Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-06-14
Atrocities Follow Defeat

As one SluuleS the eNlueuCt OuS II
struck at the outset by a fact so gen
eral that it must exclude the hypO-
thesis OF mere coincidence. and that
| is that these wholesale massacres fol
lowed Immediately upon some reverse
which the Germans had sustained.
Their army is checked by the guns
at the forts TO the east of Liege, and
the horrors of Wise, Verviers, Bligny
Battice, Herve and twenty Villages
follow. Checked before Namur, they
sacked Andenne, BOuvignies ano
Champignon. Compelled TO give bat
tie 10 the French army in the Belgian
Ardennes, they ravage the beautlIu
valley of the Samois, destroy the vii
lage Of RoSsignol and eXterminate It's
entire male population.
Checked again by the French on
the Meuse. the awful carnage OF
Dinant results: and on the SamOre
by the same army, they burn Char
leroi and enact the appalling TRACE
DIV of TamineS. At Mons the English
balk them. and all over the Borinage
there is systematic destruction, phi
lage and murder. The Belgian army
drives them back from Malines, and
Louvain is doomed. The Belgian
army. falling back and fighting in re-
treat. takes refuge in the forts oi
Antwerp. and the burning and sack
of Hougaerde, Wavre, Ottignies
Grimde, Neerlinter, Weert st. George
Shaffen and Aerschot follow. The
Belgian troops inflict serious losses
ln nf
province of Limbourg, and the towns
of Lummen, Bilsen and Lanaeken are
partially destroyed. Antwerp held
ont for two months, and all about its
outer lines of Notifications there was
blood and fire, numerous villages
we're sacked and burned, and the
whole town of TeTmonde was de-
stroyed. During the battles OF Sep
TENDER the village of BoOrtmeerbeekr
near Malines, occupied by the Ger
mans. was retaken by the Belgiansr
and when the Germans entered II
again they burned forty houses
Three times occupied by the Belgians
and retaken by the Germans, Boort'
meerbeelk was three times punished IN
the same way. That is to say, every
where the German army met with q
defeat it turned on the civil popula'
ton and punished it, wreaklng a
cowardIy vengeance on helpless and
unoffending civilians. This happened
so many times and so precisely in the
same way that its significance cannon
be avoided.
But there is a striking corrollary
To all this. In all those regions where
the Germans could pass without re-
sistance from the Belgian or Frencf
or English troops there were no mas
sacres and no incendiarism in the
grand style. There were many lso
lated cases of individual outrage and
atrOcity, of course but no systematic
ally organized humiliation of cities
no massacre of populations, as al
Louvain, Dinant, Termonde, Aeschot
Tamines. Wise. Between Brussel!
and Mons. in the northern part o.
the Ardennes: in the north of Linn
bourg. in East Flanders, the German
army passed in force, but there wal
I no resistance there on the part of reg
ular troops. no check to the ambi
tious plan. And there was nc
"schrecklichkeit."
If, as the claim is, the whole civil
population of Belgium was organized
/ for a ''voIksrieg" they would have
/ been found there as we'll. From al
that one can gather the franc
tireurs'' existed only in the over
wrought imagination of the German
soldiers, and one is led irresistibly tC
the conclusion that thus stung b!
little defeats and exasperated by the
/ checks which their plans had sus
tanned. the officers either ordered oil
permitted these atrocities on the civil
DODulatiOn