Belgium -- History -- German occupation, 1914-1918
It is useful to observe that these declarations have been made
spontaneously, since it is obvious that we were powerless to exert any
pressure on the Germans. They have, therefore, nothing in common with
those which the Germans have forced the Belgian wounded or prisoners to
sign.
_The Pretended Massacres of German Civilians._
There remain the famous massacres of Germans in Brussels, Antwerp,
Liége, etc. According to witnesses "worthy of credence," inoffensive
Germans, even women and children, were killed and martyred in various
Belgian cities. At Liége alone more than 150 persons, of whom
three-fourths were women and children, were said to have lost their
lives.
As to Liége, we have inquired of inhabitants of the city, several of
whom are closely connected with the administration of justice; no
one had any knowledge of any such occurrences. They have therefore
been invented, lock, stock, and barrel, by the "witnesses worthy of
credence," and we defy the Germans to mention the name of a single one
of these 150 "victims."
At Antwerp we can oppose, to the testimony of those who were "present"
on the occasion of murders and serious assaults upon German women,
the official report, which admits that shops were broken into by
the populace, but which at the same time attests that no German was
wounded. Let us add that the German Weber was _not_ assassinated, but
is quietly living in Antwerp.
Let us proceed to the doings in Brussels; and let us quote, from
_Greueltaten_, the most serious occurrences there mentioned. We have a
story, based on hearsay, which tells, of course, of gouged-out eyes,
as well as three reports of ocular witnesses. The first is that of a
witness "worthy of credence" who saw a child thrown from a window and a
woman dragged by the hair until she was insensible; he also witnessed
the murder of a German druggist, one Frankenberg, who was betrayed by
his own wife, a Belgian. The second witness is the correspondent of
the Wolff Agency. He saw only what the people of Brussels themselves
witnessed: that is, that the populace pillaged the German shops and
cafés on the 4th and 5th August. But he had not been able to discover
any acts of violence against the person; those he mentions, in a couple
of words, without insisting on them, had been related to him; but he
does not even add that the witnesses were "worthy of credence."
Finally we have a priest, who complains that he was arrested as a spy
and beaten by the gendarmes. Perhaps he was a spy; in any case, not a
few German spies disguised as priests have been discovered in Belgium.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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