Their commonest explanation is this, “Civilians fired on us."[24] The French Commission of Enquiry came to the following conclusion on this point:  “This allegation is false, and those who put it forward have been powerless to give it the appearance of truth, even though it has been their custom to fire shots in the neighbourhood of dwellings, in order to be able to affirm that they have been attacked by innocent inhabitants, on whose ruin or massacre they had resolved.”

Enquiries conducted by high magistrates have established the fact that German officials are very frequently guilty of premeditated lies.  It is probable, all the same, that many German soldiers, on entering Belgium or France, were obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them.  The cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting for pillage—­“Man hat geschossen (they have fired)”—­is enough for a locality to be delivered up at once to the wildest fury.  “When an inhabitant has fired on a regiment,” said a soldier at Louvain, “the place belongs to the regiment.”  What a temptation for a Boche soldier to fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and massacre!

Some mistakes have possibly been made which could have been avoided by the least enquiry.  Read this admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon officer:  “The lovely village of Gue-d’Hossus has been given over to the flames, though innocent in my opinion.  I hear that a cyclist fell off his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself.  As a consequence there was firing in his direction.  Then, the male inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames.  Such horrors will not be repeated, we must hope ...  There ought to be some compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this indiscriminate shooting of people.”

The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbourhood of, villages have been those of French or Belgian soldiers covering their retreat.  Sometimes this has been discovered, but too late, and they have continued their crimes—­in order to justify them.

Here is the statement of a neutral:  “In one village they found corpses of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot....  In the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with consideration, and allowed himself to talk freely:  his complaint was the misdeeds of his soldiers.  Near Haelen, he told his host, he had to have a soldier shot on finding in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings:  the man, on being questioned, admitted that he had cut them off the bodies of the German dead."[25]

In exceptional cases an enquiry is held; and in every such instance the truth is discovered and massacre prevented.