WHO ARE THE HUNS?

Franc-Tireur Warfare and Cruelty. 113
prepared it for this end for a long time. The cruelties which
were committed upon wounded soldiers, doctors and nurses in
this guerilla warfare (physicians were murdered and hospitals
attacked by rifle-fire) even by women and priests, were of such
a nature that my generals were finally forced to resort to the
most severe measures in order to punish the guilty and to intimidate
a blood-thirsty population from continuing its dastardly
and murderous deeds.
Several villages and even the ancient city of Louvain with
the exception of the beautiful Town Hall were destroyed x
through the necessity of protecting my troops and assuring them
some measure of self-defense. My heart bleeds when I realize
that such measures should have become unavoidable and when
I think of the innumerable innocent people who have lost their
homes in consequence of the barbarous behavior of these criminals.
Wilhelm, I. R.
The Imperial Chancellor in his communication to the
representatives of the "United Press" and the "Associated
Press," also alludes to the systematic nature of the franc-tireur
campaign in Belgium. Herr von Bethmann Hollweg writes:
"The fact that Belgian girls have put out the eyes of
wounded men upon the battlefield is kept secret from you.
The officials of Belgian cities have invited our officers to meals
and then shot them whilst seated at the table. The civil population
in violation of all international law was incited to attack our
troops in the back by all manner of inhuman weapons after
having received them in a spirit of assumed friendliness. Belgian
women cut the throats of sleeping German soldiers in the
quarters they themselves had offered the men."
And this lawless and inhuman method of carrying on war
in Belgium was repeated in village after village as the German
troops entered French territory. There was obviously a central-
1 This sincere, manly and justifiable note of the Emperor was subjected
to the foulest abuse and misinterpretation in England, and by journalistic
reverperation, by certain newspapers of the United States. The full extent
of the injury sustained by Louvain had not at that time been ascertained, but
as has been subsequently proved, only a portion of the town had succumbed
to the flames, the spread of which had been heroically fought by the German
troops, to whose efforts the saving of the historic Town Hall was also due.
Miillcr, Who are the Huns? 8