German Atrocities: An Official InvestigationMorgan, J. H. (John Hartman)
History
German Atrocities: An Official Investigation
Morgan, J. H. (John Hartman)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities
and Austria, as well as in all neutral countries, there will be a wish
to join in the efforts which both the Allies and the leading neutral
Powers are sure to make to regulate and mitigate the conduct of war. In
order to call forth these efforts by showing how great is the need for
strengthening the existing rules of war, and providing more effective
means of securing their observance, it is essential that the facts
should be made known and studied, and that the world should see how the
present rules, imperfect as they are, have been trampled under foot
by the German authorities. This is what makes it right and necessary
to publish the data contained in the Reports already referred to, and
those data also which have been gathered by Professor Morgan with such
earnest labour.
So much for the justification--an ample justification--which exists
for publishing the horrible record which this book contains. I need
not here analyse it or quote from it or comment upon it. The facts
speak for themselves. Professor Morgan’s general conclusions as to the
behaviour of the German troops in France seem to be borne out by the
facts which he adduces. They are further supported by the facts set
forth in the Belgian, French, and British Reports. This accumulation of
testimony is convincing, and it becomes even abundantly more convincing
when one remembers that the German Government has scarcely attempted to
deny the contents of those reports. To the French report, strengthened
as it is by numerous extracts from the diaries of German soldiers
(translated by M. Joseph Bédier), in which they describe, sometimes
with shame, sometimes with satisfaction, the conduct of their comrades,
no answer seems to have been made, although a few trivial objections
were raised to the translations. Neither has the German Government
ventured to meet the British report, except by a vaguely worded general
contradiction in a semi-official newspaper. As regards the Belgian
reports, no more to them than to the others has any examination and
specific contradiction been vouchsafed. But a White Book has been
published which tries to turn the tables by accusing Belgian civilians
generally of firing on German troops and committing outrages upon
them. Professor Morgan, in one of the most illuminative parts of his
book, subjects this White Book to a critical analysis, exposes its
hollowness, and shows conclusively that while it does not prove the
German case against the civilian population and the Government of
Belgium, it virtually admits, in its attempts to justify, the shocking
cruelties perpetrated by the German Army upon that population. As the
lawyers say, _habemus confitentem reum_.
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