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Show THE CRIMES OF THE HUN DURING the past few days there has , been a marked increase in the 'number of people in America 'who believe that there should be proper steps taken, now the end of the war is reached, to puniBh those who are guilty of having caused it in the first place and those who have inspired or committed the awful crimes and excesses ex-cesses that have marked its course. There is also in Great Britain, France, Belgium and other allied countries a very powerful demand for legal action against the criminals, and this demand had been expressed with especial force after the last peace flurry and the renewal of Hunnish "frightfulness" on sea and land. The following is a very much 'abbreviated 'ab-breviated list of crimes committed by the Germans and their allies during , the war. It is not intended to be com-pletei com-pletei the specific cases cited are merely samples. Many heinous misdeeds, mis-deeds, such as diplomatic lies, plots against neutrals, murders of neutral citizens, destruction of neutral property, prop-erty, are purposely omitted, as the list is already long enough. The purpose pur-pose is to present to the reader some material on which to, base a ponclu-slon ponclu-slon as to "whether 'the modern Huns ought to be allowed to go their way after the war, unpunished 'and unmarked, un-marked, like men with clean hands and souls. They sank the steamer Lusltania, with l;906 bouIs on board, of whom 1,134 periBhed,. Including hundreds of women and children, and then struck a medal to commemorate the heroic event. They sank British and Swedish merchant mer-chant ships in the North Sea in the fall of 1917 and shelled the lifeboats, killing many civilians. The details were reported by the Norwegian papers. pa-pers. They sank the -British ship Belgian Prince, made the survivors leave the lifeboats, which they wrecked, and then submerged with their victims helpless on the deck of the submarine. The story was told by the chief engineer engi-neer of the Belgian Prince, who was rescued, thirty eight of 'his comrades being drowned. They shelled the United States transport Ticonderoga, killing many after the steamer was helpless, and submerged while a lifeboat with seventeen sev-enteen survivors was tied to the submarine. sub-marine. This occurred after the Germans Ger-mans had opened peace negotiations. They sank the Japanese ship Hirano Maru, drowning about 300, and fired two torpedoes at the American destroyer de-stroyer Sterrett, which was picking up the survivors. They sank the Irish Channel mall steamer Leister, with about 750 on board, of whom only about 150 were saved. This boat is described as a coasting passenger steamer about like the boats plying from New York to Fall River. The victims of course were mostly Irish, for whose welfare the Germans have been so solicitous. They torpedoed the steamer Ad- (Continued on Page 13.) & $ I ! CRMES OF THE HUN (Continued from Page 4.) miral Ganteaume, with 2,500 refugees it on board. Luckily, only fifty lives wore ilost. This was the first notable attack on a non-military craft by a submarine, and was especially criminal crimi-nal because it was committed in broad daylight, when it muBt have been evident that the boat was -crowded with civilians. They torpedoed the steamer Falaba, and the crew of the TT-boat laughed and jeered at the victims struggling i in the water. Among the 111 victims was an American, L. C Thrasher, perhaps per-haps the first to perish from this cause. They murdered thirty-two civilians !'in the Place de l'Universite at Liege. This was established to the satisfaction satisfac-tion of the Bryce Commission of Inquiry. In-quiry. They massacred about 400 civilians at Andenne, Belgium. The authority , for this is the Bryce report. ' They killed many scores of civil ians (perhaps 200) at Dinant, many i of these being "executed" in the prison courtyard. 1 They massacred about fifty civilians at Gerbeville, France. (Report of French commission.) At Haut-de-Vermont, France, they murdered a widow, Guillaumo by name, 78 years old. This old woman's body was mutilated. (French official report. They put to death fifty innocent . priests and thousands of innocent Cath olics. (Statement of Cardinal Mer-cier.) Mer-cier.) They killed twenty six priests in the diocese of Malines alone. (Belgian , 'official report.) They tortured and shot the priest of Duechen, Belgium, an invalid, aged 87. (Belgian official report.) They killed, near Beaumetz, France, two old men and an old woman, whose bodies were found by the British Brit-ish in a garden, with the brains hanging hang-ing from their cloven skulls. The only excuse discovered waB that they had refused to bake bread for the Germans. Ger-mans. (Reported by the Bryce Commission Com-mission on the testimony of a British sergeant.) They murdered 4,500 non-combatants in Serbia, in August, 1914. Some wore buried alive, many tortured, etc. This Is the testimony of Professor H. A. Reiss of the "University of Lau-zanne, Lau-zanne, Switzerland, who made an in-i in-i qulry for the Swiss section of the Ge neva convention. They killed by murder, starvation, or hardships, with all the accompani-, accompani-, ments of cruelty imaginable, thou sands of Armenians, the number having hav-ing been estimated as high as half the Armenian population, totaling perhaps 4,500,000. While the Turks were immediately im-mediately responsible, the Germans v are morally so, having refused to inter- fore to save the Christian victims of ' their allies. They executed a little French Boy Scout because he would not reveal information in-formation about the French troops. This was revealed by a letter found on i a dead German officer, who describod J? -i i i ... 'mi U the boy's proud courage before the firing squad, and added 'the Bochian comment: "Infatuated wretch! It was a pity to see such wasted courage'.' cour-age'.' They dropped bombs on Antwerp, the first atrocity of this kind, killing many civilians. Their warships bombarded the British Brit-ish summer resort towns of Scarbor-ugh Scarbor-ugh and Whitby, killing many civilians. civil-ians. They made repeated air raids on Paris and London, dropping bombs in purely residential sections, and killing kill-ing in all hundreds of civilians. They bombarded Bucharest from air planes, killing hundreds of people, Including many women and children. They repeatedly shelled and bombarded bom-barded the open city of Nan cy, killing many civilians. They bombed the city of Padua, killing many civilians. A Bavarian soldier wrote to a girl in Germany that at "Batonville" (Ba-donviller) (Ba-donviller) he bayonetted seven women and four young girls in five minutes. (French official report.) They repeatedly shelled Paris with long-range artillery, under conditions making anything but indiscriminate destruction impossible. One shell struck the church of St. Gervais during dur-ing a service and killed nearly 100 people, peo-ple, mostly women and children. Near Ypres they shot two girls, about six and eight years old, whose dead bodies were found in the upper room of a house by British soldiers. (Belgian official report and Bryce official of-ficial report, evidence being given by at least two witnesses.) They violated the Belgian nuns. This is on the authority of Cardinal Mercier, who states in his letter to the cardinals and bishops of Germany, that to his knowledge there had been several outrages of this kind. He describes de-scribes the evidence as being "very precise," but quite naturally refused to subject the victims to a public inquiry. in-quiry. At Malines, near Antwerp, a German Ger-man soldier, one of a squad of eight, Impaled a child two years old on his bayonet and carried it off down the street. The Incident was sworn to before be-fore the Bryce Commission by a Belgian Bel-gian citizen 'and hiB wife, testifying separately and giving the same details. de-tails. At and near Louvain, the Belgian Commission of Inquiry reports a number num-ber of girls and women were raped, some of them by many soldiers. Corroboration Cor-roboration of this is furnished by General von Boehn, commanding the Ninth German army, who told the well-known American correspondent, E. Alexander Powell, that he had sentenced sen-tenced two of his soldiers to twelve years' penal servitude each for this crime. Twelve years! At Dinant they "executed" twelve children-under the age of six, half of them as they lay in their mother's arms.. The younger children were the child Flevet, three weeks old; Maurice Retamps, eleven months old; Nelly Pollet, thirteen months old; Gil-da Gil-da Genon, eighteen months old; Gllda Marchot, two years old; Calara Gru- vay, two years and six months. (Recounted (Re-counted by Minister Brand Whitlock, on the authority of the Bishop of Na-mur.) Na-mur.) At Bailleul, near the Franco-Belgian frontier, at least thirty women and girls were violated during eight days of German occupation in 1914. Sworn evidence of this was presented to the Bryce Commission, and Professor J. H. Morgan of the University of London, Lon-don, states that the testimony shows at least five officers were guilty. At Bailleul "in one case, the facts of which are proved by evidence that would satisfy any court of law, a young girl of nineteen was violated by one officer while the other held her mother by the throat and pointed,a revolver, re-volver, after which the officers exchanged ex-changed their respective roles." (Professor (Pro-fessor J. H. Morgan in German Atrocities; Atroci-ties; An Official Investigation.) They torpedoed the British hospital ship Llandovery Castle, with 258 people, peo-ple, only twenty-four being saved. Fourteen Canadian nursing sisters were drowned. The testimony of the survivors shows that the submarine tried to sink their lifeboats. They Bank the British hospital ship Glenart Castle, about 150 lives being lost. They bombed the American Red Cross hospital at Jouy, France, killing two and wounding nine of the hospital personnel. This hospital was plainly marked, there being a crosB 100 feet long on the lawn, visible from several thousand feet in the air. They bombed a Canadian hospital, with lighted Red Cross signs, and killed many doctors, wounded and nurses. They torpedoed the Russian hospital ship Portugal in broad daylight in the Black sea, causing the death of twenty-one nurses, twenty-four Red Cross workers, and forty sailors. The vessel ves-sel was plainly marked, and the torpedo tor-pedo was fired from a distance of some thirty or forty feet only. They shelled the famous Rhelms cathedral ca-thedral until it was a ruin. They blew up the ancient castle of Coucy, one of France's most famous medieval monuments, without military mili-tary reason. In their retreats in France they have burned whole villages by the scoro without possible military advantage. They destroyed a large part of the city of Louvain in an orgy of ruthless-ness. ruthless-ness. They deliberately destroyed the trees and vines of the French farmers In territory they were evacuating. They have destroyed the farming implements of the French rural population. popu-lation. They severely damaged the cathedral cathed-ral at Padua and destroyed priceless objects of art in that and other buildings. build-ings. They blew up the cathedral of No-yon No-yon by set bombs on evacuating it during dur-ing the past summer. They destroyed many buildings at Cambrai by set bomVi. At St. Quentin thr "rench captured a German officer witn a wagonload of explosives which he had been told he had two days to distribute through the ' H . HHB Sixty-three British prisoners died of ifll the "tree punishment," being roped to il the trunk of a tree on a fiat board, and JHH left twenty-four to forty-eight hours, 1 even a week, without water or food. iH (Reported by the Chicago Daily News jH correspondent .Edward Price Bell, on 1 H the authority of statements secured Ifll by the ladies' emergency committee of lil the British Navy League.) H The Germans in one prison camp B trained sheep dogs to bite the prison- ers. (Reported by Ambassador Ger- The Austro-Hungarians punished Russian prisoners at Dunaserdagelli by screwing them up in coffins. (Sworn to by many prisoners and a Russian Sister of Mercy to a Russian commls- sion of injuiry.) H In the earlier days of the war es- pecially, British prisoners were mis- 1 treated and insulted by the civilian H population, who spat upon them and H perpetrated worse outrages. H The German military and medical H staffs deserted the prison camp at Wittenberg during a typhus epidemic H in 1915, when sixty British and French H and a still larger number of Russians died of this disease. H They have ppisoned wells in many localities. Proof of intent is furnished , by a document captured recently, is- ' sued to the 108th Battalion of German infantry, and dated September 5, 1918. It says: "All wells should be pios- , oned." Il They have been using explosive bul- lets against American troops. (Report- ed with details, by Edwin L. James, H the New York Times correspondent.) H They have killed opponents who H have surrendered. Proof is furnished H by letters of German soldiers sent to !flH Ambassador Gerard, protesting against jH this violation of the laws of war. 'H They have violated the use of the H white flag, firing on opponents after ' pretending to surrender. The Bryce jH commission says: "There is, in our H opinion, sufficient evidence that these ( offenses have been frequent." H They have abused the Red Cross. jH The Bryce commission received much . v. . testimony of this nature, and there have been several reports of similar H treachery against American troops. jH Lieutenant W. J. Harcourt, 120th Ma- M chine Gun Battalion, 32d Division, when in Detroit some weeks ago, de- H scribed the killing of Michigan troops H from a church tower at iCierges from E which the Red Cross flag was flying. H They have used civilians as a screen M against allied fire. (Authority of Minis- j'H ter Whitlock and Cardinal Mercier.) They systematically robbed all enemy ' M countries by the Rathenau plan of ex- H ploitatiou, the total value of this gov- H ernmental loot being, as estimated by M Andre Cheradame, several tens of bll- H lions of francs. H They confiscated in Belgium alone H machinery and new materials worth H $400,000,000 in the first four months H of the war. (Belgian official statis- H tics.) M They destroyed sources of economic wealth in Belgium (not including de- H structlon of private property) to the M If amount of $1,000,000,000. (Belgian of- l . ficial statistics.) i V They have deported many thousands h (100,000 as long ago as November, j 1916, according to Minister Whitlock) it of Belgians and forced them to work H in Germany. Vernon Kellogg, former- ly of the Belgian relief commission, says: "The deportations . . wore the most vivid, shocking, convincing single h "'! happening in all our enforced ol)sorva- H tion and experience of German dlsre- ! , " gard of human suffering and human i rights in Belgium." They imprisoned the directors, fore- H men and eighty one workmen of Mr. H Lenoir's factory at Mons for refusing H to work in tjie service of the German H army. (Cardinal Mercier.) B They fined the city of Tournai 200,- H 000 marks for refusing to submit de- H portation lists to the German com- B I mander. H k They forced Belgians to work at H & shell making in Berlin. (Ambassador i Gerard.) K y They deported from Lille and vicln- H fjj ity and from Alsace-Lorraine, to work w I behind the German lines, many girls Bl''' from fifteen years upward, separating KWI . them from their mothers and families. Hflj They forced Belgian women to dig H. trenches back of the Flanders front. M (Authority of Belgian legation at H Washington.) B . They gravely mistreated and ex- M posed deported Belgian civilians to H j'j make them work, using torture by ex- H i) tremes of heat and cold. Many died M J or were ruined in health. (Informa- B jj tion gathered by Belgian government.) H j They enslaved 250,000 Polish work men who ivere In Germany In August, 1914, forcing them to remain and la bor, and they later lured or forced 250,000 more to come. (Deputy Trom-pczynski Trom-pczynski of the Prussian diet.) Town Talk. |
