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56 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
about reprisals, for the soldier reasons something like this :
" The war must be conducted between soldiers, and when
either party is defeated and the conqueror marches into the
vanquished to\Mi, the civilians must not fire from windows
on the troops entering. And if the nuisance cannot be checked
in any other way, then the town must be punished." Such
was the case with Louvain, which is an unfortified town and
where not a single window-pane would have been broken,
had not the franctireurs themselves brought about the destruc-
tion. Things actually went to such lengths that German
soldiers who tried to extinguish the fire in the burning houses
next to the Townhall, in order to save this valuable building,
were shot down during their work by franctireurs. The
German conduct of the war is severe, but it is not cruel.
During the first stage of the war, when the troops had
entered a town and burnt or demolished those houses from
which civilians had been shooting, solitary houses were often
to be seen which remained untouched in the midst of the
desolation. The doors of such remaining houses often bore,
written in chalk and in a soldier’s hand, some such inscription
as :
" Here lives an aged couple," or :
" Here lives an invalid
who must be spared," or :
" There has been no firing from this
house " ; or again :
" The inhabitants of this house are
friendly people." Such houses are then spared by the troops
M^ho come after. In the course of my narrative I shall have
frequent occasion to mention traits of kindliness on the part
of the German soldiers towards the local population. On
the other hand, I have never either seen or heard of a single
act of cruelty.
After one more visit to the railway station and taking a
look at troops from Lunéville on the way to Belgium, likewise
several infantry trains from Metz, I returned to the Hotel
Staar just in time to meet the yoimg lieutenant who had been
instructed by General Moltke to take me to the Headquarters
of the Crown Prince’s Army. His name was Hans von Gwinner
and he is the son of the great banker and Bagdad Railway
magnate in Berlin. He was a wide-awake and capable young
fellow and drove his car himself. I sat down beside him,
whilst the orderly accompanying us took his seat inside.
It poured with rain as we left the town. The road was
slippery, but we had studded tyres and the lieutenant drove
at terrific speed. We had started off rather late and we wanted
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