The whole makes a
fearful sight. Blow upon blow! Thunderbolt on thunderbolt!
Everything given over to plunder. I saw a mother with her two
little ones--one of them had a great wound in the head and an
eye put out.
Deserved repression, remarks this soldier: "They had telephone
communication with the enemy." And yet, we may recall that by Article
30 of The Hague Convention of 1907, signed on behalf of H.M. the Emperor
of Germany, "no collective penalty, pecuniary or other, shall be
proclaimed against a population, by reason of individual acts for which
the population is not responsible _in solido_." What tribunal during
that dreadful night took the pains to establish this joint
participation?
[Illustration: Figure 2.]
II.
The unsigned notebook of a soldier of the Thirty-second Reserve Infantry
(Fourth Reserve Corps) has this entry:
Creil, Sept. 3.--The iron bridge was blown up. For this we set
the streets on fire, and shot the civilians.
Yet it must be obvious that only the regular troops of the French
Engineer Corps could have blown up the iron bridge at Creil; the
civilians had no hand in it. As an excuse for these massacres, when any
excuse is offered, the notebooks usually note that "civilians" or
"francs-tireurs" had fired on the troops.
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