The Kingdom of serbia : report upon the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the first invasion of Serbia

CAUSES OF THE MASSACRES 185

brute was unchained and let loose by his superiors, the work of destruction was duly carried out by men who are fathers of families and probably kindly in private life.

Thus the responsibility for these acts of cruelty does not rest upon the privates—mere victims of the instincts of the wild beast, which slumbers in every human being—but on their superior officers, who failed to restrain these tendencies ; nay, I will say even more, who aroused them.

The massacres were all the more readily committed by the Austro-Hungarian soldiers, as they were stimulated by the prospect of gain by pillage, which was permitted and even commanded by their superior officers. Those who from a sentiment of dignity did not wish to take part in the massacring and looting, were probably drawn into it by the fanatical Bosnian Mahommedan peasants, those professional plunderers, by whom the high command took good care to have the troops accompanied while on the march.

In short, it is beyond all doubt that the massacres of the civil population and the pillage were systematically organised by the command of the army of invasion; it is upon the command that all the responsibility must rest, and also the disgrace with which for all time to come this army has covered itself—the army of a people which claimed to be at the head of civilisation, a people which desired to impose its “KULTUR” on others who did not desire it.

Events have justified the attitude of those who refused to accept this *“ Kultur.”