Between thirty and forty of the depositions submitted related to this offense.  This number does not in itself seem so great as to be inconsistent with the possibility of accident.

In one case a Red Cross depot was shelled on most days throughout the week.  This is hardly reconcilable with the enemy’s gunners having taken any care to avoid it.

There are other cases of conspicuous hospitals being shelled, in the witnesses’ opinion, purposely.

In one of these the witness, a Sergeant Major, makes a suggestion which appears plausible, namely, that the German gunners use any conspicuous building as a mark to verify their ranges rather than for the purpose of destruction.  It would be quite according to the modern system of what German writers call Kriegsraeson to hold that the convenience of range-finding is a sufficient military necessity to justify disregarding any immunity conferred on a building by the Red Cross or otherwise.  In any case, artillery fire on a hospital at such a moderate range as about 1,000 yards can hardly be thought accidental.

(2) As to firing on ambulances, the evidence is more explicit.

In one case the witness is quite clear that the ambulances were aimed at.

In another case of firing at an ambulance train the range was quite short.

In another a Belgian Red Cross party is stated to have been ambushed.

On the whole we do not find proof of a general or systematic firing on hospitals or ambulances; but it is not possible to believe that much care was taken to avoid this.

(3) As to firing on stretcher bearers in the course of trench warfare, the testimony is abundant, and the facts do not seem explicable by accident.  It may be that sometimes the bearers were suspected of seeing too much; and it is plain from the general military policy of the German armies that very slight suspicion would be acted on in case of doubt.

(c) Abuse of the Red Cross and of the White Flag.

THE RED CROSS.

Cases of the Red Cross being abused are much more definite.

There are several accounts of fire being opened, sometimes at very short range, by machine guns which had been disguised in a German Red Cross ambulance or car.  This was aggravated in one case near Tirlemont by the German soldiers wearing Belgian uniforms.

Witness speaks also of a stretcher party with the Red Cross being used to cover an attack and of a German Red Cross man working a machine gun.

There is also a well-attested case of a Red Cross motor car being used to carry ammunition under command of officers.

Unless all these statements are willfully false, which the committee sees no reason to believe, these acts must have been deliberate, and it does not seem possible that a Red Cross car could be equipped with a machine gun by soldiers acting without orders.  There is also one case of firing from a cottage where the Red Cross flag was flying, and this could not be accidental.