A German Woman’s Cruelty
The records of awful cruelty practiced by the Germans on their Russian captives are too terrible to be believed almost. And German women were as bad as German men, as the following instance will tell: ― On one occasion when the Tzar and his Consort were visiting a military hospital in Moscow, the Emperor approached the bedside of quite a young soldier and noticed that both his eye-sockets were empty. On His Majesty inquiring how such a dreadful accident had occurred, he was told that the wounded soldier was lying on the battlefield unable to move.
A German sister of mercy (?) came up to him, but instead of giving him help, she took out of her pocket a sharp stiletto, put both his eyes out, and then left him to die, if he had not been found by some members of the Russian Red Cross Brigade.
On hearing this harrowing account of merciless cruelty, the Emperor turned pale with suppressed emotion; horror and dismay were depicted on his mobile features. For a few moments he could not utter a word, then, stooping, the Tzar pressed his lips to the unhappy man’s forehead, and in a low but clear voice promised to have him provided for until the end of his life.
We are told also of Prince Joachim, the German Kaiser’s son, ordering the epaulettes to be torn off from the uniform of Russian officers, and for them to be struck with them across the face, because they declined to sweep the streets, saying that their soldiers would do it under their supervision. At last, half-dead with hunger, fatigue and misery, the officers gave in and took the brooms, and while they were thus degraded Prince Joachim snapshotted them. “It seems incredible,” says the narrator of the above, “that an Emperor’s son, the great-grandson of Queen Victoria, should be such a man.”