At other times and places, German troops have not rested content with
the mere terrorization and humiliation of religious sisters. On February
12, 1916, the German Wireless from Berlin states that Cardinal Mercier
was urged to investigate the allegation of German soldiers attacking
Belgian nuns, and that he declined. As long as the German Government has
seen fit to revive the record of their own brutality, I present what
follows.
A New York physician whom I know sends me this statement:
"I was dining in London in the middle of last April with a friend, a
medical man, and I expressed doubt as to the truth of the stories of
atrocity. I said I had combatted such stories often in America. In
reply, he asked me to visit a house which had been made over into an
obstetrical hospital for Belgian nuns. I went with him to the hospital.
Here over a hundred nuns had been and were being cared for."
On a later Sunday in September I visited the Municipal Hospital of
Ghent. In Salle (Hall) 17, I met and talked with Martha Tas, a peasant
girl of St. Gilles (near Termonde). As she was escaping by train from
the district, and when she was between Alost and Audeghem, she told me
that German soldiers aimed rifle fire at the train of peasants. She was
wounded by a bullet in the thigh. My companion on this visit was William
R. Renton, at one time a resident of Andover, Massachusetts. His present
address is the Coventry Ordnance Works, Coventry.
A friend of mine has been lieutenant in a battery of 75's stationed near
Pervyse. His summer home is a little distance out from Liege. His wife,
sister-in-law, and his three children were in the house when the Germans
came. Peasants, driven from their village, hid in the cellar. His sister
took one child and hid in a closet. His wife took the two-year-old baby
and the older child and hid in another closet. The troops entered the
house, looted it and set it on fire. As they left they fired into the
cellar. The mother rushed from her hiding place, went to her desk and
found that her money and the family jewels, one a gift from the
husband's family and handed down generation by generation, had been
stolen. With the sister, the baby in arms, the two other children and
the peasants, she ran out of the garden. They were fired on. They hid in
a wood. Then, for two days, they walked. The raw potatoes which they
gathered by the way were unfit for the little one. Without money, and
ill and weakened, they reached Holland. This lady is in a safe place
now, and her testimony in person is available.
[Illustration: THE GREEN PASS, USED ONLY BY SOLDIERS AND OFFICERS OF THE
BELGIAN ARMY.
It gives passage to the trenches at any hour. The writer, by holding
this, and working under the Prime Minister's son, became
stretcher-bearer in the Belgian Army.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account