The Logan Republican

False stories

During the present war in Europe as well as in previous wars, many stories of cruelty are circulated. Some are false and some are true. But the following story relative to the Belgians gouging out the eyes of German soldiers is significant. It is taken from the Kolnische Volkszeitung of October 29:

"In spite of the repeated warnings of the press wild rumors about the soldiers with gouged out eyes to be found in the ophthalmic hospital at Aachen continue to be circulated. In the course of a journey in the neighborhood of Aachen I myself frequently heard these horrible stories. For instance, a soldier sitting at a table of the upper ten thousand in a hotel near Aachen gave me the following evidence: I have myself been in the ophthalmic hospital in the Stephanstrasse. A sister led me into a dark ward hung with black—the so called death ward. Twenty-eight soldiers with gouged out eyes were lying there. At my entrance they cried out to me in bitter anger and pain, "If you are a comrade, stab us to death." Other soldiers confirmed this statement, and those who were sitting round told me, when I expressed some doubts, that these reports were current in all directions.

"On Monday, October 19, I went to call on the director of the hospital in question, Dr. Buellers, who said, 'Very well I will show you this terrible ward.' He opened the door of a sick room. The occupants were all right. A second and then a third ward is inspected. 'Is anyone in pain?' 'No, doctor,' was the answer. Finally another door is opened. Here we found darkened lights, black curtains. All of a sudden the electric light is turned on. 'Does that hurt your eyes?'

'No, doctor.'

'Were your eyes gouged out in Belgium?'

The wounded men laughed loud. And so it went on through all the wards. There was misery and pain in some of them. Cases in which both eyes had been injured were very rare.

"The surgeon in chief turning to me said: If you want to state in public what you have seen, please write that neither I nor my colleagues have up to the present treated a single soldier with gouged out eyes."

The same letter proceeds to deal with the report, which has much circulation in Germany, of dead men and dead horses being found on battlefields with their eyes cut out. An ambulance man who had been over a great many battlefields, questioned on the point, said that he himself had never seen a dead or wounded man who had been mutilated in this way. As to horses, it seemed not probable that carrion crows were responsible for mutilations.