"1683-1920". Frederick Franklin Schrader
von Mach’s letters unanswered and the report has never been made public. Following is the Washington report referred to:
Washington, Jan. 27. (Special to the “World”)—Of the thousands of Belgian refugees who are now in England not one has been subjected to atrocities by German soldiers. This in effect is the substance of a report received at the State Department from the American Embassy in London. The report states that the British government thoroughly had investigated thousands of reports to the effect that German soldiers had perpetrated outrages on the fleeing Belgians. During the early period of the war, columns of the British newspapers were filled with these accusations. Agents of the British government, according to the report from the American Embassy at London, carefully investigated all of these charges; they interviewed alleged victims and sifted all the evidence. As a result of the investigation the British Foreign Office notified the American Embassy that the charges appeared to be based upon hysteria and natural prejudice. The report added that many of the Belgians had suffered severe hardships but they should be charged up against the exigencies of war rather than the brutality of the individual German soldier.
According to advices from Switzerland, under date of July 9, 1916, the paper “Italia” printed the following:
“Assisted by the Papal state department, the congregation of Catholic church officials instituted a searching inquiry into the reported German atrocities in Belgian convents, first among the Belgian prioresses resident in Rome, next among the Belgian nuns passing through, all of whom unanimously deny having any knowledge of the alleged atrocities. Bishop Heylen, of Namur, who was among those examined, declared that the reports referred to were lacking in every essential of truth. Possibly an isolated case had occurred without his knowledge, but certainly nothing beyond this. Cardinal Mercier, who was also interviewed, spoke of three cases based upon hearsay. The Congregation deplored the spread of exaggerated reports lacking all semblance of truth and expressed its satisfaction with the results of the investigation.”
To the last it was a favorite pastime to charge the Germans with wanton destruction of towns. Ample contradiction could easily be offered if space permitted. Thus William K. Draper, Vice Chairman of the New York County Chapter of the American Red Cross, is quoted in the New York “Times” of July 13, 1919: “A pitiful part of this destruction is the realization that much of it was caused by French artillery, the troops being forced to demolish the towns while being occupied and used by the Germans.”
The whole web of lies and the conditions underlying the scheme are conclusively exposed in “The Tragedy of Belgium,” by Richard Grasshof, (New York: C. E. Dillingham Co.)
The Belgian atrocities were purposely conceived and exaggerated for two reasons:
1. To camouflage the fact that against all rules of civilized warfare, the Belgians of Louvain and several other towns, claiming protection as civilians, awaited an opportune time to institute a massacre of German soldiers who had entered and been stationed there approximately a week in apparently good relations with the population.
2. It was expected that Germany and Austria would be surely invaded under the joint impact of the forces of Russia, France, Belgium, Servia, Montenegro, England and Japan. In that event the world would hear no end of Cossack, Servian and Montenegran atrocities committed on German women and children, as in the Balkan campaign. England had called into the field the Indians, Maoris, Zulus and other savage blacks and yellow skins; France had called the Moroccan natives and the Senegalese tribesmen, blacks who hang around their necks strings adorned with the ears and noses of their fallen foes.
Forseeing that the ravages of these uncivilized warriors would excite the anger of the world against the Allies, if they ever crossed into German territory, that their deeds would bring the curses of the universe upon England’s head, it was resolved to anticipate all possible criticism and reproach by being the first to charge atrocities against their enemies and thus to negative all counter charges, or to say that they were merely retaliatory measures adopted in reprisal for barbarous acts committed against their own men. The Allies never crossed the German lines, save in East Prussia, nor the Austrian-Hungarian border save in Galicia, and here the Cossack reign, short as it was, proved the shrewd wisdom of English and French foresight; 700,000 homes were wantonly destroyed in Galicia alone. Its lawlessness beggars description; but humanity was not staggered because the mind of the world had been drugged by fatal infusions of falsehood about Belgian babies and women maimed and brutalized by “German barbarians.”
Prof. John W. Burgess, Charles Carleton Coffin (“The Boys of ’61”) and others have shown that precisely the same hysterical lies were circulated throughout England and the world by Englishmen during the American Civil War, the same kind of atrocities being charged against the Union Army.
No paper has been more aggressive in charging the Germans with atrocities than the New York “Times.” In its issue of April 17, 1865, it said:
“Every possible atrocity appertains to this rebellion. There is nothing whatever that its leaders have scrupled at. Wholesale massacres and torturings, wholesale starvation of prisoners, firing of great cities, piracies of the crudest kind, persecution of the most hideous character and of vast extent, and finally assassination in high places—whatever is inhuman, whatever is brutal, whatever is fiendish, these men have resorted to. They will leave behind names so black, and the memory of deeds so infamous, that the execration of the slave-holders’ rebellion will be eternal.”
The late James G. Blaine quoted Lord Malmesbury of date February 5, 1863, as accusing the Union troops guilty of “horrors unparalleled even in the wars of barbarous nations.”
All efforts to counteract the avowed campaign of misrepresentation were denounced as the acts of men in the pay of the Kaiser or irreclaimable pro-Germans determined to lend aid and comfort to the enemy, and subjected any one attempting them to the penalties contained in the Espionage Act. In interpreting the act, as applied to the liberal press, Postmaster General Burleson was quoted as follows:
“There are certain opinions and attitudes which will not be tolerated by the Post Office Department. For instance, such papers have sought to create in the minds of our citizens of German birth or descent the impression that Germany is fighting a defensive war; that the accounts of Belgian atrocities … are all English or American lies.”
To gainsay such an edict was to risk imprisonment for a term of twenty years.
Bancroft, George—Treaty with Germany—Vancouver Boundary Line.
Bancroft, George—Treaty with Germany—Vancouver Boundary Line.—The very cordial relations which subsisted between the United States and Germany from the days of Frederick the Great were carefully nurtured by the great men succeeding the establishment of the republic, as shown elsewhere by the comments of President Adams on the treaties with Prussia, and were strongly cemented by the aid extended the Union by Germany during the Civil War, as acknowledged by Secretary Seward and prominent members of the United States Senate. One of the most active promoters of this friendship was America’s foremost historian, George Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, and father of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, minister to Great Britain and subsequently to Prussia and Germany (1867–74).
It was through his efforts and friendly personal relations with Bismarck that a memorable agreement came into existence which established the right of immigrant German Americans to renounce their old allegiance and accept an exclusive American citizenship, exempting them from performing military service should they return to their native land. The effect of this agreement was more important than appears, as it was the first time that by a formal act the principle of renunciation of citizenship at the will of the individual was recognized. Beyond this, it led to a complete change of policy on the part of Great Britain by upsetting the old doctrine, “once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” The immediate good result was the renunciation by England of her claim to indefeasible allegiance, and to the right to impress into the British service a former British subject