But whoever fired was shot. Upon our leaving
Owele the rifles rang out, and with that, flames, women, and
all the rest.
[Illustration: Figure 8.]
IV.
Frequently when a German troop want to carry a position, they place
before them civilians--men, women, and children--and find shelter behind
these ramparts of living flesh. As such a stratagem is essentially
playing upon the nobility of heart of the adversary, and saying to him
"you won't fire upon these unfortunates, I know it, and I hold you at my
mercy, unarmed, because you are not as craven as I am," as it implies a
homage to the enemy and the self-degradation of the one employing it, it
is almost inconceivable that soldiers should resort to it; it represents
a new invention in the long story of human vileness, which even the
dreadful Penitentiels of the Middle Ages had not discovered. In reading
the stories from French, Belgian, and English sources, attributing such
practices to the Germans, it has made me doubt, if not the truthfulness,
at least the detailed exactness of the stories. It seemed to me that the
tales must be of crimes by men who would be disavowed, individual
lapses, which do not dishonor the nation, because the nation on
ascertaining them would repudiate them.
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