Читать книгу German Atrocities: An Official Investigation - J. H. Morgan - Страница 15

The case of Dinant may be taken as typical. The evidence as to Louvain and Aerschot is not less incredible. We are asked to believe that at Aerschot34 the population of a small town suddenly rose in arms against a whole brigade, although the population was quite unprotected—“we ascertained that there was no enemy in the neighbourhood.”35 To explain this surprising and suicidal impulse the Germans produce—it is their only evidence—the statement of a Captain Karge, that he had “heard rumours from various German officers” that the Belgian Government, “in particular the King of the Belgians,” had decreed that every male Belgian was to do the German Army “as much harm as possible.” “It is said that such an order was found on a captured Belgian soldier.” Strangely enough, the order is not produced—not a word of it. Also, “an officer told me that he himself had read on a church door of a place near Aerschot that the Belgians were not allowed to hold captured German officers on parole, but were bound to shoot them.” He adds that he “cannot repeat the words of this officer exactly.”36