E. Alexander Powell, author and journalist, acted as a War Correspondent with the Belgian Army in the campaign of the autumn of 1914. He was invited to dine with General von Boehn, Commander of the Ninth German Army. He thus had an opportunity of visiting the German lines and of having a conversation with a highly-placed German official. He published his experiences in a book called " Fighting in Flanders," from which the following quotations are made by permission of Mr. Wm. Heinemann :



An American, I went to Belgium at the beginning of the war with an open mind. I had few, if any, prejudices. I knew the English, the French, the Belgians, the Germans equally well. I had friends in all four countries and many happy recollections of days I had spent in each. When I left Antwerp, after the German occupation, I was as pro-Belgian as though I had been born under the red-black-and-yellow banner. I had seen a country, one of the loveliest and most peaceable in Europe, invaded by a ruthless and brutal soldiery ; I had seen its towns and cities blackened by fire and broken by shell ; I had seen its churches and its historic monuments destroyed ; I had seen its highways crowded with hunted, homeless fugitives ; I had seen its fertile fields strewn with the corpses of what had once been the manhood of the nation ; I had seen its women left husband less and its children left fatherless ; I had seen what was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land of desolation ; and I had seen its people . . . aroused, resourceful, unafraid, and fighting, fighting, fighting. Do you wonder that they captured my imagination, that they won my  admiration ? I am pro-Belgian ; I admit it frankly. I should be ashamed to be anything else.



******************************************

The General began by asserting that the accounts of atrocities perpetrated by German troops on Belgian noncombatants were lies. . . .

" Three days ago, General," said I, " I was in Aerschot. The whole town is now but a ghastly, blackened ruin."

" When we entered Aerschot," was the reply, " the son of the Burgomaster came into the room where our officers were dining and assassinated the Chief of Staff. What followed was retribution. The townspeople got only what they deserved."

" But why wreak your vengeance on women and children ? " I asked.

" None have been killed," the General asserted positively.

" I'm sorry to contradict you, General," I asserted with equal positiveness, " but I have myself seen their bodies. So has Mr. Gibson, the Secretary of the American Legation in Brussels, who was present during the destruction of Louvain."

" Of course," replied General von Boehn, " there is always danger of women and children being killed during street fighting if they insist on coming into the streets. It is unfortunate, but it is war."

" But how about a woman's body I saw with the hands and feet cut off ? How about the white-haired man and his son whom I helped to bury outside of Sempst, who had been killed merely because a retreating Belgian soldier had shot a German soldier outside their house ? There were twenty-two bayonet wounds in the old man's face. I counted them. How about the little girl, two years old, who was shot while in her mother's arms by an Uhlan and whose funeral I attended at Heyst-op-den-Berg ? How about the old man near

 Vilvorde, who was hung by his hands from the rafters of his house and roasted to death by a bonfire being built under him ? "

The General seemed taken aback by the exactness of my information.

" Such things are horrible if true," he said. " Of course, our soldiers, like soldiers in all armies, sometimes get out of hand and do things which we would never tolerate if we knew it. At Louvain, for example, I sentenced two soldiers to twelve years' penal servitude each for assaulting a woman."

" Apropos of Louvain," I remarked, " why did you destroy the library ? "

" We regretted that as much as anyone else," was the answer. " It caught fire from burning houses and we could not save it."

" But why did you burn Louvain at all ? " I asked.

" Because the townspeople fired on our troops. We actually found machine-guns in some of the houses. And," smashing his fist down upon the table, " whenever civilians fire upon our troops we will teach them a lasting lesson. If women and children insist on getting in the way of bullets so much the worse for the women and children."

" How do you explain the bombardment of Antwerpby Zeppelins ? " I inquired.

" Zeppelins have orders to drop their bombs only on fortifications and soldiers," he answered.

" As a matter of fact," I remarked, " they destroyed only private houses and innocent civilians, several of whom were women. If one of those bombs had dropped two hundred yards nearer my hotel I wouldn't be here to-day smoking one of your excellent cigars."

" That is a calamity which, thank God, didn't happen," he replied.

" If you feel for my safety as deeply as that, General," I said earnestly, " you can make quite sure

of my coming to no harm by sending no more Zeppelins."

" Well, Herr Powell," he said, laughing, " we will think about it. And," he continued gravely, " I trust that you will tell the American people, through your great paper, what I have told you to-day. Let them hear our side of this atrocity business. It is only justice that they should be made familiar with both sides of the question."

I have quoted my conversation with General von Boehn as nearly verbatim as I can remember it. I have no comments to make. I will leave it to my readers to decide for themselves just how convincing were the answers of the German General Staff-for General von Boehn was but its mouthpiece-to the Belgian accusations.



END OF OPINION

Click here for all Sixty American Opinions on the War

E. ALEXANDER POWELL.