The daily banner. (Cambridge, Md.) 1897-2008, 1918-04-22
KEEP RECORD OF CRIME
Legal Proof OF German OutraSeS is
Being Collected-PhotoSraphS Tell
The Story.

(From Stars and Stripes. France
1t is doubtful whetb Il any peoples
Of antiquity have so OeSmeared the
record of the human race as have the
modern Germans. Their catalogue
Of crime is so complete that it would
seem impossible to add one that
might have been forgotten. Yet each
day brings in new charges based on
incontestable evidence.
When the representative of the
nations assemble for the final settle
ment there will be laid before the
representatives of Germany affida-
Wits, photographs and other legal
proofs that make German atrocities
far better established than the scalp
ings of the Sioux Indians on the
Western frontiers, the murders of
the Black Hole of Calcutta or the
crimes of the Spanish uaquisition. On
a battle line 800 miles long, in every
village the retreating Germans pass
ed, the following morning accredited
men hurried to the scene to make the
record against the day of judgment.
The photographs of dead and mutt
lated women, girls, children and old
timony are esteemed by purists--the
testimony Of mature men, who have
seen and heard, and the testimony
Of children too innocent to invent
their statements, but old enough to
tell what they saw. From such sour
ces more than 10000 separate at
rocities committed by the German
armies have been documented and
g h. oh n11 of
the Allied nations Tor use when the
terms of peace are to be discussed.
When the German army in Lor-
raine was defeated by one-half its
number it fell northward, passing
through French towns and villages,
where there were no Frenchmen, no
guns, and where no shots were fired.
During July and August men went
slowly from one ruined town to an
other, talking with the women and
children, comparing the photographs
and the full official records made at
the time with the statements of the
poor, Wretchea survivors who lived
in cellars where once there had been
beautiful houses, orchards and vine
yards.
In BerbeviiIier, they took the pho
tograph of the bodies of l 5 old men
whom the Germans had lined up and
shot because there were no young
soldiers to kill; heard the detailed
story of a woman whose boy of IA,
being nearest the age of soldier,
was first hanged to a pear tree in
the garden, and when the officer and
soldier had left him and were busy
setting fire to the next house, she cut
the rope, revived the strangled boy,
only to find the soldiers had return
ed, and while the officer held her
hands behind her back, his assis-
tants poured pertol on the boys head
and clothes, set fire to him and while
he staggered about, a flaming torch,
they shrieked with laughter.
When the Germans burned all the
houses and retreated the next morn
ing the prefect of Lorraine photo
q sz1a q piatza the bodice -ef 2nzold men W.
ing as they fell, the bodies of wo-
men stripped and at last slain, while
in the next village stood the ruined
square belfry into which the Germans
had lifted machine guns, then fore
ed every woman and child-27o in
number-into the little church and
notified the French soldiers that if
they fired upon the machine guns
they would kill their own women and
children.
After several days hunger and
thirst, at midnight these brave wo-
men slipped a little boy through the
church window and bade their huS-
bands fire upon the Germans in the
! belfry, saying they preferred death
| to the indignities they Ware suffer-
ing And so these French
| ed their guns, and in blowing those
| machine guns out of the belfry kill
ed 20 of their own women and chill
| dren.
Further indisputable proof of the
| heartlessness of the Germans is to
| be found in the letters and diaries
| taken from the German dead.
| Here is the diary entry, August
| %, of Private Max Thomas: Our
soldiers are so excited We are like
wild beasts. Destroyed eight houses,
with their inmates. Bayonetted two
men with their wives and a girl of
| 49,"
In the diary of Ethel Anders oc-
| Cured this: IN Vendre all the in
habitants without exception were
brought out and shot. This shoot
ing was heartbreaking, as they all
knelt down and prayed. 1t was real
/ sport. yet it was terrible to watch.
At Hecht l saw the body of a young
! girl nailed to the outside door Of a
cottage by her hands. She was
about IA or 16 years old.
Standing in the village of Heri-
menil, boy of 16 and his mother
showed me II bullet marks against
the stone wall where a mother, 23
years old, with a babe on her breast
with her young sister and sister-in-
law of Is and IT, were shot by L
German soldiers. On little boarG
in one ruined village we can reac
these words: Marie. Aged 16
Dead August "a. 1915. Vengeance i:
Mine, l will repay, said the Lord ,