals had been safe; and against pirates all the sea Powers had united. Yet here was a leading Power going back to piracy, deliberately announcing death and destruction to any neu- tral who dared to sail the seas where she forbade. Germany knew full well what she was doing. She thought she could afford to ignore the anger of the outer ring of nations. The only one strong enough to assail her was the United States; and German statesmen easily persuaded themselves that this country was too peace-loving to be driven into war. They even ventured to make secret war on Amer- ica, sending agents to blow up munition factories and per- form other crimes against her civil law. They did this so openly that the United States Government was compelled to xxiv AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF demand the recall of the Austrian Ambassador for obvious violation of the diplomatic laws. 1 Germany, through her submissive Austrian tools, went even one step further. She had the Austrians protest against the sale of American munitions of war to the Allies. The protest took the wholly illogical ground that since Ameri- cans were not in a position to deliver merchandise equally to both parties to the War, their sales to the Allies became "opposed to the spirit of International Law." Not content with drowning neutral sailors to stop their trading with the Allies, Germany sought to give a show of justice to her action by this Austrian protest. In itself the protest would be un- important, except for the fact that it partly accomplished what it was presumably intended to do. It confused some Americans into thinking there might be justice in the Aus- trian plea, when in truth there was none whatever. Ger- many had herself made a business of selling "munitions," and sometimes even regiments of soldiers, in every war that America had ever fought, and not once had she been in a position to traffic equally with each party to the war. In other words, Germany was again inventing an absolutely new rule, labeling it "International Law," and summoning neutrals to apply it for her benefit. Her plea, as a future question not of law but of abstract justice, had a speciously plausible sound. How unjust its application would really have been was decisively pointed out in the reply made by the United States Government. 2 Confusion of American opinion was further increased by the fact that Britain at the time of the new U-boat attack began expanding the established methods of enforcing mari- time International Law, so as to enable her to check all sup- plies from reaching Germany by sea. The United States Government protested to Britain, but admitted that the new British methods were within debatable grounds of law. The dispute was thus one to be settled within courts of law. Moreover, America's dispute with Britain was wholly dif- ferent from that with Germany, because the British steps in- 1 See § XVII, "The Secret Attack upon America," by Lansing, Dumba, etc. 1 See § VIII, "Germany Protests against America," by Burian, etc. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xxv jured Americans only in property, which could be restored or paid for, and did not strike at American lives, which were as beyond repayment as they were beyond restoration. Nevertheless, the confusion of mind among Americans caused by Austria's protest, Germany's arguments, and the controversy with Britain, made it possible for Germany to venture her next step in frightening neutrals from the seas. On May 7, 1915, she sank the Lusitania. 1 There is no need to dwell here upon the horror of that tragedy. Americans know of it too well. It was of a piece with all Germany's policy of fright fulness; and our frank unwillingness to fight made us to German judgment a fit- ting subject for the lesson of submissive fear which she meant the sinking of the Lusitania to teach to all the neu- trals. German psychology misread Americans as wholly as it had misread the Belgians and the Britons. THE GREAT GERMAN ATTACK ON RUSSIA By the summer of 19 15 the world had thus become almost a unit in its disgust and anger against the Germans, though by no means a unit in its fear of them. That was to come later. The meaning of Dunajec was not at first widely un- derstood. Germany now proceeded to make her new power clear. In the west she launched in June a series of smashing attacks against the French in the Argonne. These were con- ducted by the armies of the Crown Prince, and had perhaps a dynastic rather than a military purpose. At any rate, they were as resolutely met as they were delivered. The Germans could advance but a few yards, paying dearly for each one; and after three weeks they abandoned the assault. If it had been intended only, to concentrate the Allies' attention on the west, it had succeeded. Germany's mighty movement against Russia seemed for the moment almost for- gotten. This Mackensen advance had been, as we have seen, partly delayed by Italy's entrance into the War; but by July 1 st Galicia was reconquered and Mackensen was turning his advance northward into Poland, threatening Warsaw from the south. 1 See § XII, "Sinking of the Lusitania," by von Jagow, Wilson, etc. xxvi AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF So began the third great German assault against War- saw; and this time it was successful. Hindenburg, whose main armies lay along the Prussian-Polish border to the north of Warsaw, suddenly struck southward with all his strength, while Mackensen was striking northward. The main Russian armies were thus caught between the two, and might well have been surrounded in Warsaw and cap- tured there. Their commander, the Grand Duke Nicholas, foreseeing this, fought delaying battles as long as he could, and then retreated, leaving Warsaw to its fate. The Ger- mans entered it on August 4th, triumphant indeed at having captured the great city, but sorely regretful that they had not also captured within it the main Russian army. 1 From that time Russian resistance continued crumbling before the mighty blows of Hindenburg and his able lieu- tenant, Mackensen. The greatest of Russian fortresses along the Western frontier was Kovno on the Niemen (ne- men) River, the chief defense against East Prussia. This was stormed and captured by the Germans on August 17th. Its loss startled Russia far more than that of Warsaw. The latter was, after all, a Polish, not a Russian city ; but Kovno was Russian, and in one sense was the outermost defense of Petrograd itself. Directly east of Warsaw the strong Russian fortress town of Brest-Litovsk (le-tofsk) was captured on August 25th ; and between this loss of Kovno in the north and Brest- Litovsk in the south, the Russian armies were again threat- ened with encirclement. To escape, they on September 1st abandoned Grodno, another strong fortress position between the two extremes. Their line was now withdrawing toward the interior of Russia, losing mightily in men, munitions and territory, but always managing to evade that final sur- rounding and capture which was the avowed aim of the Hin- denburg campaign. On September 5th the Czar announced that he himself would take over the active command of the Russian forces. This made no immediate change ; but gradually the Russian resistance stiffened. Once more Hindenburg made a desperate 1 See § XV, "The Fall of Warsaw," by Van der Boeck, Princess Radziwill. etc. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xxvii effort to entrap an army, this time the one at the northern end of the long Russian line, at Vilna. After a week of battle Vilna was captured on September 18th. But the Russians again withdrew in safety, and the German losses in the long and bitter battle had been so heavy that Germany saw it was time to pause. Her success in the campaign had been enormous. Poland had been added to the Mid-Europe Empire ; much of the Russian frontier lands had been occu- pied ; and the Russian armies had been sorely battered. To have advanced further against them in the face of the on- coming Russian winter, would have been to repeat the blunder of Napoleon. 1 Moreover, the Russian forces seemed once more as strong as ever. Immediately after their escape from Vilna, they began attacking again. At Dvinsk, to the north of Vilna and Kovno, there was a great battle lasting all through mid-October. When the Russians had no better weapons, they fought with clubs or with bare hands ; and the Germans made no progress forward. Soon a new line of trenches ex- tended all along the eight hundred miles of the Eastern front ; and the exhausted Germans were perhaps more glad of the chance of shelter than were the furious and uncon- querable Russians, THE ALLIES' EFFORTS TO AID RUSSIA Meanwhile what were the Allies doing to aid Russia in her dark hour of need? Britain continued her unfortunate attack upon the Dardanelles. If she could break the Turk- ish resistance there, she could bring to Russia some of the much needed ammunition. Having failed to force a passage through the strait by her ships alone, she sent an army to their aid. But by the time the army arrived in May, the Turks were fully ready, self-assured and eager for the fight. The Britons could scarcely even force a landing, much less sweep the Turks from the entire Dardanelles peninsula and capture Constantinople. The main assault was heroically delivered, chiefly by Australian and New Zealand troops, on August ioth, and was a costly failure. 2 All year these ^ee § XIX, "Russia's Desperate Rally," by the Czar, et al. 1 See § XVI, "Britain's Failure at the Dardanelles," Kitchener. xxviii AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF troops remained on the narrow strand they had won under the protection of the battleships, an unfortunate spectacle to the nations of the East, who were thus taught by ever- present example that the Britons were not invincible. At length, in December, Britain formally withdrew her forces, formally admitted her defeat. France also sought to relieve the pressure upon Russia. In September, Marshal Joffre ordered the first great French offensive on the Western front, the attack in Champagne. Hitherto Joffre had proclaimed his advocacy of the famous "nibbling" process. That is, he meant to let the Germans do all the costly attacking, while his sheltered defensive troops killed as many foemen as they could, yielding a little ground when the attack became too heavy, and falling back to the next defense. Let Germany work her savage will of plunder and torture in the captured region ; that, France could not stop. But in the end the "nibbling" would exhaust Germany's strength, and the British blockade would reduce her to starvation along with her victims. The iron patience of the nibbling process, however, had not allowed for Rus- sia's possible overthrow and the consequent opening to Ger- many of all the foodstores of the East. So now, to relieve Russia, Joffre undertook the Champagne offensive. 1 Midway between the sorely battered city of Rheims (ranee) and that Argonne forest where the Germans had just attacked in vain and where Americans were later to win undying glory, the French let loose a three days' bom- bardment, the heaviest yet known in the West. Then half a million Frenchmen charged forward on a narrow front around Perthes, the scene of their unsuccessful spring attack. For ten days they battled onward, but succeeded in ad- vancing their line only some two miles. Of course German reinforcements were drawn to the spot by thousands, and to that extent the German advance against Russia may have been weakened by the Champagne assault. But it was de- livered at terrible expense, both in men and munitions ; and the French official expressions of satisfaction over the re- sult were by no means convincing to outsiders. In brief, 1 See § XVIII, "The Big Allied Offensive," official statements. THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xxix the military lesson of 19 15 on both the Eastern and the Western front was that while the new enormous artillery assault could break a second-rate trench defense, yet when both offensive and defensive were of the highest grade, the defense was still immeasurably the stronger. GERMANY SEIZES THE ROAD TO CONSTANTINOPLE With the dying down of the French attack in the West and of the great German advance in the East, there came in October the most tragic event of the tragic year, the crushing of heroic little Serbia. 1 Germany had planned this as her most important coup, the step which was to establish as a definite reality her Empire of Middle Europe. Her two Allies, Turkey and Austria, were wholly in her hands. Ger- man generals commanded their armies; and in Turkey's case German officers controlled her navy also. But between the German-Austrian territorial block and its Turkish out- post intervened the middle Balkans, where Bulgaria was neu- tral, and Serbia a foe. German diplomacy convinced Bul- garia that the War was practically won for Germany, and so persuaded the Bulgarian king to do what the Germans had accused Italy of doing. He entered the War hastily on what he deemed the winning side, so as to share in the spoils. Germany was glad to promise the Bulgarians anything and everything. They were to be lords of all the Balkans. Of course this lordship could only be preserved under Germany's control and protection; but for the moment Germany was careful not to emphasize this feature of the bargain. 2 The arrangements for Bulgaria's entry into the War were conducted so secretly that the Allies were caught un- awares. Moreover, the redoubtable General Mackensen was secretly shifted from the Russian front and with some of the best German troops was sent across Austria to the Ser- bian border. Now, suddenly, he began a fourth Teuton in- vasion of Serbia; and just at the most disastrous moment for the sturdily resisting Serbs, Bulgaria declared war upon them and attacked them from the rear. 1 See § XXI, "The Crushing of Serbia," by Savic, etc. 'See § XX, "Bulgaria joins the Central Powers," by Menshekoff, Radoslavoff, etc. xxx AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE OF There was some effort to give Allied help to the Serbians by an army gathered at Salonika, the nearest port in neutral Greece. But this aid was both too feeble and too late. The Serbs fought desperately all through October and Novem- ber. They yielded no inch of soil until it was deep dyed with blood. They fought the German-Austrian army on their Danube frontier for a week before they withdrew from Belgrade. Their secondary capital, Nish, fell to the Bul- garians on November 5th. The Serbian Government was withdrawn from town to town southward and westward, until on November 25th its members abandoned Prisrend, the last little border city that remained to them, and fled across the Albanian mountains to the Adriatic coast. Here, under shelter of the Italian warships, they established them- selves at Scutari (skoo-tah-re), an exile government in a foreign land. But they had still subjects. Undying in its fame for- ever, will be that last retreat of the Serbian army. Hope- lessly outnumbered, surrounded, except for the snow-cov- ered Albanian mountains at their backs, without ammunition and even without food, the Serbian soldiers still refused sur- render. They preferred the starvation march across those frozen winter mountains. Many of the Serbian women and children chose that alternative also, rather than face the torture they knew they must expect from their unhuman conquerors. It was the exodus of a nation. 1 Few of the women and children survived; but of the men, with Italian aid, there ultimately gathered over a hundred thousand in the Adriatic Island of Corfu, the nucleus of a new Serbian army which ultimately marched in victorious triumph back into its empty and hideously martyred land. THE SHRIEKING YEAR OF MASSACRE General Mackensen and his German troops promptly withdrew from conquered Serbia and left it in Austrian and Bulgarian hands. Of the butcheries, the deliberate torturings which followed there, we can only speak in despairing horror. American Indians never maltreated their victims with more 1 See § XXIV, "The Serbian Exodus," by Barby, Novakovitch, etc THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE xxxi fiendish cruelty and delight. In fact the series of wide- spread massacres with which the Mid-Europe Empire was inaugurated in 19 15 make that perhaps the record year for all eternity of man's inhumanity to his fellows. Here is the record. In the West, Germany continued to hold her dominion over Belgium and Northern France by her established policy of "fright fulness." Of this the most notorious, though by no means the most barbaric, case was the sudden, secret process of law and falsehood by which her officials executed the British nurse, Edith Cavell, on October 12th. 1 On the Western oceans, as we have seen, Germany began the murder of civilians and neutrals by means of submarines, including the sinking of the Lusitania. From the Western skies Zeppelins and other aircraft dropped their bombs. In the East Germany over- ran Poland, professed a heartfelt friendship and pity for the suffering Poles, and then exploited them in a slavery and starvation ten times worse than that which desolated Belgium. The Belgians were saved by American charity and by the publicity Americans gave to each injustice. The Poles, shut off from Western knowledge and Western pity, were compelled to endure their Calvary unaided. 2 These were German and official brutalities, deliberately carried out for the consolidation of the expanding German Empire. In the farther East, where Germany had linked forces with the uncivilized hordes of Asiatic origin, with Turks and Bulgars and Hungarians, the massacres were more personal, undertaken as much for pleasure as for busi- ness. Of such nature were the Serbian atrocities, and the still more unspeakable massacres of Armenians by the Turks. For these outbreaks of her Eastern partners Germany is only indirectly responsible ; she did not command them but only allowed and unofficially encouraged them by precept and example. Meanwhile Germany herself raised constant out- cry, because on the Western front the French and British employed some of their African and Hindu troops. These 1 See § XXII, "Execution of Edith Cavell," by Whitlock, Zimmer- etc. 2 See § XXV, "Poland's Agony," by Walcott and Trompczynski. xxxii THE BUILDING OF GERMANY'S EMPIRE troops were trained to civilized warfare and kept under civilized command. Yet at the very moment of her protest, Germany linked hands with the most unhuman of Asiatics, and permitted these monsters to work their ghoulish wills unrestrained. The details of the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians are the most foul, the most unprintable, that his- tory has been called on to record since the first Hunnish in- vasion of Europe almost fifteen hundred years ago. 1 To Germany, however, these endless sickening horrors were but minor incidents, unfortunate, but inseparable from the one great triumph, the establishment of her Empire of Middle Europe. 2 This had become a visible fact, symbolized by the sending of a German train under German officials all the way from Berlin to Constantinople. This was first accomplished in November, and soon became a regular sys- tem, affording unbounded satisfaction to every German. The new extension of empire had become possible through three main steps, each destructive to Germany's al- lies. Indeed, like the fabled god of old, Germany seemed able to grow only by devouring her own children; for even in Poland, which she now held as a conquered province, she had begun by proclaiming Polish independence and then de- stroying it. The three steps of her advance to Constanti- nople had been : first, the breakdown of Austria, compelling her obedience to German commanders ; second, the Armenian massacres, which threw the Turkish leaders into the arms of German diplomats as their only shelter from punishment by outraged Christianity; and third, the German assistance and protection which had enabled Bulgaria to destroy the Serbs, and had thereby bound her in iron chains to Germany, her one defense against the sternly indignant ''brotherhood of Democracy." This brotherhood was being born, with many throes, through all the western world. It was founded everywhere on the increasing rule of the people. Only by thus appealing to Democracy could the former rulers find the strength to persist in the tremendous War. 1 See § X, "The Armenian Massacres," by Lord Bryce. Dr. Sturmer. etc 2 See § XXIII, "Middle Europe Empire Established," by Presi- dent Judson, et al. THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE THE CAPTURED PROVINCES FACE OFFICIAL SLAUGHTER AND "THE GREAT PILLAGE" WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN BISHOP HENRY CLEARY PREFECT L. MIRMAN As M. Mirman well points out in his narrative herewith, we re- tell these stories of German robbery and slaughter in no desire for re- venge ; but only because it is the somber duty of History to make sure that they are not forgotten, that men shall not build the future on any mistaken idea of the character and the possibilities of that mass of people who once sought to force their mastership upon the surround- ing nations — and who may some day seek to do the same again. We must all be eager for a renaissance of the German conscience, a re- construction of the German mode of life and thought. But it would be madness to let this hope for the future of the Teuton lead us to ignore his demon-worship of the past. Remember that each statement made in the following narrative has been tested and retested, and has stood long before the public gaze to invite contradiction or disproof, if such, alas, were possible. Dr. Cleary, the Roman Catholic Bishop of New Zealand, a clergyman of the noblest repute, speaks wholly from his personal experience. M. Mirman, on the other hand, is the official speaker for the entire body of French civic authority in the invaded districts. His report becomes thus the sworn and solemn statement of united France. There have been individual German reports by men who declared that they, being at the front, saw nothing of these savageries. If the reporters were truthful men, they were very fortunate ones ; for there have also been shoals of individual reports by Germans who took active part in the atrocities and who gloried in them. Moreover, they found in their German homes a ready audience to applaud and encourage them. The little local newspapers of Germany in 1914 and 1915 are not pleasant reading to one who hopes for the spiritual future of the human race. Among so many German voices speaking, we have chosen here the most authoritative one. We let the German Kaiser himself de- clare the proclaimed policy of the "super-race." One would like to doubt the authenticity of this damning statement of one who, from his own human imperfection, assumes to become at once judge, jury, and executioner over an entire race — a race who have overwhelmingly disproved the verdict of degeneracy which is here made the reason for destroying them. Unfortunately we have as yet no evidence against the genuineness of this terrible self-indictment. It was officially pub- lished in France in January, iqiq, as part of an intercepted letter sent by the Kaiser early in the War to his fellow-plotter, the aged Emperor of Austria. C. F. h. W., VOL. III.— 1. I 2 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE BY KAISER WILLIAM II. MY soul is torn asunder, but everything must be put to fire and blood. The throats of men and women, chil- dren and the aged must be cut and not a tree nor a house left standing. With such methods of terror, which alone can strike so degenerate a people as the French, the war will finish be- fore two months, while if I use humanitarian methods it may be prolonged for years. Despite all my repugnance I have had to choose the first system. BY RT. REV. DR. CLEARY Both in Northern France and Belgium one hears very numerous stories of oppression and outrage against the civilian population. Some of these, told at second, third, or tenth hand, I felt bound to regard as exaggerated or wholly untrue. Others were stated in a form which did not aid investigation. Others, relating to fully detailed cases of alleged crimes, some of them of peculiar atrocity, I had not the time, nor as to certain of them the inclination, to inves- tigate. I here refer only to acts of oppression and vio- lence, vouched for by eye-witnesses of good standing, of de- clared competency and good character. The more public and striking outrages described hereunder are, moreover, supported by a very considerable mass of independent and convergent testimony which cannot be lightly set aside, and which induces a strong conviction that, on the whole, the German army of occupation did, in point of fact, translate into action the policy of "ruthlessness" and "terrorization" against the non-combatant population of the part of France to which reference is here made. Hostages During my stay in France, I met a number of prominent and respected civilians — mayors, parish priests, merchants, etc. — who had been seized by the German troops as hos- tages or sureties for the "good behavior" of the local popu- lation towards the invaders. The "good behavior" usually THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 3 included the safety of the German communications; the prompt supply of transport, money, or other things requisi- tioned; and the avoidance of any of the many (and often vague) things which the German commander, in his abso- lute discretion, might regard as helping the French enemy or interfering with the invaders' military plans. Failure, or alleged failure, on the part of the inhabitants exposed the hostages to heavy fines, deportation, long imprisonment, or prompt death at the hands of a firing party. Now, hos- tages have, in such circumstances, no effective power of control over a scattered and distracted population, and they are in no way responsible for the military action of their country's forces. For these reasons, the taking and, on oc- casion, execution or other penalizing of hostages is abhor- rent to Christian sentiment and the modern practice of civ- ilized war. Part 2, Chapter I, of the "German War Book" deals with this question of hostages, and it admits what fol- lows : "Every writer outside Germany has stigmatized this measure as contrary to the law of nations, and as unjustified towards the inhabitants of the country." The same official publication goes on to say that this practice of taking hos- tages "was also recognized on the German side as harsh and cruel," but that its supreme justification was "the fact that it proved completely successful." In the war of 1870, the Germans, says the "War Book," forced their French hos- tages "to accompany trains and locomotives." In the town of (where I was billeted for a week in the mayor's house) the Germans, when in retreat before the advancing French troops, found yet another use for hostages. A large number of the townsfolk, variously estimated for me by many eye-witnesses, were "rounded up" as hostages by the retreating invaders. Those unhappy civilians were placed in two guarded lines along two adjoining bridges and their approaches, at the very edge of the town. One of these bridges was over a canal, the other over a river beside the canal ; and over these two bridges the German troops pro- ceeded to retreat between the two long rows of French hos- tages: the idea was that the oncoming French would, in order to save their own people, forego the military advan- 4 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE tage of blowing up the bridges with high explosive shells or of treating the flying enemy to doses of bursting shrapnel or machine gun fire. The French shrapnel did, however, spatter over the bridges, smiting friend as well as foe. All my local informants assured me that, as each hapless hos- tage dropped, slain or wounded, he was thrown by his cap- tors into the water, from which the bodies of twenty-two of them were subsequently recovered. Although permitted and authorized by the German "War Book," the exposure of civilians to the fire of their own troops is, of course, contrary to the usages of civilized war. It is expressly forbidden by Chapter XIV. of the British "Manual of Military Law." Pillage In every war there occurs, in some or other degree, the looting of private property. (By looting is meant private thefts committed by individuals.) I am able to bear per- sonal testimony to the generally splendid conduct of our New Zealand troops in this respect; and I have reason to believe that the restraint practiced by them, in this matter, represents the general attitude of the whole army. In the old wars, for instance, fowls, even in friendly countries, were commonly looked upon by soldiers as "derelict goods," the lawful prize of the first comer. And so they were re- garded by both German officers and men. But since the en- forced retirement of the invaders, domestic fowls have again gradually multiplied in Northern France ; and it is a high tribute to our men to state that these important "live stock" of the French people, in the regions traversed by me, are practically as safe from confiscation as they would be in New Zealand or the British Isles. The fowl-runs in the war area represent a testimonial to the good conduct of our men, just as surely as another excellent testimonial is fur- nished by the great and highly reciprocated kindness and affection which they manifest to the children. This some- times shows itself in quaint and "spoiling" ways (as some of them would to their own little ones), but always with the best intentions. THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 5 In modern military law, the seizure of the private prop- erty of non-belligerents is not permissible, except under the pressure of immediate military necessity ; and where it is so taken, it is to be paid for on the spot, or its receipt acknowl- edged by a proper document. Over all the regions of France and Belgium traversed by me, and formerly occupied by German troops, the plunder of the private property of civilians was carried out in a generally wholesale way, with- out any pretense of military necessity, without payment, and usually without receipt, under the orders and direct su- pervision of army officers, and as an act of settled State pol- icy. The evidence of this public policy of plunder was simply overwhelming; it extended over the whole occupied area visited by me; and it spared no class or section of the people — involving rich and poor alike to the extent of their respective chattel resources. Collating the oral and ocular evidence furnished to me by, literally, hundreds of towns- people, villagers, and peasantry, I found that the general official procedure was as follows : At an early suitable moment after the occupation of a country district or center of population, official arrange- ments were made for the seizure and exportation of the greater part of the chattel property of the inhabitants. For this purpose, a sufficient supply of motor lorries was as- sembled. Squads of soldiers, under the supervision of officers, proceeded with the work of plunder. Others raided the fields and farms, collected and drove off all horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, etc., and took possession of all fowls and Belgian hares (which were numerously raised in Northern France for food purposes). Returns were demanded of all stock, stores of grain and other foodstuffs — the failure of a boy to mention a quantity of wheat concealed in a cellar resulted in his being shot by a firing-party close to my last billet in France. Grain and forage were seized and sent away; so, too, was a great part (sometimes nearly all) the food in dwellings; and much of the sustenance of even poor people was roughly thrown about, damaged, wasted, or destroyed. This was in 1914-15. Bed-coverings were almost invariably taken; so, usually, were linen and woolen articles (under- 6 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE clothing of every sort included), napkins, towels, curtains, table-covers, etc., ornaments, and furniture, excepting (as a rule) bedsteads and other heavy and cumbrous pieces. Locked drawers, presses, etc., were broken open. Money, plate, costly ornaments of comfortably portable size, and jewelry seem (according to the information given to me by numerous victims of this modern Great Pillage) to have been specially favored by the officers. And when the work was done to the satisfaction of the Command, the long pro- cession of high-loaded motor lorries set out on its way towards the Rhine. I will give here just three partial instances of the truly Prussian thoroughness with which this policy of plunder was carried out, in violation of natural right and the law of nations. One woman villager, a worker's wife, showed me her gutted (but somewhat reorganized) home, and wound up her detailed description of the official pillage with these words : "Those Prussians did not even leave me my baby's little booties or socks or shirts — they took every- thing, everything, everything." Only a few doors away from her humble abode stood the big house of a manufac- turer with whom I was billeted for some days. He had sent away his wife and children shortly before the invaders oc- cupied the village. These made a pretty clean sweep of his house. Several Prussian officers were billeted there. They personally stole every article of jewelry in the place, and all the valuable gold and silver family plate, some of it con- sisting of old and treasured heirlooms ; they seized a number of costly gold and other ornaments; they invaded every drawer, and even carried away his wife's silk dresses. All his oil-paintings were taken away, except a few, of lesser value, and some of these were slashed with sword-cuts. "lis ont tout pille [they have pillaged everything]," said my host to me in his account of the behavior of his guests from be- yond the Rhine. Just one other instance out of a great number that might be cited : It occurred at a little farm- house, the home of a poor, childless, and very old widow, just behind our fighting lines. I was billeted in that shell- cracked farmhouse, within German gun-fire range, for THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 7 thirty-two days, while serving as chaplain in the fighting lines. The local evidence went to show that the poor old woman's home and little farm, like many others in the neigh- borhood, was pretty thoroughly "cleaned up" by the plunder- parties. Her own story, and that of another old eye-wit- ness living in the house, was to this effect : That the mili- tary officials took practically everything, down to the last fowl; that they compelled the old woman to cook her own stolen food for them; that they fed inordinately thereon, drank great quantities of her coffee, and, said she, "what they did not devour, they wasted," leaving hardly a scrap of eatable food in the place. "Payment?" she replied, in an- swer to a question; "not a sou!" And receipt for goods taken ? "There was no receipt," said she. The same replies were, in substance, made to me in all of the hundreds of cases of officer-led plunder of which I have a recollection. And, according to international law and to established con- ventions (to which Germany was a party), such a course of conduct in war is illegal : it is thieving, naked and unadorned. Levies Article 52 of the Hague Regulations declares, in regard to requisitions: — "They must be in proportion to the re- sources of the country." This provision is, as to its pur- port and effect, embodied in section 416 of the British "Man- ual of Military Law," and the British Requisitioning In- structions. The same just and humane Hague Regula- tion was affirmed by Article 40 of the Declaration of Brus- sels, accepted by Germany. But it is also set aside in Chap- ter IV of the "German War Book," where it declares that "it will scarcely ever be observed in practice," and that "in cases of necessity the needs of the army will alone de- cide." Over a great part of the country visited by me, the civilian population not alone had their chattel property sys- tematically plundered, but they were, in addition to this, subjected to racking (sometimes confiscatory) money fines and levies. Some small hamlets, robbed of practically every- thing, and living in part on borrowed money, had to pro- vide, on short notice, forced contributions running into £160 8 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE and upwards. From the information supplied to me by my manufacturing host and others, some of these compulsory payments, in the circumstances of the contributors, amounted in practical effect to the "buccaneering levies" (brandscJiatz'itngcn) which are declared to be illegal in Chapter IV of the "German War Book." Yet this cruel and unjust measure is in full accord with the spirit of the mili- tarist writers whose pagan principles are crystallized in the "War Book." One of these is Clausewitz, an authority of high standing with Prussian militarists. In the fifth chap- ter of his "Vom Kriege," he declares that the military right of requisitioning private property "has no limits except those of the exhaustion, impoverishment, and devastation of the whole country." And, despite its condemnation of "buc- caneering levies" and some commendable references to the rights of private property, the "German War Book" itself reaches the same merciless conclusion. This is stated in the third paragraph of the Introduction and in a fierce foot- note quotation thereto from Moltke, which is given with ap- proval. Both in text and footnote we find, nut-shelled, the Prussian policy of "terrorismus" against both the persons and the property of non-combatant populations. Murder of Civilians Another and more terrible form of this established Prus- sian militarist policy of "terrorization" of peaceful popula- tions is the frequent and unnecessary taking of civilian lives. From numerous eye-witnesses — of the classes' already de- scribed — I heard details of the murders of many unarmed civilians. One of these, already referred to above, was a mere boy, guilty of no military offense punishable by death. As illustrating the methods followed by officers in some such cases of murder, I cite two' instances vouched for by com- petent and respectable eye-witnesses frequently seen by me. During the early days of my stay at the front, in North- ern France, I visited one of my priests, a Catholic chaplain, who was then billeted, with two other New Zealand officers, at a better class of farmhouse, quite close to the trenches. I had been informed that the house-mother there was witness THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 9 to a tragedy that had been reported to me. I found her to be an extremely pious Catholic woman, of middle age, fairly educated, and speaking better French than is common among the peasantry of that region. She confirmed, even in most details, the story which I had heard, and told me, in sub- stance, what follows : — Her brother, a farmer, lived near by — a quiet, inoffensive man, very industrious, extremely careful not to mix himself up in military or political mat- ters, not guilty of spying or any civil or military offense, and immensely devoted to his wife and three children. While my informant was on a visit to him, there entered some German officers. One of them (without any judicial for- mality) drew his sword and severed the farmer's hand at the wrist, the hand dropping to the floor. They then fired three revolver shots at him, two of the shots penetrating the victim's abdomen, the third his throat. All this took place in the presence of the victim's sister (my informant), and of his wife and three children, all of whom were frantic with horror at the sudden tragedy. The poor man's sister cried to him : "Oh, brother, you are dying ; make an act of sorrow for your sins and of love of God." He replied faintly: "I cannot, sister; say them for me." Then his sister knelt beside him and began to recite the prayers. When she was so engaged, the dying man cried out : "I am done for!" and, making a big sign of the Cross over him- self, began to recite the acts of sorrow for sin and of love of God. And so he died. The sorrow-riven widow, seem- ingly almost unbalanced by grief, left the scene of the tragedy, and lives in a town where I was billeted in the mayor's house for a week. In that town, the hostages were killed, as already described, and close to it occurred the fur- ther outrages to which reference is made hereunder. A little over a mile westward from the town last re- ferred to, there stands, close together, a group of small farmhouses — some of them at one time billets for our sol- diers. I visited some of them from time to time — one of these (not a billet) being the home of a widow whose hus- band had also been cruelly murdered without any judicial formality, by German officers. He had hidden under some io THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE hay in his barn as soon as he heard the rattle of German rifles "shooting up" the country around about. (I found a rather widespread impression among the peasantry, for many miles around, that persons running away, or found hiding, were regularly shot on sight by the then newly ar- rived invaders.) In the course of their search of the little farm in question, they discovered the hidden man, and the officers perforated him with seven revolver bullets. This is the statement made to me by his widow and by the family next door (only some twenty yards away ) , who quite plainly heard the shots that widowed their plundered neighbor and orphaned her children. The next door house referred to was also pretty thoroughly stripped, but the occupying troops did not otherwise molest the house-mother and the five delightful little children there, who used to swarm joy- ously about me when I visited the billets near by. When, in company with two of my chattering little friends, I paid a first visit of sympathy to the widow of the murdered man, she was busy winnowing peas in the barn, the same barn, grinding heavily on the handle of a big noisy machine. Her face looked towards the wall furthest from me. When she had finished the loaded hopper, she turned suddenly at the sound of my greeting. I shall carry to my death the agony staring out of her eyes and set in the closely crowded wrinkles prematurely carved by grief, and the utter hope- lessness and helplessness that marked her mechanically-told tale of swift tragedy. There must be many such eyes in France and Belgium, that shall ever be riveted upon such sudden horror, until death, in mercy, closes them. Of the various other cases brought to my notice, I will mention only those that follow : — In the neighboring town (a little over a mile away) seventeen civilians were (I was informed on the spot) put to death by the invaders; in a village close by, several others. I had heard a great deal about a ghastly massacre perpetrated close to the village of D . I spent part of a January day investigating the matter, right upon the spot, and among those (including the parish priest) who were likely to furnish me with reliable information. I learned, in substance, that eleven flying peas- THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE n ants (several of them being refugees from other invaded districts) were "rounded up" a few hundred yards outside the village, compelled (without trial) to dig a big pit, and then shot into it by a party of Prussian troops, under the direction of a Prussian colonel. The parish priest (who, by the way, was for a time a hostage) showed me the position of the pit into which the victims were shot. It is in an open field, outside the village. Three of the murdered men, local people, were exhumed and interred in consecrated ground in the parish cemetery, beside the ruins of the once beautiful church which the Prussians fired and destroyed on the eve of their retreat before the advancing French. A Prussian major assured the parish priest (so the latter informed me) that the civilian population of the place had not fired upon or molested the invaders. Such a course of action would, indeed, have been an act of supreme folly on the part of the women, children, and the few men (mostly old or unfit) left at the time in those French countrysides — espe- cially in view of the well-known and oft-proclaimed meth- ods of proscription and terrorism with which any civilian interference would be avenged, even upon the innocent, as was done in the well-remembered days of 1870. In view of this well-known German policy, the local authorities at D (and in these parts of France generally, so far as I know) seized the few shotguns and other weapons of offense in each commune, and stored them, under lock and key, in the Mairie, whenever there arose any probability of the early arrival of the invaders. In a town in which I was billeted, it was suggested or asserted by German officers that shots were fired by civilians. This, however, was hotly denied by prominent citizens, and one mayor assured me (as he had previously assured these officers) that the shots complained of were fired, in his full view, by organized French troops in retreat. That, however, did not save the place from enor- mous levies. And both the clergy and the civil authorities rather frequently voice the conviction that such accusations were merely a pretext for pursuing the German State policy of "ruthlessness" and "terrorismus" in the form of ex- actions in blood and coin. In any case, I was assured, many 12 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE times over, that no proper trial, or no judicial proceeding of any sort, preceded the penalty of death or of confiscatory levies. The "German War Book" declares that the slay- ing of prisoners is sometimes "expedient" — although it acknowledges the proceedings to be always "ugly." But even a civilian prisoner does not lightly lose, either by nat- ural law or international convention, his right to a fair trial before forfeiting his life. And even if attacks were really made by individuals upon the invaders, the Prussian method of inflicting gen- eral penalties, in such cases, is forbidden by Article 50 of the Hague Convention : "No collective penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on ac- count of the acts of individuals, for which it cannot be re- garded as collectively responsible." But a wide range of tragic outrage and wrong is left to the discretion of officers in the following words of sweeping menace contained in the official Introduction to the "German War Book" : "Certain severities are indispensable in war; nay, more, true hu- manity very often lies in a ruthless application of them." But neither militarist sanction, nor even the plea of "or- ders," can be held to justify "inherently immoral'' acts of violence and inhumanity. Some "Not Bad" Everywhere that I went, both in France and Belgium, I found that the people asserted differences in conduct among the various national elements of the German army of oc- cupation. Even among French soldiers and some veterans of the war of 1870, I met sometimes with good words, some- times with merely negative and comparative commendation, for Rhinelanders, Saxons, and a few others. I came across a certain number of cases in which both German officers and men were, for instance, ashamed of the evil work of State-organized plunder. And this was especially the case where they were billeted upon, and kindly treated by, the people whose homes they were ordered to pillage. In such cases, the work of plunder, although carried out, was gen- erally by no means so searching and merciless as it too fre- THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 13 quently was elsewhere. Regarding such troops, the people would remark that they were "not bad," "not at all bad," that there were some "quite respectable men among them," and that this or that officer was "courteous" or "amiable," etc. Yet even the least objectionable of the invaders seem to have, under "orders," inflicted rather severe ordeals upon the people. I had read a number of statements to the discredit of the Bavarian troops during the early part of the war. I was, therefore, quite unprepared for the practically uni- versal verdict in their favor all over those invaded parts of the war-zone where I was in touch with the civilian popu- lation. These troops may or may not have been average samples of the Bavarian armies. On that point I venture no expression of opinion. But this I know : that, over the districts where I found they had been in occupation, the unfailing answer to inquiries was to this effect : That, among the invaders of these parts, the Bavarians were the most inclined to consideration and mercy in the gathering of spoil, less given than others to the "shooting up" of civilians, and, in billets, comparatively unobjectionable. The statement (published in British papers early in the war) was several times re-told to me in France, that two Ba- varian regiments had mutinied against the execution of some of the "frightfulness" orders given in Belgium, and had been transferred elsewhere; and some instances were men- tioned to me of real kindness, on their part, towards the people. I mentioned this unexpectedly favorable verdict regard- ing Bavarians to a British officer occupying an important position in Belgium : he was one of the comparatively few who spoke French, and, practically from the beginning of the war, mixed freely with the people in (among others) the selfsame areas as were covered by my experiences at the front. He assured me that his information, derived from the people, expressed, on every side, the same opinion. And he told me the following illustrative case, which was afterwards repeated to me, in substance, by some residents near the spot : i 4 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE This British officer's story relates to a now battered and uninhabited farmhouse, at present within our lines. For over a month I visited it or passed by it almost daily, on my way to or from the fire-trench. During the German occupation, the farm-buildings were used for a time as billets for a detachment of Bavarians. Just before their arrival there, the house-mother had died, leaving several helpless little children. The Bavarians told the bereaved father that he might pursue serenely his usual outdoor oc- cupations, and that they, in the meantime, would look after the household and the motherless little ones. The cooking, washing, tidying-up, etc., were (I was assured) carried out with great, fastidious care; the house was a picture, the children shining examples of neatness and greatly attached to the big, hefty fellows from beyond the Rhine. The Prussians I met several French civilians who spoke not unkindly of individual Prussian soldiers who had been billeted upon them. I met one, and only one Frenchman in my experi- ence who spoke well of a Prussian officer. That w?s the parish priest (already referred to), and he spoke very kindly indeed of the Prussian major already mentioned in the course of this letter. But in regard to the other Prus- sian officers with whom he had come into contact, his mildest expression was that they were all "arrogant" and "evil-mannered." For the rest, I made numerous other in- quiries regarding Prussian officers, as distinguished from officers of other sections of the German army. Such in- quiries or remarks were ordinarily met with set lips and flashing eye; with declarations that, though the Prussian private was sometimes "not bad," the Prussian officers were the most ruthless in pillage and the murder of civilians ; and with such epithets (hundreds of times repeated) as "brutal," "merciless," and (over and over again) ce sont tons des barbares — mais tons, tons (they are all barbarians, all, all). The general verdict, as expressed to me, was that the worst and most callous violators of the usages of civilized warfare were the Prussian officers, and that the worst of the THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 15 Prussians were the Pomeranians, both officers and men. In this connection, it is, perhaps, a curious coincidence that, East Prussia is the home of the system known as "Prussian- ism," which has overlain Germany and organized the Em- pire, less as a State than as an Army bent on conquest. The usually magnificent calm of French patience often breaks into a glow of hate when the Prussians and their ways are mentioned. With sundry other nationalities of the German Empire, it seemed to me that the peasantry of those regions felt that, under happier auspices, they might live, in peace, as neighbors, in a neighborly way. I thus gathered that, even amidst the fierce resentments aroused by such methods of warfare, the Northern French peasant is often able to judge as does President Wilson, between the German people and the Prussian military oligarchy. These, and their methods of pagan "frightfulness," have seared the brain and soul of the Flandrian populations. Destruction of Churches From townsfolk, villagers, peasantry, British officers and others I learned that the German method of dealing with churches proceeded generally along the following lines in the parts of France under consideration here : When a re- treat from a hamlet, village, or town seemed to them an early likelihood, the German officers in command requisi- tioned all the kerosene and benzine around about, intro- duced straw, firewood, and other inflammable material into the church, piled up chairs, benches, etc., flooded the place as well as they could with the liquid, and then set the whole thing alight. They also, at times, distributed explosives in places where they were calculated to increase the damage. In sundry cases it was evident to even the most casual observer that the building was of little or no use for purposes of military observation or offense, being without tower, spire, or other such feature, and being overlooked (in some cases which I noted) by taller buildings. Occasionally, one sees only one building in a village burned down — it is the church. More numerous still are the churches destroyed by German guns firing high explosive shells. I ascertained 16 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE that, in several cases, the church towers had been used by both French and Germans in turn for observation purposes. In such cases, the destruction of the observation post was a legitimate, though regrettable, military measure. But one curiously frequent and significant fact struck me in connec- tion with the churches burned down or otherwise destroyed by retreating German troops in the area of France to which I refer. It is this : Over a wide area, nearly every tower was left standing, a conspicuous landmark in the flat land- scape. With a minimum of trouble, they could have all been immediately used for observation purposes by the ad- vancing French troops. The spires, where present, were burned down or blown down; and the towers in question could easily have been in great part demolished by high ex- plosives, such as were sometimes used upon the walls. But they were left, and still they stand. And it is assumed that they were spared for a German military purpose, namely, to serve as useful landmarks for "ranging" the German ar- tillery. In one small area visited by me, close to our lines, six churches were destroyed. Two of the priests were killed, and a third had an extremely narrow escape. Mention might here be made of a peculiar form of "frightfulness" followed by the Germans in destroying some of the churches in this district by high explosive shells. After a vigorous, accurate, and destructive bombardment of one church only (other buildings around being left com- paratively little damaged) the firing suddenly ceased for a time. The parishioners (a very pious population here- abouts) felt confident that the bombardment was at an end, and they gradually assembled in and around their church to see and estimate the damage done. The vast majority of the gatherings naturally consisted of women, children, and old men — the fit men of military age being away in camp or billet or trench. Suddenly, without warning, the German guns broke out again, this time in a furious tempest of shrapnel, with results to the civilian population which you can well imagine. I heard of this form of "ruthlessness" from a number of persons, and (as regards one very con- siderable center of population) from some New Zealand THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 17 officers who were present, as well as from one of the priests of my diocese, a military chaplain, who witnessed the de- struction, by these means, of one church of great beauty from his billet in the same square. Various Crimes Article 44 of the Hague Regulations says : "Any com- pulsion, by a belligerent, on the population of occupied ter- ritory, to give information as to the army of the other bel- ligerent, or as to his means of defense, is prohibited." This just and humane provision is one of the many such repudi- ated in the "German War Book." It says in Part II, Chap- ter I : "A still more severe measure is the compulsion of the inhabitants to furnish information about their own army, its strategy, its resources, and its military secrets. The majority of writers of all nations are unanimous in their condemnation of this measure. Nevertheless, it cannot be entirely dispensed with; doubtless it will be applied with regret, but the argument of war will frequently make it necessary." The compulsory betrayal of a country by its invaded in- habitants is thus, quite properly, forbidden by the Hague Regulations. They also (Articles 23 and 52) forbid the forcing of the inhabitants of an occupied region to engage in work designed to injure their country. The official "Ger- man War Book" also treats as "a scrap of paper" this valued provision of Christian and civilized warfare, and it authorizes such unjust compulsion of civilians even to the extent of "shooting some of them" in case of refusal (Part II, Chapter I). During my stay in France I heard a few vague allegations of attempted compulsion under both these heads, but no time was left to investigate them. I merely set down here the provision officially made for such very terrible forms of compulsion. The evidence recently supplied shows that, in point of fact, Belgian and French deportees were compelled to engage (even in the fire-area) in work designed to injure their respective countries. The same official "War Book" approves of certain other resorts "on which," says Professor Morgan, "Inter- w., VOL. III.— 2. 18 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE national Law is silent because it will not admit the possi- bility of their existence" among civilized peoples. I refer to the German War Lord's sanction of "the exploitation of the crimes of third parties (assassination, incendiarism, robbery, and the like) to the prejudice of an enemy." This sufficiently explains certain forms of German official activ- ity in the United States. The "War Book" seeks to justify the "inherently immoral" exploitation of crime by the fol- lowing un-Christian doctrine of Professor Lueder : "The ugly and inherently immoral aspect of such methods cannot affect the recognition of their lawfulness. The necessary aim of war gives the belligerent the right and imposes upon him, according to circumstances, the duty not to let slip the important — it may be the decisive — advantages to be gained by such means." Conclusion In view of the "War Book's" repudiation of so many principles and methods of civilized warfare, it seems, to some extent, superfluous to adduce evidence of "ruthless- ness" and "terrorization" by armies trained and acting un- der its instructions. The Prussian militarists' "War Book" is, in effect, the expression of armed materialism running amok. It provides for, or permits, or supposes, practically every form of "f rightfulness" laid to the charge of "Prus- sianism" during this great struggle; so far as lies in its power, it flings aside the precious results of the Church's centuries of effort (crystallized and extended in interna- tional conventions) to mitigate the atrocities of pagan war- fare. With human nature as it is, war has more than suffi- cient horror, even when hedged around about by the re- strictions called for by chivalry, Christian moral principles, and international agreements. In the mass of men engaged in war there will also ever be some who will fall at times short of the ideals that become the Christian warrior. But just as surely, in the stress of war, will many tend to fall below the lower, as before the higher, ideal of soldierly right and duty ; and depth will naturally and inevitably call THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 19 to depth in the practical application of the hard, crude ma- terialism of the Prussian military code. And, just as nat- urally, such forms of military "fright fulness" as it sanctions or directs, tend to increase in number and intensity, to the progressive degradation of war. We witness the further developments of this tendency in the deliberate sinking of Belgian relief ships, in the large deportations of unprotected girls in France and Belgium (against which the Holy See has raised its voice in protest), and (not to mention other things) in the open and repeated destruction of hospital ships and the attempted slaughter of wounded soldiers and nurses upon the high seas — in direct violation of Hague Convention, No. 10. The fundamental issue now is this: Are we, or are we not, to hold what is still safe, and to re- store what is being lost, of Christian and civilized inter- course between nation and nation? BY THE FRENCH CIVIL AUTHORITIES L. Mirman, Prefect; G. Simon, Mayor of Nancy; G. Keller, Mayor of Luneville This is a statement of horrors, but a statement of plain truths ! Where have we discovered our facts ? They are taken from three sources: First, Four reports issued by the French Commission of Inquiry; 1 and "Germany's Vio- lation of the Laws of Warfare," published by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Second, Two volumes con- taining twenty-two reports of the Belgian Commission, and the Reply to the German "White Book" of May 15, 191 5 ; Third, Notebooks found upon a large number of Ger- man soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers, who have been wounded or taken prisoners, and translated under the direction of the French Government. These valuable records, in which the bandits and their leaders have impru- dently given themselves away, are real "pieces a conviction." These reports in their entirety form an overwhelming indictment. We wish that every one could study them in 1 The members of this Commission were MM. G. Payelle (Premier President de la Cour des Comptes), A. Mollard (Ministre Plenipoten- tiaire), G. Maringer (Conseiller d'Etat), E. Paillot (Conseiller a la Cour de Cassation). 20 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE full. But the books are large, running to thousands of pages, and will not find their way to the general public. Yet every one ought to know how the Germans carry on war. We have therefore made selections from these docu- ments in order to compile this brief statement. A dismal task, this wading through mud and blood ! And a hard task, to run through all these reports, pencil in hand, with the idea of underlining the essential facts! You find yourself noting down each page, marking each paragraph; and, lo and behold, at the end of the book, you have selected every- thing — that is to say, nothing. One might as well start to gather the hundred finest among the leaves of a forest, 01 to pick up the hundred most glittering grains among the sand on a beach. All we can do is to take the first examples which come to hand. This, then, is not a collection of the most stirring and striking German crimes, but simply a book of samples. Two classes of outrage stand out, and must remain ever present to the mind : murdered civilians can be counted in thousands; houses willfully burned, in tens of thousands. Robbery We shall not waste time over the looting of cellars, of larders, of poultry yards, of linen-chests, or of whatever can be consumed promptly, or immediately made use of by the troops — all these are the merest trifles. Let us also dismiss pillage, organized on a large scale by the authorities, of all sorts of raw material and industrial machinery : the bill on this score will come to several thousand million francs. Let us likewise put aside official robberies, com- mitted by governors of towns, or provinces, from municipal treasuries (even the treasury of the Red Cross at Brussels was robbed), usually under the form of fines, or of taxes imposed under transparent pretenses. There again there will be millions to recover. We shall deal here with personal robberies only, as dis- tinct from the pilfering carried on by hungry soldiers, dis- tinct too from the regular contributions levied on a con- quered country by an unscrupulous administration. These THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 21 robberies are innumerable, committed sometimes by private soldiers, but often by officers, doctors, and high officials. Here are some examples : (1) Soldier thieves: They are rougher in their deal- ings, and kill those who offer resistance. It is a case of "Your money or your life." Madame Maupoix, aged 75, living at Triaucourt, was kicked to death while soldiers ransacked her cupboards. Monsieur Dalissier, aged 73, be- longing to Congis, was summoned to give up his purse : he declared that he had no money; they tied him up with a rope and fired fifteen shots into his body. Let us pass quickly over the "soldier thief" — merely small fry! (2) Officer thieves: At Baron, an officer compelled the notary to open his safe, and stole money and jewelry from it. Another, after going through several houses, was seen wearing on his wrists and ringers six bracelets and nine rings belonging to women. Soldiers who brought their officer a stolen jewel received a reward of four shillings. The robberies at Baccarat and Creil were "directed" by offi- cers. At Creil, a captain tried to induce Guillot and De- monts to point out the houses of the richest inhabitants, and their refusal cost them harsh treatment. At Fosse, a French military doctor in charge of an ambulance, conveying two hundred patients, and himself wounded, was arrested and taken before a captain. The captain told the doctor that he would have him shot, and meanwhile opened the doctor's tunic with his own hand, took out his pocketbook and appro- priated the 400 francs he found in it. Officers and privates sometimes share the stolen money. From a diary belonging to a titled Lieutenant of the Guards, let us quote this note : "Fosse. Village entirely burnt. The 7th Company made 2,000 francs in booty." From an- other officer's notebook: "More than 3,000 francs booty for the battalion." Another diary, after the sacking of a place, gives a de- tailed account of the distribution thus : "460 francs for the first lieutenant, 390 francs for the second lieutenant, etc." (3) Doctor thieves: At Choisy-au-Bac, two army doc- 22 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE tors, wearing their brassards, personally sacked the house of a family named Binder. At Chateau-Thierry some doctors were made prisoners : their mess-tins were opened and found to be full of stolen articles. After Morhange, a French doc- tor of the 20th Corps remained in the German lines to be near his wounded. He was accosted by one of his German "confreres," who with his own hands stole his watch and pocketbook. At Raon-sur-Plaine, after the retreat of our troops, Dr. Schneider remained behind with thirty wounded. Next day up came a German ambulance with Professor Vulpius, a well-known German scientist of Heidelberg University, who must have presided over many international medical con- gresses. As soon as he was installed, "Herr Professor" intimated to his French fellow-doctors that he was "going to begin with a small customary formality." The for- mality was a simple one : his colleagues were to hand over to him "all the money they had on them." "I strongly pro- tested" (declared the French doctor, on oath), "but we were compelled to hand over our purses and all their contents. Having relieved us in this way, he turned to our poor wounded, who were all searched and stripped of their money. There was nothing to be done : we were in the hands, not of a doctor, but of a regular brute." (4) Royal thieves: After living about a week in a chateau near Liege, H.R.H. Prince Eitel Fritz, the Duke of Brunswick, and another nobleman of less importance, had all the dresses that could be found in the wardrobes belonging to the lady of the house and her daughters packed up before their own eyes, and sent to Germany. These thieves are often facetious: they give as compen- sation a so-called receipt or bond (in German, of course), which means, "Good for a hundred lashes," or "Good for two rabbits," or "To be shot," or "Payable in Paris." They are also disgusting. In houses robbed by them they leave, by way of visiting cards, excrement in beds, on tables, and in cupboards. These thieves have a partiality for safes, and in this connection the story of Luneville deserves recording. A THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 23 house near the station, belonging to M. Leclerc, was set on fire; the walls alone remained standing, and in one of them (on the second floor) a safe was left intact. A non-com- missioned officer, named Weill, with a party blew up the wall with dynamite, and the safe was extricated from the rubbish, carried to the station, put on a truck, and sent to Boche-land. This man Weill, before the war, often came to Luneville on business with hops, was always well re- ceived there, made himself agreeable and knew everybody. When the Germans settled in the unfortunate town he played a very important part, in spite of his low rank, in acting as agent, confidential clerk and guide to the Commanding Of- ficer. The robbers are also business-like in their transport arrangements as to carriages, military wagons, lorries, and motor cars. At Compiegne, where the home of the Orsetti family was sacked, silver plate, jewelry and articles of value were collected in the courtyard of the chateau, then clas- sified, registered, packed and "put into two carts, upon which they took care to place the Red Cross flag." We read in the notebook of a wounded German soldier, under medical treatment at Brussels, "A car has arrived at the hospital, bringing war booty, a piano, two sewing machines and all sorts of other things." In 1870, our clocks were in most demand; now, pianos form the attraction, and an immense number have been sent to Germany. They are the article particularly favored by the Boche ladies. In a chateau retaken by our troops, an officer left behind a letter from his wife, in which is writ- ten, "A thousand thanks for the beautiful things you sent me. The furs are magnificent, the rosewood furniture is exquisite; but don't forget that Elsa is always waiting for her piano." These women, however, are not all as patient in waiting as Elsa. They frequently come and choose for themselves, and preside over the packing. They have been seen arriving in motor cars from Strasbourg or Metz, at many towns in Lorraine, at Luneville, Baccarat, and elsewhere. All notebooks, more or less, contain such items as these : 24 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE "Wholsale pillage and abundant loot," "Everything de- stroyed or sacked," "Looting going strong," "Played the piano; looting going strong." This very German formula frequently occurs, "Methodically plundered." And again, "We have been allowed to plunder; we didn't require to be told twice : whole bales of loot." "Rcthel. The Vandals could not have done better." (The officer who makes this indiscreet admission and seems to protest against the thefts committed, writes on the fol- lowing page : "I have found a silk rainproof coat and a camera for Felix.") "Convey. The village, and the workmen's cottages looted and sacked. Atrocious. There is something, after all, in what they say of German barbarians." "Ottignies. The village was pillaged. The blond beast has made plain what he is. The Huns and the free-lances of the Middle Ages could not have done better." "Cirey. During the night incredible things were done : shops sacked, money stolen, rapes : enough to make one's hair stand on end." Incendiarism In order to punish imaginary crimes, attributed to in- dividuals or townships, or without even taking the trouble to discover any kind of pretext, the Germans often, espe- cially after looting, set everything on fire so as to make all traces disappear. Sometimes, as at Courtaqon, they com- pelled the inhabitants to provide the material for burning their own houses; or, as at Recquignies, forced prisoners "to set the houses of the doctor and mayor on fire with lighted straw." But generally they do the work themselves. They have a special service for this, and all the requisite in- cendiary material is carefully prepared ; torches, grenades, fuses, oil pumps, firebrands, satchels of pastilles containing very inflammable compressed powder, etc. German science has applied itself to the perfecting of the technic of incen- diarism. The village is set alight by a drilled method. Those concerned act quite coolly, as a matter of duty, as THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 25 though in accordance with a drill scheme laid down and perfected beforehand. Of course, fire once let loose, these people have to see that it does its work completely : accordingly, at Louvain, they destroyed the fire-engines and fire-escapes ; at Namur, they stopped the firemen at the very moment they were pre- paring to do their duty. In this way they sometimes willfully burned down whole blocks of dwellings (Luneville) : sometimes an entire dis- trict (105 houses at Senlis, 112 at Baccarat) : sometimes almost a whole town itself (more than 300 houses at Ger- beviller, 800 at Sermaize). On other occasions they did not leave a house standing (Nomeny, Clermont-en-Ar- gonne, Sommeilles). The complete list of buildings, cottages, farms, villas, factories, or chateaux, burned willfully in this way by hand, will be a formidable one, amounting to tens of thousands. Refinement of cruelty frequently occurs. At Aerschot "women had to witness the sight of the conflagration hold- ing their hands up. Their torture lasted six hours." At Crevic, the Germans began their sinister work by burning a chateau which they knew belonged to General Lyautey. The troops, commanded by an officer, shouted out for Ma- dame and Mademoiselle Lyautey "that they might cut their heads off." The houses destroyed by fire were not always unin- habited. At Maixe, M. Demange, wounded in both knees, dragged himself along and fell prostrate in his kitchen ; his house was set on fire and Madame Demange was forcibly prevented from going to the rescue of her husband, who perished in the flames. At Nomeny, Madame Cousin, after being shot, was thrown into the burning building and roasted. At the same place, M. Adam was thrown alive into the flames. Let us note in common with him, to their credit, an act of comparative humanity. Finding that the unhappy man was not being burnt fast enough, they ended his misery in the flames by shooting him. At Monceau-sur- Sambre, where they set fire to 300 houses, they confined 26 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE the two brothers S. in a shed, and the unfortunate men were burnt alive. The soldiers' diaries are rilled with descriptions of in- cendiarism, some of which we now quote. "Returned by Mazerulles, which was burnt as we passed through, because the engineers found a telephone there connected up with the French." "The whole village was in a blaze. Every- thing destroyed in the street, except one small house; in front of the door was a poor woman with her six children, her arms raised and begging for mercy. And every day it is the same thing." Parux. "The first village burnt (in Lorraine, on Au- gust ioth) ; after that the fun began. Villages in flames, one after the other." Another notebook simply states, "Sommepy — horrible carnage. The village entirely burnt; the French thrown into the burning houses; civilians with the rest." Another recalls theatrical memories. "The vil- lage is ablaze; it reminds one of the conflagration of Wal- halla in the Twilight of the Gods.' " Here is a poet speaking: "The soldiers set up the red cock {i.e., fire) upon the houses, just as they like." This poet is moved, and speaks of "pure vandalism" on the part of his companions in arms. And again, a musician writes, "Throwing of incendiary grenades into the houses; a mili- tary concert in the evening — 'Nun danket alle Gotf ! (Now thank we all our God)." Finally, a Bavarian : "The village (Saint-Maurice, Meurthe-et-Moselle) was surrounded, and the soldiers posted one yard apart so that no one could escape. Then the Uhlans set fire to the place, one house after the other. No man, woman, or child could possibly escape. Only the cattle were removed in safety, because cattle have some value. Any one trying to escape was shot. Everything in the village was destroyed." We shall see presently that they even went so far as to burn ambulances. Murder Not having sufficient space for a complete catalogue, we shall here simply mention the judicial murders of Miss Ca- vell, Eugene Jacquet, Battisti, and others, in order to honor THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 27 the memory of those noble victims. For the same reason, as they are now well known to every one, we content ourselves with merely recalling the criminal torpedoing of the Lusi- tania, Ancona, Portugal, Amiral-Ganteaume ... all mer- chant steamers, without any military character whatever, employed in carrying passengers of every nationality, and the last named crowded with refugees. We may pass over the crimes committed from a distance, so to speak, on unfortified towns, with field-pieces, long- range guns, aeroplanes, and Zeppelins, merely noting that the Germans were the first to fire shells into the center of towns indiscriminately. If they made an exception, it was to aim at the cathedral square, when people were leaving after Mass, as at Nancy, or into the market-place at the time when women are busiest, as they did at Luneville. We only mention here such outrages as were committed at close quarters with hand-weapons, bayonets or rifles. The list is a long one. Will the exact number of victims ever be known ? In Belgium alone it has been proved that up to now more than 5,000 civilians have been assassinated: grown men, old people, women and children. They slaugh- tered their victims sometimes one by one, sometimes in groups, often in masses. They were not content only with killing. At one place they organized round the massacre such tragic scenes, and at another displayed such refinements of cruelty that reason falters in face of their acts, and asks what terrible madness has brought this race to such low depths ? Is it possible ? Yes, it is. Judge by the following examples : A Westphalian prisoner states, "The commanding offi- cer ordered us to shoot two women, and we did so. One of them was holding a child by the hand, and in falling she dragged the child over with her. The officer gave orders to shoot the child, because it could not be left alone in the world." At Rouves, a Government clerk refused to tell a Bavarian officer the numbers of the French regiments in the neighborhood. The officer killed him with two shots from his revolver. At Crezancy, another officer shot with his own hand young Lesaint, 18 years old, "to prevent his being a 28 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE soldier later on." At Embermenil, Madame Masson was shot for having, in absolute good faith, given some wrong information. As she was obviously in a state of pregnancy, they made her sit down on a bench to meet her fate. At Ethe, two priests were shot "for having buried some weapons." At Marqueglise, a superior officer ordered the arrest of four young fugitives. Learning that two of them came from Belgium, he exclaimed, "The Belgians are filthy people," and without more ado took his revolver and shot them one after the other. Three were killed outright, the fourth expired the following day. At Pin, some Uhlans found two young boys on the road. They tied them by the arms to their horses and galloped off. The bodies of the poor lads were found a few miles away — their knees were "literally crushed"; one had his throat cut and both had several bullets in their heads. At Herimenil, during the pillage, the inhabitants were shut up in a church, and kept there for four days without food. When Madame Winger, 23 years of age, and her three young servants, one girl and two boys, were too slow in leaving her farm to go to the church, the captain ordered his men to fire on them. Four more dead bodies ! The Germans arrived at Monchy-Humieres. A group of inhabitants watched them marching past. No provoca- tion whatever was offered, but an officer th5ught that he heard some one utter the word "Prussians." He at once called out three dragoons, and ordered them to fire upon the group — one killed and two wounded — one of the latter being a little girl of four. At Sommeilles, when the fire — which destroyed the whole place — broke out, Madame X. took refuge in a cellar belonging to M. and Madame Adnot, who were there, with their four children, the eldest a girl of 1 1 years. A few days after, on returning to the village, our soldiers found the seven bodies in the cellar lying in a pool of blood, several of them being horribly mutilated. Madame X. had her right arm severed from her body; the little girl's foot had been cut off, and the little boy of five had his throat cut. At Louveigne a certain number of men were shut up in THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 29 a blacksmith's shop; in the afternoon the murderers opened the door as if it were a pigeon-shooting competition, drove the prisoners out, and shot them down — a ghastly group of 17 corpses. At Senlis the heroic Mayor, M. Odent, and six members of his staff were shot. At Gerbeviller they forced their way into the house of M. and Madame Lingenheld; seized the son, aged 36, ex- empt from service, and wearing the badge of the Red Cross, tied his hands, dragged him into the street and shot him. They then returned to look for the father, an old man of 70. Meanwhile the mother, mad with terror, made her escape. On coming out she saw her son lying on the ground. As he still showed signs of life, they threw paraffin over him and roasted him. The father was shot later on with fourteen other old men. More than 150 victims were identi- fied in this parish. At Nomeny, M. Vasse provided shelter for a number of neighbors in his cellar. Fifty soldiers got in and set fire to the house. To escape the flames the refugees rushed out and were shot one by one as they emerged. Mentre was killed first; his son Leon, with his little eight-year-old sister in his arms, fell next : as he was not quite dead they put the barrel of a rifle to his ear and blew his brains out. Then came the turn of a family named Kieffer. The mother was wounded; the father, his boy and girl, aged respectively 10 and 3, were shot down. They fell on them with fury. Striffler, Guillaume, and Vasse were afterwards massacred. Young Mile. Simonin, 17 years old, and her small sister, afraid to leave their refuge in the cellar, were eventually driven out by the flames, and immediately shot at. The younger child had an elbow almost blown off by a bullet; as the elder girl lay wounded on the ground, she was de- liberately kicked by a soldier. At Nomeny 40 victims were identified. The following depositions on the massacres at Nomeny are made by prisoners, one a Bavarian officer in the Reserve, the other a private in the same regiment. The lieutenant says : "I gathered the impression that it was impossible 30 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE for the officers at Nomeny to prevent such acts. As far as I can judge, the crimes committed there, which horrified all the soldiers who were at Nomeny later on, must be put down to the acts of unnatural brutes." The soldier says, "At five o'clock regimental orders were received to kill every male inhabitant of Nomeny, and to raze everything to the ground ; we forced our way into the houses." Here is a more de- tailed account of a massacre near Blamont : "All the vil- lagers fled : it was terrible ; their beards thick with blood, and what faces! They were dreadful to look at. The dead were all buried, numbering sixty. Among them were many old men and women, and one unfortunate woman half con- fined — the whole being frightful to look at. Three children were clasped in each other's arms, and had died thus. The Altar and the vaulting of the church were destroyed be- cause there was a telephone 2 communicating with the en- emy. This morning, September 2nd, all the survivors were expelled. I saw four small boys carrying away on two sticks a cradle containing a baby of five or six months. All this is dreadful to see. Blow for blow : thunder against thunder! Everything is given up to pillage. I also saw a mother with her two children ; one had a big wound on the head, and one eye knocked out." Outrages on Women and Children We might write a long and heartbreaking chapter on this pitiful subject, but let the following suffice. The Report of the French Commission of Inquiry concludes with these words, "Outrages upon women and young girls have been common to an unheard-of extent." No doubt the bulk of these crimes will never come to light, for it needs a con- catenation of special circumstances for such acts to be com- mitted in public. Unfortunately and only too often these circumstances have existed, e.g., at Beton-Bazoches and Sancy-les-Provins, a young girl, and at St. Denis-les-Re- ' To whom did it belong, and where was it? Telephones exist in every district of Meurthe-et-Moselle. Besides, our army installed field telephones which were not all destroyed at the time of their retreat. It is a most foolish pretext. THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 31 baix, a mother-in-law and a little boy of eight years old, and at Coulommiers a husband and two children, were wit- nesses to outrages committed on the mother of the family. Sometimes the attacks were individual and sometimes com- mitted by bodies of men, e.g., at Melen-Labouxhe, Margaret W. was violated by twenty German soldiers, and then shot by the side of her father and mother. They did not even respect nuns. 3 They did not even spare grandmothers (Louppy-le- Chateau, Vitry-en-Perthois, etc.). Nor did they respect children. At Cirey, a witness (a University professor), whose statements one of us took down a few days after the tragedy, cried to a Bavarian officer, "Have you no children in Germany?" All the officer said in reply was, "My mother never bore swine like you." Now and then they let themselves loose on a whole fam- ily; at Louppy, the mother and her two young girls, aged thirteen and eight, respectively, were simultaneous victims of their savagery. The outrages sometimes lasted till death. At Nimy, the martyrdom of little Irma G. lasted six hours, till death delivered her from her sufferings. When her father tried to rescue her he was shot, and her mother was seriously wounded. Indeed, it was certain destruction to any fren- zied parent who tried to defend his child. A clergyman of Dixmude says, "The burgomaster of Handzaeme was shot for trying to protect his daughter." And how many other cases have occurred ! We have not the heart to continue the list. Martyrdom of Civilian Prisoners After having burnt our villages, and shot the inhabi- tants by dozens in some places, and by hundreds in others, they frequently deported all or a part of the survivors to Germany. It is impossible at this moment to establish the number of those deported, but they were sent off by tens 8 See the report of the French Commission. See also the moving letter of Cardinal Mercier to von Bissing : "My conscience forbids my divulging to any tribunal the information, alas, only too well substan- tiated, which I possess. Outrages on nuns have been committed." 32 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE of thousands. These unfortunate people, men, women and children, who had witnessed and survived fires and mas- sacres, who had seen their houses blazing and so many of those dear to them fall under the bullets of the assassin, and who were forced in some places to dig graves for their victims, and in others to hold a light for the executioners while they were finishing off the wounded, — these poor wretches are dispatched to Germany. What a journey, and what a place of residence! Before February 28, 191 5, more than 10,000 persons, old men, women, and children, who had been deported from France to Germany, had been repatriated by way of Switzer- land. All those who received them on their return were "alarmed at their ragged condition and weakness," which was so great that the French Commission of Inquiry re- ceived special instructions to question these victims. They took the evidence of over 300 witnesses in 28 different lo- calities. To do justice to their case one ought to quote the whole report — children brutally torn away from their mothers, poor wretches crowded for days together in car- riages so tightly packed that they had to stand up, cases of madness occurring among these half-stifled crowds, howl- ing with hunger. But we must confine our quotations to a few items of "Kultur." "While the men of Combres set out for Germany, the women and children were shut up in the village church. They were kept there for a month, and passed their nights seated in the pews. Dysentery and croup raged among them. The women were allowed to carry ex- crement only just outside the church into the churchyard." "At least four of the prisoners were massacred because they could not keep up with the column, being completely exhausted." "Fortin, aged 65, and infirm, could not go any further. They tied a rope to him, and two horsemen held the ends so that he had to keep the pace of the horses. As he kept falling down at every moment, they made him get up by poking him with their lances. The poor wretch, covered with blood, prayed them to kill him." "One hundred and eighty-nine inhabitants of Sinceny, who were sent to Erfurt, arrived there after a journey of THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 33 84 hours, during which each of them got nothing but a sin- gle morsel of bread weighing less than four ounces. An- other convoy spent four days on the railway journey and were only fed once, and were beaten with sticks and fists and with knife handles." The same brutalities were experi- enced in the German cities through which they passed, and very few of the civilian prisoners escaped being buffeted by the infuriated crowds or being spat upon. So much for the journey. Now for what happened to them after their arrival! "The declarations made to us show clearly that the bulk of the prisoners almost col- lapsed from hunger. After food had been distributed, when anything was left, you saw some of them rush to the neighborhood of the kitchens; hustled and beaten by the sentries, these unfortunates risked blows and abuse to try and pick up some additional morsels of the sickening food. You saw men, dying of hunger, picking up herring heads, and the grounds of the morning's decoction." At Parchim, where 2,000 French civilians from 12 to yy years of age were interned, two starving prisoners who asked for the scraps left over were beaten with the butt- ends of rifles to such an extent that they died of their wounds. The young son of one of them who tried to pro- tect his father was tied to a stake for a week on end. On oath, Dr. Page deposes : "Those who had no money almost died of hunger. When a little soup was left, a crowd of unfortunates rushed to get it, and the non-commis- sioned officers got rid of them at last by letting the dogs loose on them." But what is the need of all these details and of all this evidence ? Look at the 10,000 who came back after being repatriated and see what the bandits have done to them. Reader, summon up your courage and peruse to the bitter end the conclusions of the Official Commission of Inquiry. "It is impossible to conceal the melancholy and indignation we felt on seeing the state of the 'hostages' 4 whom the Germans had returned to us after they had kid- naped them in defiance of the rights of nations. During * Through old habit, the Commission makes use of this word; they are not "hostages," of course. W., VOL. III.— 3. 34 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE our inquiry we never ceased hearing the perpetual coughs that rent them. We saw numbers of young people whose cheerfulness had disappeared apparently forever, and whose pale and emaciated faces betrayed physical damage probably beyond repair. In spite of ourselves we could not help thinking that scientific Germany had applied her methodical ways to try and spread tuberculosis in our country. Nor were we less profoundly moved to thought by the sight of women mourning their desolated hearths and missing or cap- tive children, or by the moral impression left on the faces and bearing of many prisoners by the hateful regime which was intended to destroy, in those who were subjected to it, the feeling of human dignity and self-respect." German Excuses: Lies and Calumny The Bodies have taken up three positions in succession. In the first place, in their speeches, in their writings and by commemorative pictures and medals, they have gloried in their misdeeds, thus declaring that Kultur is above mo- rality (as stated by their writer, Thomas Mann), that the right of German might is above everything. Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world outside them there was something known as a "moral conscience," not understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, they cynically denied the charg-es. Finally, when they were driven from this second trench, when simple negation became im- possible, they had perforce to explain their crimes. Their commonest explanation is this, "Civilians fired on us." 5 The French Commission of Inquiry came to the following conclusion on this point : "This allegation is false, and those who put it forward have been powerless to give it the appearance of truth, even though it has been their custom to fire shots in the neighborhood of dwellings, in order to be able to affirm that they have been attacked 8 Need it be noted here that even if in any locality an imprudent civilian had fired a shot, it would still remain — in accordance with the Hague Convention, International Law, and plain morality — a crime to massacre in a heap, haphazard, and without inquiry, so many innocent souls? THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 35 by innocent inhabitants, on whose ruin or massacre they had resolved." Inquiries conducted by high magistrates have estab- lished the fact that German officials are very frequently guilty of premeditated lies. It is probable, all the same, that many German soldiers, on entering Belgium or France, were obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them. The cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting for pil- lage — "Man hat geschosscn (they have fired)" — is enough for a locality to be delivered up at once to' the wildest fury. "When an inhabitant has fired on a regiment," said a soldier at Louvain, "the place belongs to the regiment." What a temptation for a Boche soldier to fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and massacre ! Some mistakes have possibly been made which could have been avoided by the least inquiry. Read this admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon officer: "The lovely vil- lage of Gue-d'Hossus has been given over to the flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a cyclist fell off his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself. As a consequence there was firing in his direction. Then, the male inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames. Such horrors will not be repeated, we must hope . . . There ought to be some compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this indiscriminate shooting of people." The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbor- hood of, villages have been those of French or Belgian sol- diers covering their retreat. Sometimes this has been dis- covered, but too late, and they have continued their crimes — in order to justify them. Here is the statement of a neutral : "In one village they found corpses of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot ... In the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with considera- tion, and allowed himself to talk freely : his complaint was the misdeeds of his soldiers. Near Haelen, he told his host, 36 THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE he had to have a soldier shot on finding in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings : the man, on being ques- tioned, admitted that he had cut them off the bodies of the German dead." In exceptional cases an inquiry is held ; and in every such instance the truth is discovered and massacre prevented. At the end of August, Liebknecht, a member of the Reichstag, set out in his car for Louvain. He came to a vil- lage where there was considerable excitement going on. The Germans had just found three of their men lying dead on the road, and accused the peasants of being responsible for the deed. Liebknecht examined them, and was not long in obtaining proof that the Germans had been killed by Belgian riflemen. At Huy there were shots in the night ; two soldiers wounded ; the populace accused ; the mayor arrested and condemned to death ; but he knew that there were no Allied troops in the neighborhood, and also that his own people had not fired a shot. "Shoot me, if you like," he said calmly, "but not before extracting the bullets from the wounded." The officer, less of a brute than some, gave his consent to this. The bullets in the wounds were German bullets. In their private diaries they accuse one another, each throwing on his neighbor the responsibility for crimes com- mitted. A cavalryman writes : "It is unfortunately true that the worst elements of our Army feel themselves au- thorized to commit any sort of infamy. This charge ap- plies particularly to the A.S.C." A bombing officer: "Dis- cipline becoming lax. Brandy. Looting. The blame lies with the infantry." An infantry officer : "Discipline in our company excellent — a contrast with the rest. The Pio- neers are not worth much. As for the Artillery, they are a band of brigands." A final extract seems to be the only one that gives the truth : "Troops of all arms are engaged in looting." What is our object in repeating these reports of horror? Is it to incite our soldiers to commit, if chance arises, atrocities like theirs? We repudiate with horror a thought such as that. Defensive reprisals (asphyxiating gas, liquid THE "PRUSSIAN TERROR" IN FRANCE 37 fire, etc.) are sometimes indispensable. Reprisals for re- venge would be unworthy of us. But — without speaking of personal punishments, demanded by outraged conscience, and essential in order that the two indivisible principles of right and of responsibility may still exist in the world — we must make it absolutely impossible for the Wild Beast to break out again. It is not enough for these crimes to be known by Gov- ernments and by a few hundred people with leisure and inclination to read collections of great volumes. They must be known by everybody, by the entire people, by the People, who — in our proud and free countries — control, support, direct their Governments and are .the sole masters of their own destiny. Our peoples ought to know the crimes committed in the name of "Kultur," in order, at all costs, to take the precautions necessary to prevent forever their return. That is our first object. The second is this : to all our martyrs we have a sacred duty — that of remembrance. There, where they fell, we shall doubtless carve their names in stone or bronze. But what of a time further away? When, after the long sufferings of this war, freed humanity takes up again its works of peace, we shall see the Germans reap- pear in every land, at every crossroad — men of commerce, industry, finance, science, men of the people and of society — in every place where those of all countries, all races and all colors meet and rub elbows. And what is our attitude to be ? Our answer is this : So long as the nation in whose name and by whose hands these atrocities have been com- mitted has not herself solemnly cast from her the scoundrels who dragged her into such decadence, we shall consider that it would betray our martyrs for us even to rub shoul- ders with their executioners, and that until the day arrives — if it ever does arrive — of a striking moral repentance, to forget would be to condone. TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS THE RUSSIAN VICTORY OF SARIKAMISH JANUARY 4TH ROBERT MACHRAY No Turkish accounts of the Great War have been issued, except a few wholly empty and boastful proclamations. No reliable account ever can be issued now, because of the general Turkish downfall. The Russian anarchy has been almost equally destructive both of eye-wit- nesses and official records of the great events of the early years of the War. Hence we are obliged to appeal to a western historian, a British expert on the "Near East" for a clear narrative of the spectacular mid- winter campaign which Turks and Russians fought against each other amid the mighty mountains of the Caucasus. The Caucasus mountain region divides Europe and Asia to the eastward of the Black Sea. Its summits are among the highest peaks in the world, including Mt. Ararat of Biblical fame, which is over 21,000 feet high. Here occurred much of the hard fighting of the pre- ceding Russo-Turkish war of 1878, which made famous the Caucasus fortresses of Kars and Erivan. And here in December of 1914, not far from Kars, the chief Russian stronghold, there gradually developed a bitter battle, which reached its climax of Russian victory at Sari- kamish on January 4, 1915. Hence the new year was ushered in by an Ally triumph. Northern Armenia was soon afterward occupied by the Russians, and also northern Persia, with its capital Tabriz. The Turks had previously seized northern Persia ; and as they retreated the advancing Russians snatched it in their turn. The Persians were helpless be- tween the two. The Russians had previously "policed" this part of Persia ; now they gradually spread over it as conquerors. The Turks fell back unwillingly to their own domains along the Euphrates River valley. Here they were later to fight Britons as well as Russians. BY ROBERT MACHRAY OF unusual interest, both from the military and the po- litical points of view, and not less remarkable in its broadly human aspects was the campaign in the Caucasus. It was no small affair, no mere episode; involving, as it did, the fate of above a quarter of a million men, and rang- ing over a front of some three hundred miles, it would have been rightly deemed something tremendous in any war 38 TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS 39 other than the present colossal conflict of the nations. Yet the large scale on which it was conducted in such a region and at the particular season of the year, the extraordinary boldness and at least partial success of the Turkish plan of attack, and the overwhelming triumph of the Russians that was its final result, came as a great surprise to the world, whose attention had been absorbed by the vast issues in the western and in the main eastern theaters of operations. The general public had been hardly aware that fighting of an important character was proceeding in the Caucasus; in our newspapers, as a rule, the communiques dealing with it, issued by the Russian Headquarters Staff, which were al- most the only sources of information available, had been consistently stowed away in a corner as if they did not count. Then suddenly this indifference was changed by the publication of a memorable telegram on January 4th from the Grand Duke Nicholas, that most laconic of men, addressed to General Joffre, another strong, silent man, which began with the significant words, "I hasten to give you good news," and definitely announced two crushing de- feats of the Turks that were sheer, irremediable disaster, as later was seen to be the case. Up to that time even the Russians themselves in other parts of their empire took comparatively slight notice of the struggle in the Caucasus, as in their view it was a very secondary business when compared with the gigantic and terrible contest being waged in Poland and Galicia. Nor at first did they appreciate the greatness of the achieve- ment of their arms in that area at anything like its full value — they spoke of it as a "pleasant little success this Christ- mas," that is, at their Christmas, which is twelve days after ours. Further, the fact is that while sharp fighting with the Turks was not unexpected, it did not follow the line an- ticipated by the Russian Command, who looked and pre- pared for it much more to the southeast. Although Turkey was suspected by the Allies almost from the commencement of the Great War in August, she did not commit the provocative acts, including the bombard- ment of Odessa, until the end of October. During the in- 40 TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS tervening period of three months, and particularly towards the latter part of it, Austro-German pressure on the Rus- sian front in Europe necessitated a withdrawal of some portion of the Russian troops normally stationed on the Turkish frontier and in Caucasia, and known as the "Army of the Caucasus." This force, which was under the imme- diate control of the Governor-General of the Caucasus, was intended to be, and generally was, kept independent of the Russian main armies and separate from them, and in ordi- nary times was credited with 180,000 effectives, comprised in three army corps, various brigades of rifles, several di- visions of cavalry, and numerous bands of Cossacks. The southern boundary of Caucasia marches with both Turkish and Persian territory, and the activities of this army were not confined entirely to the viceroyalty, for it also sup- plied the body of soldiers that Russia maintained in the northern part of Persia, which under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907 is recognized as the "Russian Sphere." Last year, before the war, the number of these soldiers was estimated at 3,000, distributed in detachments throughout northern Persia, notably at Teheran, its capital, and in the province of Azerbaijan at Tabriz, its second city. De- tailed, at all events nominally, for the preservation of order and the protection of Russian interests in that long-dis- tracted country, and too inconsiderable to be designated an army of occupation, they yet constituted in a very real sense the advance-guard of the Russian Empire in that quarter of the globe. When the Russians saw that war with the Turks was in- evitable, their first preoccupation in that region was their frontier, which was so vulnerable, so little defended by for- tifications of any sort, that it was called the Achilles' heel of Russia. Attack was easy on that side, and thinking it was there that the Turks would operate in force, they re- duced their strength, already decreased by drafts to Eu- rope, in the mountain districts of the Caucasus, and con- centrated the troops thus obtained north and south of the Arasces, which forms the international boundary, the cen- tral point being Julfa, the terminus of a railway from Tiflis, TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS 41 and some eighty miles distant from Tabriz by the best road in Persia. The Turks, however, either foresaw what the Russians would do, or were informed by their spies of what was taking place, and when they developed their great offensive it was found that while their attack did include this south- eastern part of Caucasia, their main assault was made else- where, namely, in the mountains of the Caucasus on their own and the Russian frontier. Their objective was not Tabriz-Julfa-Tiflis, or Khoi-Julfa-Tiflis (Khoi lies west of Tabriz and is rather nearer Julfa), but Sarikamish-Kars- Tiflis. They deliberately selected the much harder route be- cause, it must be held, they deemed the many difficulties which it presented as more than counterbalanced by the relatively inferior strength of the Russians who were de- fending it, and by the decided military advantage that comes from a surprise. The plan of the Turkish Command, who no doubt were acting under German inspiration, has been characterized as mad, but it is only right to say that it was madness with reason in it; the best justification of it is that it met with a large measure of success, and indeed very nearly succeeded altogether. It was at the end of November that the Turks began to put their plan of campaign into execution, and winter had already set in, not only in the mountains, but throughout the Armenian plateau. The Russians were held up but still fighting hard at Koprokoi, and had made no further advance of moment on the rest of their front, north or south. There was no longer talk in Petrograd of the imminent fall of Erzerum ; instead, the military critic of the Retch admitted that the Turks were making a spirited struggle in spite of their enormous losses, and that they were well-trained, well- equipped, disciplined, and enduring. The phrase "enormous losses" has been used so often in this war, and with so elastic a signification, that apart from figures being given, it has come to have little meaning; but whether their losses were enormous or not, the Turks were now in great strength, in far greater strength than the Russians. Under Hassan Izzet Pasha, its Commander-in-Chief, 42 TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS the Ottoman "Third Army," which included some of Tur- key's best troops, had been concentrated at Erzerum; it consisted of three army corps, each of three divisions: the 9th Army Corps, whose headquarters was Erzerum itself; the 10th Army Corps, from Erzingan; and the nth Army Corps, from Van. With auxiliaries this army numbered about 120,000 men. On its right, deployed southeast of Erzerum, were forces, perhaps drawn from Van or even Mosul; and still farther on its right were two or three Turkish regiments and masses of Kurdish irregulars. This right wing, which extended into Persia, was nowhere strong, and was not prominent in the unfolding of the Turkish of- fensive, but it kept more or less busily employed considerable Russian forces whose presence was much needed in the center — they had the satisfaction, however, of inflicting on it a defeat on December 26th at Dutak that prevented it from cooperating in the main attack, as may have been tfie design. Of far greater consequence was the Turkish left wing, which was made up of two divisions of the 1st Army Corps, brought at the outset of the war from Constantinople and landed at Kopa and other ports on the Black Sea south of Batum, and supplemented by many irregulars in the district of the Chorok (northeast of Erzerum), where its concentra- tion was effected. It had been the original intention of the Turks that this army should strike at Batum when it was in sufficient force by additions from oversea, but as the result of Russian resistance on land, and especially of various ac- tions between the Turkish and Russian Fleets, which ended in the latter gaining the control of the Black Sea, the idea was rendered impracticable and was abandoned. Mean- while, the plan for the big offensive in the Caucasus had been evolved, and the 1st Army Corps and its supports were fitted into it as the left wing. This wing may have had from 30,000 to 35,000 combatants; the precise figure is un- certain, but it must have been fairly large. Hassan Izzet Pasha, or Enver Pasha, if it was he who really was in chief command, had in all probability upwards of 160,000 men at his disposition, and the operations he set on foot soon TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS 43 disclosed the familiar German turning movement which aims at the envelopment and destruction or surrender of an enemy army in some particular locality — in this case, the Russians on the line Sarikamish-Kars. Naturally the Russians, like any other people in the same circumstances, do' not make a point in their com- muniques of announcing their retirements and reverses, and definite Turkish information is lacking; but while some of the details of this remarkable movement are obscure, its principal outlines are sufficiently clear. I. In the Center; the main attack. During the last days of November and the first of December the ioth Army Corps moved out from Erzerum in a northeasterly direction by roads or tracks which must have been passable, two di- visions marching on Ardost in the Sivri valley, and one division on Id in the adjoining valley of the Olti, a southern tributary of the Chorok. The Russians had occupied these frontier posts, which are in Turkish territory, early in No- vember; the Turks now drove them out, and advancing on the Russian side of the mountains, took Olti, a little town, out the most important in the neighborhood, and the starting place of several tracks leading southward to Sarikamish, to the railway two or three miles east of it, and even to Kars. Pushing the Russians before it, but slowly, for they fought with characteristic "stubbornness," giving way only under the pressure of greatly superior numbers, the ioth Army Corps marched on to Sarikamish, with the intention, of course, of taking the Russians there in flank and rear, and capturing the railway to Kars. It reached its objective in the fourth week of December. At the same time the Rus- sians were assailed in front by the 9th Army Corps, which now appeared upon the scene. In conjunction with the nth Army Corps, the 9th Corps, by the third week in De- cember, had compelled the Russians, after severe fighting, but here also far outnumbered, to withdraw from Koprokoi and other positions east of it on the main road to Sari- kamish, and had forced them back into the mountains. Be- sides the main road there are in the vicinity two paths from the foothills that cross over to Sarikamish on different 44 TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS passes, and on one of these tracks at Korosan, a few miles from the highway, the nth Corps halted, attacked and "con- tained" the Russians immediately in front of them, while the 9th Corps fought its way over the pass on the main road, and got into touch with the 10th Corps. These two corps then assaulted the Russian forces, and after several days' sanguinary onslaughts, but with numbers still decidedly in their favor, took Sarikamish and two or three miles of the railway beyond it, as the year drew to an end. II. The Right Wing ; largely negligible, as noted above. III. The Left Wing; most important outflanking movement, and scarcely subsidiary to that of I., but co- ordinated with it. In addition to the highway from Erze- rum to Sarikamish there is but one other good road, and that is to speak relatively, in the Little Caucasus. It climbs up from Batum through the valley of the Chorok to Artvin, thence to Ardanuch on the south side of the river, and next to Ardahan, from which it goes down direct to Kars. The 1st Corps, operating in the Chorok region, and materially assisted by the rebellious Adjars of the country, seized this road, occupied Ardanuch, and after a desperate Russian resistance lasting seventeen days, which must have been one of the most heroic in history, took Ardahan, and threatened an immediate descent on Kars, which if it succeeded would cut off the retreat of the Russians west of it, that is, at Sarikamish, from Kars. To sum up. On January 1st the Turks were in pos- session of Sarikamish and part of the railway, though they had destroyed a bit of it, and on January 2nd they also held Ardahan. It looked for all the world as if the Turkish plan were working out into a great victory. Reading be- tween the lines of the messages wired by the correspondents of our journals, it could be discerned that Petrograd was anxious and uneasy; the correspondent of the Times said that "it must be recognized that the Turks under German leadership have displayed exceptional qualities of general- ship." The Turks themselves appeared to be in no doubt of the issue; it is stated that Enver Pasha was so confident of the result that he said that he expected to be in Tiflis TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS 45 within a few days. It was perhaps of this particular time that the writer of the German official communique was speaking when he reported that in Berlin military circles the situation of the Turkish Army in the Caucasus was con- sidered to be exceedingly favorable. But the Russian Viceroy and his military advisers had grasped the situation, too. The Turks had been made to pay very dearly for every foot of their advance. Even so they remained far more numerous than the Russians, who therefore needed to be strongly reenforced. Persia was denuded of Russian soldiers, and large bodies of troops were hurried forward to the front by rail from Kars, Erivan, and Jul fa — almost, but not quite, too late. They would have been altogether too late if the ist Army Corps had been able to make its contemplated descent on Kars, and the first concern of the Viceroy had been to send supports to the gallant regiment which alone had so long withstood the attack of the two divisions of this Corps before and at Ardahan. Yet larger reinforcements were dispatched to Sarikamish, and they arrived to find that though the place had been reft from Russian hands the battle was being waged with no less determined persistence and tenacity by their compatriots. Neither at Ardahan nor at Sarikamish were the Russians, even in the closing stages, nearly so numerous as the Turks. It was, however, written, as the Turks themselves would say, that their plan, even on the edge of seeming fulfillment, was doomed to failure of the most disastrous kind ; but the writing was, all said and done, the writing of that first-class fighting man, the Russian infantryman, who, like another famous first-class fighting man, does not know when he is beaten. Beaten he was at Ardahan and at Sarikamish, but at both he, as it were, held out and would not acknowledge defeat. From neither was he forced in rout and disorder; from Ardahan he fell back slightly, and from Sarikamish about three miles. When the reinforcements came up the Russians, thanks to the valor of these hard-pressed but un- daunted infantry of theirs, were at once in a position to undertake a vigorous offensive, which developed into glori- 46 TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS ous victories, gained practically simultaneously. In point of time they succeeded first at Ardahan, Sunday, January 3rd. It had been understood that they consummated their over- whelming triumph at Sarikamish on the same day, but an official survey of the operations, published in Petrograd on February 1st by the Headquarters Staff of the Army of the Caucasus, definitely fixes the date as Monday, January 4th; the only difference is that the Turkish left wing was smashed a day earlier than the center. Details of the course of the struggle are lacking, but the immediate cause of the tre- mendous change in the fortunes of the belligerents was the artillery which the Russian reinforcements were able to bring on the scene in both areas — a comparatively easy mat- ter with respect to the Sarikamish front, to which the rail- way gave access, but an extremely arduous business at Arda- han, forty miles up the mountains by road from Kars. Hardly any information regarding the battle of Ardahan can be obtained beyond statements that after the place was bombarded the Russians drove the 1st Army Corps out of it at the point of the bayonet, and by repeated charges ut- terly routed the enemy, who was crushed into fragments. These broken remnants fled in confusion back to Ardanuch, but, hotly pursued, were not allowed to rest there long, as it was reoccupied by the victors on January 18th. Some sur- vivors from the wreck made good their escape into their own territory, while others sought refuge in the fastnesses of the Chorok ranges, where the Ad jars gave them shelter, but as a combatant force the Turkish left wing had been swept out of existence. The fighting in and about Sari- kamish lasted in all nearly a fortnight, but the various and varying accounts of its later phases convey a somewhat blurred impression rather than provide a consecutive narra- tive. That impression is mainly of great masses of Turks, brave to the last but famished and half-frozen, being mown down by guns and maxims and rifle-fire on the main road, in the passes, and on the lower slopes of the mountains ; or of their fierce attacks repulsed and Russian counter-attacks driven home, the cold steel finishing what was left undone by shell and bullet — the whole against a background of TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS 47 snow, in an atmosphere so arctic that the wounded suc- cumbed to the cold where they fell. Doubtless it was all desperate and sanguinary enough. By the end, the 9th Corps, with the exception of its general, Iskhan Pasha, its divisional commanders, and a few hundred officers and men who capitulated, was totally destroyed, while the 10th Corps was decisively defeated and put to flight, what remained of it making its way back to Olti as best it could, and losing more men and material ever as it went. Thus, of the Turkish center one-third was absolutely demolished, and another third battered to pieces and dispersed; with the left wing gone this meant that the plan of campaign, well-con- ceived as it was, and carried out with success for about a month, had after all finally crashed down in blackest ruin. News of this disaster reached Enver Pasha, who was probably at Erzerum or Koprokoi at this time, and with a view to attempting to retrieve the situation, or at least of covering the retreat of the 10th Corps, he hastened to Koro- san, where the 1 ith Corps, the remaining third of the center, was still in position, holding, or perhaps being held by, the Russians in front of it. Putting himself at the head of the nth Corps, whose commander he is said to have had exe- cuted — why is not clear — Enver moved it up to Kara Urgan, a post on the main road to Sarikamish just on the frontier, and was joined by fresh troops in such numbers that, ac- cording to one account, which, however, must be grossly exaggerated, his force was 100,000 strong. Kara Urgan is about a dozen miles west of Sarikamish, and the Russians advancing from the latter on the former engaged this army, whose offensive was so resolute that for four days they made no headway against it. On January nth the tide turned, but it was not till January 16th, when a strongly fortified Turkish position at Zivin, a few miles west of Kara Urgan, was stormed, that victory was assured and the Turks were thoroughly routed. "Despite violent snow- storms, which lasted from the 8th to the 16th of January, rendering the roads very difficult, our troops by dint of the greatest heroism and extraordinary tenacity progressed con- tinuously with attack after attack," says the Russian com- 48 TURKEY LOSES THE CAUCASUS munique of February ist; "the enemy's forces were com- pletely broken up and retreated precipitately, abandoning wounded and ammunition and flinging their guns down precipices." In other words, Kara Urgan repeated the same story as Ardahan and Sarikamish. For five days the Russians kept indefatigably pursuing the Turks, dislodging them from point after point, until they fled, demoralized and shattered, back towards Erzerum. This completed the debacle, and with the exception of desultory and insignifi- cant encounters in the Olti region with the remains of the ioth Corps, concluded the campaign in the Caucasus. On the stricken fields of the Caucasus the Turks are reported to have suffered a loss of more than a hundred guns, and their loss in killed and prisoners cannot have been much, if at all, short of 70,000 men. THE U-BOAT WAR ON COMMERCE GERMANY'S DEFIANCE OF THE NEUTRAL NATIONS FEBRUARY 4.TH PRINCE VON BULOW ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ WILLIAM ARCHER On February 4, 1915, Germany took a step which challenged all the world to war. She declared that her U-boats would sink at sight any merchant ship which they even suspected of being an enemy. This obviously meant in threat, and actually caused in practice, the torpe- doing of many neutral vessels. Now, the right of neutral sailors, and even of neutral merchandise, to safety at sea had been guaranteed to them for generations by every civilized nation, including Germany. Hence this declaration was a breaking, not of some special treaty as in the case of the invasion of Belgium, but of all treaties. It struck at the very basis of all International Law, and claimed for Germany the right to be sole arbiter of all her acts, including even the killing of f