Following the scenes of the
German invasion into Belgium, where here and there some maddened
civilian fired on the German troops and precipitated the deaths of his
townsmen,[C] Berlin issued, on August twenty-seventh, a declaration,
of which this paragraph is a part:
[Footnote C: The Belgians contend that, in almost every case, such
firing by civilians was the result of attack on their women.]
"The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil
population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to
create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to
the whole country."
A Belgian officer once quoted it to me, with a comment.
"This is not an order to the army. It is an attempt at justification
for the very acts which Berlin is now attempting to deny!"
That is how "frightfulness" came into the literature of the war.
Captain F---- stopped the car. Near the road was a ruin of an old
church.
"In that church," he said, "our soldiers were sleeping when the
Germans, evidently informed by a spy, began to shell it. The first
shot smashed that house there, twenty-five yards away; the second shot
came through the roof and struck one of the supporting pillars,
bringing the roof down. Forty-six men were killed and one hundred and
nine wounded.
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