ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the slaughter, incendiarism, and pillage which were resolved upon beforehand by the Germans and set forth by them in various publications, and are based upon terror, which they consider a firm foundation. It examines the crimes attributed to the Germans, beginning with those recorded in the prisoners' notebooks, and selecting only the most typical cases. The German General Staff justifies its policy of murder and incendiarism by the necessity under which it lay of terrifying the inhabitants of the country, and thus inducing them to ask for a cessation of hostilities. Terrorization has always been employed by revolutionaries no less than by kings, as a means of impressing their enemies. The sort of murder, pillage, and incendiarism that was employed by the Germans and Austrians. The merciless methods of warfare seem to spread increasingly, and to carry us back by gradual steps to the remotest periods of history.
