The Boches will deny them later on, but in 1914 they did not deny them, but rather gloried in them as a “good idea.”  We can see this from the letter of the Bavarian Lieutenant Eberlein, published on the 7th October, 1914, by a leading Munich paper, “We had arrested three other civilians when a ‘good idea’ struck me.  We made them sit on chairs in the middle of the street;—­supplications from them, and blows with butt-ends of rifles from us.  At last they were seated outside in the street with their hands convulsively clasped together.  I felt sorry for them, but the plan worked at once.  As I learnt later, the regiment which entered Saint-Die, further to the north of us, had precisely similar experiences to our own.  The civilians, whom they had put in the same way in the middle of the street, were killed by French bullets.  I saw their dead bodies."[17]

FOOTNOTES: 

[17] We have not, so far, come across any attempted justification, by German authors, of these cowardly acts; but such we shall have without fail.  It is probable that the 93 “intellectuals” whose manifesto we recall to memory a few pages further on are preparing a fresh “appeal to the civilized world” with a view to explaining that the German troops—­the representatives and trustees of Kultur—­are authorised by God Himself to use every means for the protection of their precious lives.

MARTYRDON OF CIVILIAN PRISONERS

After having burnt our villages,[18] and shot the inhabitants by dozens in some places, and by hundreds in others, they frequently deported all or a part of the survivors to Germany.  It is impossible at this moment to establish the number of those deported, but they were sent off by tens of thousands.  These unfortunate people, men, women and children, who had witnessed and survived fires and massacres, who had seen their houses blazing and so many of those dear to them fall under the bullets of the assassin, and who were forced in some places to dig graves for their victims, and in others to hold a light for the executioners while they were finishing off the wounded,—­these poor wretches are despatched to Germany.[19] What a journey, and what a place of residence!

Let us quote one story among a thousand.  “Our escort was commanded by two German officers.  They were unapproachable.  Anyone who tried to speak to them was threatened with a revolver.  In order that we might get a drink, we were made to collect empty meat tins which served as our drinking cups until we reached Cassel.  We were abused and threatened wherever we went.  Sometimes they made signs to us that they were going to shoot us, or hang us, or cut our heads off.  They threw filth at our heads and spat in our faces.  We were not going to stoop before them; the disgrace was not ours.  It is they, not we, who are degraded.  An officer who was present when our march-past took place aimed