Art. 12.-THE GERMANS IN BELGIUM.

1. The German Army in Belgium: The White Book of May 1915. Translated by E. N. Bennett. With a Foreword on Military Reprisals in Belgium and Ireland. Swarthmore Press, 1921.

2. Royaume

de Belgique.

Réponse au Livre Blanc

Allemand. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1916.

3. L'Armée Allemande à Louvain. Deux Mémoires publiés par les soins du Gouvernement Belge. Port-Villez (Seine et Oise), 1917.

WHATEVER may be thought of the value or the desirability of the proceedings against individual 'war criminals,' there can be no doubt that, in regard to the German people, and even the German army, at large, most Englishmen are willing to let bygones be bygones. No good purpose is served by deliberately dragging to the front hideous memories that are receding into the background of our minds. We are willing to hope that, in the school of adversity, Germans are learning to look with critical eyes upon that 'Furor Teutonicus' in which, at the outset of the war, they openly gloried, magnifying and inflaming it both in prose and verse.

But Mr E. N. Bennett, the translator of The German Army in Belgium,' is not content to let bygones be bygones. He must needs rake up the ghastly story of August 1914, in order to claim our approval for the German action. His book is a complete translation of the White Book, 'Die völkerrechtswidrige Führung des belgischen Volkskriegs,' published in May 1915. He gives us the text without a word of criticism or comment. His personal contribution to the volume consists of a preface of eight pages, in which he maintains that, barring 'certain instances' in which the Germans exercised their right of reprisal with unreasonable severity and without adequate discrimination,' nothing happened in Belgium that was in the least discreditable to 'probably the most sternly disciplined and best educated soldiers in the world.' He complains that the British Government ungenerously suppressed the disculpatory evidence which he here presents to English readers. The complaint is justified, though not precisely

on the ground he suggests. It is amazing that the British authorities did not publish and annihilate the White Book. The task, though tedious, would not have been difficult, for the German defence is incredibly feeble. It has been pulverised by the Belgian Government in several publications. One of these, 'L'Armée allemande à Louvain,' apparently unknown to Mr Bennett, translates the German evidence in full, and tears it to shreds in an absolutely masterly and conclusive fashion. But the Belgian publications were too voluminous for the general reader. It was difficult, indeed, to display very briefly the abounding inconsistencies, incredibilities, and absurdities of the White Book, especially as a large mass of collateral German evidence had also to be taken into account. Still, it would have been possible, within reasonable compass, to make the White Book look extremely foolish; and, if this had been done at the right time, it would certainly have been worth doing.

Two pages of Mr Bennett's 'Foreword' are devoted to extracts from Belgian (and Dutch ?) papers, supposed to prove the reality of the alleged franc-tireur attacks. These quotations were among the prize exhibits of German propaganda. They prove that, during the first four days of the stupendous calamity which had befallen the nation (the latest extract is dated Aug. 8), some Belgians were willing to believe, and some newspapers to print, the wild rumours which filled the air. It is natural that the Germans should make capital of them as indications of a state of mind; but the specific incidents related are demonstrably lies, and the Germans themselves make no effort to substantiate them. For instance, a paper of Aug. 6 stated that the population of Visé offered a 'vigorous resistance' to the advancing Germans, who completely destroyed the town.' Now it is true that, in a drunken frenzy, they completely destroyed the town-but not till ten days later. When they entered Visé they met with practically no resistance and did little or no damage. A paper of Aug. 8 relates a story of a German officer assembling the inhabitants around him and addressing to them a pacific oration, at the close of which 'a shot suddenly fired at him caused him to fall dead to the ground.' This story went the round of the

German press, generally located, not at Visé, but at some unnamed village, and with the addition that the populace were surrounded by a hollow square of German soldiers. Does it not strike Mr Bennett as remarkable that the White Book should make no allusion to an incident like this, for which, had it ever occurred, a crowd of witnesses could have been cited? The smallest investigation of these extracts from the Belgian press would have shown him that they were merely specimens of the lies which (in the absence of authentic news) filled all the papers of the world during those four days of consternation and bewilderment. If he thought them worth citing, he ought in common fairness to have cited as well the instant and energetic steps taken by the Belgian Government to forbid civilian participation in the fighting, and to secure the surrender of firearms.

Mr Bennett's careful abstention from any critical examination of the German evidence is proved by the fact that he has not even followed it on the map. He says: The White Book does not cover more than the incidents which occurred at Dinant, Aerschot, Andenne, Louvain, and the neighbourhood of Visé.' This remark he somewhat amends by heading the first section of the book (Appendices 2-66), 'Down the Eastern Frontier.' As a matter of plain fact, these Appendices refer neither to the neighbourhood of Visé in particular nor to the eastern frontier, but to villages and small towns all over the country-for instance, to villages around Namur, to Lessines (thirty miles west of Brussels), and to Deynze, Staden, and Roulers, within a few miles of the North Sea.

In his attempt to discredit the evidence presented to the Bryce Committee, Mr Bennett emphasizes the fact that it was not given upon oath. He seems to imagine that the White Book contains nothing but sworn testimony; but this is far from being the case. In the section relating to the villages, for example, 103 witnesses in all are produced, and of these only 43 are sworn. Something like the same proportion probably obtains throughout the book. A great part of the unsworn evidence consists of mere extracts from regimental reports, in which the writers may occasionally speak as

eye-witnesses, but are as a rule merely retailing the alleged experiences of others. Not one witness seems to have been subjected to any cross-examination; whereas the witnesses who appeared before the Bryce Committee were cross-examined by experienced lawyers. Even a superficial reader, in fact, must be struck by the constant failure in the White Book to distinguish between firsthand and hearsay evidence, as well as by the way in which the Zusammenfassender Bericht' prefixed to each section misquotes and misrepresents the statements it professes to summarise. But Mr Bennett is blind to all shortcomings. In his eyes everything that the (German) soldier says is evidence.

It is manifestly impossible within the limits of a single article to examine minutely even a tithe of the statements put forth in some 300 closely printed pages; but it is possible to make some general observations which seem to have escaped Mr Bennett. The typical picture presented by the German story is that of great bodies of men advancing in column of route, and fiercely assailed, in every second village they passed through, by sharpshooters concealed in the houses that lined the roadway. If these accounts were true, the expression Belgian Folk-War' employed on the cover of the White Book would not be at all exaggerated. But the first thing that strikes the attentive reader is that this is an almost bloodless war on the German side; it is the savage Belgians, not the 'defenceless' and 'unsuspecting' Germans, who are massacred. The first section of the White Book deals with events in 51 villages. We are constantly told that the advancing columns are received with 'lively fire,' 'violent fire,' 'particularly violent fire,' 'fire from all sides,' 'a general fusillade,' 'murderous fire,' 'a raging rifle-fire,' and so forth; but it is by the rarest exception that any one is injured. The total casualty-list for these 51 villages is 14 killed, 29 wounded, and three missing. To these must be added three cases of indeterminate loss: 'we had killed and wounded,' ' we lost several men, including officers,' 'a considerable number were wounded.' The disparity between cause and effect sometimes strikes the Germans themselves, who explain that the Belgians were fortunately poor

marksmen, or that they were so cowardly that, instead of exposing themselves at the windows, they fired from the middle of their rooms and, consequently, could not take aim. We are constantly assured, indeed, that these misguided patriots who, in the face of the most ghastly warnings, insisted on uselessly sacrificing not only their own lives, but the lives of their families and neighbours, habitually took up positions from which it was almost impossible to make good shooting and equally difficult for them to escape. The post usually assigned them is a 'Dachluke,' which Mr Bennett translates 'roof-window,' but which seems in some cases to mean a hole in the roof made by the removal of tiles. Could a more disadvantageous position be selected for firing into a village street? And why should men who knew they were throwing away their lives do their best to make their heroism vain?

Before attempting any solution of this mystery, let us look at a still more surprising feature of the German story. When the cry of 'Man hat geschossen!' was raised, the almost invariable procedure was to set about the 'Säuberung' (clearing out) of the houses whence shots were supposed to have proceeded. Soldiers rushed in, breaking open the doors, and, with the butt-ends of their rifles, drove all the hapless inmates into the street. Now this would appear to be a service of the extremest danger. The houses were, by hypothesis, held by armed and desperate men, who, knowing that massacre awaited them, would be sure to sell their lives dearly. However poor shots they might be, they could not fail to account for one or two of a gang of soldiers breaking into a cottage room. Will it be believed that in all the 300 pages of German evidence scarcely a case is recorded of effective resistance to the 'Säuberung' process-in the whole village section, not a single case? What can we possibly conclude from this except that the desperados were not armed? In some cases it is stated that arms were found upon them; but this is often the mere assumption of some one reporting from hearsay. In a good many cases it is said that ammunition was found, but not firearms-as though a rifle could easily be spirited away, but tell-tale cartridges were stubborn things. Can any one conjecture why the lion-hearted