The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-04-22
WHITL0CK TELLS
OF ATROCITIES OF
HUN IN BELGIUM
Used Civilians as Shields From
French Bullets.
Old Men, Girls, Women and
Children Shot Down.
PEOPLE TREATED LIKE SLAVES
Huns Always Used Guns at the
Slightest PrOvOcatiOn.
Women Compelled To Witness
Shooting of Husbands. \

New York. April 22-Describing
heretofore unrestrained German atroc-
tiles. Brand Whitlock. United States
minister to Belgium. indicates the
Prussian horrors were conducted with
Prussian efficiency as part of the plan
of campaign Whitlock was in Bel
GUM when kultur overwhelmed the
land.
Writing in Everybody's magazine for
May, which appears tomorrow, he tells
how carefully organized barbarities
followed in the wake of the German
drive, being especially cruel after each
German defeat Picturing what oc-
CURED when the French resisted a
German attempt to bridge the Mouse
August %, 1914. Whitlock says:
Made Screen of People
People were held there, evidently
as sort of screen. while the Germans
began to construct temporary bridge
over the river. The Germans sent a
citizen of Dinant. one of the prisoners,
in boat across the river to inform
the French that unless they ceased
firing the civilians would be shot But
few stray bullets still sped across
the river. The prisoners were massed
toSether-nearly ninety of them, old
men and young. girls and boys little
children and babies in their mothers
arms.
"A platoon was called up, the col
onel in command gave the word to
fire and the gray-clad soldiers in cold
blood shot down those ninety persons
they stood huddled there together.
Among them were twelve children I'M
der the age of S years. six of them
little babies whose mothers. as they
stood up to face their pitiless muir
derers. held them in their arms
The fate of the town of Andeen,
before the war place of 1900 peo-
pie. is cited by Whitlock as an exam
Ple of what happened when the Ger
mans were thrown back in at
tempt to cross the Mouse on a tenn
pcrary bridge.
Horrible PiIIaging.
"All night the killing and pillaging
went on" he says. The crowd was
ordered to walk toward the Place
Destilleuls. Those who did not walk
fast enough wero shot down. A Elem
ish clockrnaker came out of his dwell
ing supporting his aged father-in-
law. He was ordered to hold up his
hands, but ne could not do so with
cut letting the old man fall. so a SOL
der struck him in the neck with an
ak Arrived at the Place Destilleuls
the women and children were sepa-
rated from the men. Haphazard, the
soldiers picked out thirty or forty
men and shot them down in cold
blood.
And al the while. day and night,
in the flaming streets the pillage and
murder went on. The man who de-
Scribed it all to me had vivid mem
DRY of a tall. red headed soldier who
was particularly conspicuous BY the
ferocity with which he welded the AK
and mutilated his victims. baby
among them, in the arms of its
mother
Speaking of the destruction of Bort
meerbeck. near Malines, Whitlock says
that every time the German army was
thrown back upon it, they burned
forty houses
Fatal August 22nd.
AT Dinant" Whitlock declares
women and children were forced 20
stand by and witness the murder of
husbands and fathers. One woman
Madame Amin. who had given biz tn
to child three days before. was borne
forth on a mattress by German SOL
diers. who said they would compel her
to look on while they shot her hus-
band. but her cries and applications
finally moved the soldiers to spare
the husbands life"
In the little graveyard beside the
church at Tamines. there are hun
dreds of new made graves" writes
Whitlock.
THE crosses stand in serried rows
They are all neat. of painted wood
alike except for the names and ages
from Is to "a. But they all bore
the same sinister date, August %,
1914.
About six hundred men were
nlassed in st. Martins square, by the
river bank. and the women folk. their
wives, mothers, daughters. were as
sembled to witness the scene"
Quoting an eye witness. Whitlock
described how the Germans lined up
the victims, then tumbled $50 of them