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The Massacres—Andenne.
ОглавлениеWhen we come to the justification alleged for the wholesale massacres of communities the evidence is even more suspicious. In order to prove the Belgians unspeakable knaves the German Government have to present them as incredible fools. At Andenne, “a small town of a population of about 8,000 people,” there were affrays in which “about 200 inhabitants lost their lives.”23 According to the German document, “two infantry regiments and a Jäger battalion” were marching through this place when they were set upon by the inhabitants. Two regiments and a battalion would constitute the greater part of a brigade; they must have amounted to at least 7,000 men.24 We are asked to believe that this small unprotected community (one of the German witnesses expressly says, “I did not see one single French or Belgian soldier in the entire town or the environs”)25 made an unprovoked attack on this overwhelming force, and that the women assisted with pots of scalding water. Two hundred of the civilians were, by the German admission, shot. The German losses were, it is added, “singularly small.” So singularly small were they that the German Report omits even to enumerate them.