“The road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liege is one long, sad line of desolation.[110] Otherwise the district is fertile; now, however, sadness and devastation reign supreme.  Nearly every second house is a heap of ruins, while the houses which are still standing are empty and deserted.

[Footnote 110:  On September 8th, 1914, the Kaiser sent a long telegram to President Wilson, in which he defended the German armies against the charges of ruthless atrocities.  He euphemistically stated that “a few villages have been destroyed.”]

“On every side signs of destruction; furniture and house utensils lie around; not a pane of glass but what is broken.  Still the inhabitants themselves are to blame, for have they not shot at our poor, tired soldiers?"[111]

[Footnote 111:  “Mit den Koenigin-Fusilieren durch Belgien” ("With the Queen Fusiliers through Belgium"), by H. Knutz, p. 13.]

That is the utmost sympathy which any German has expressed for Belgium.  The German public is fully informed of all that has been done, and considers that they have been brutally, wrongfully treated.  Lord Bryce’s report as well as the French and Belgian official reports have been dealt with at considerable length in the German Press, but receive no credence whatever; they are lies, all lies invented to blacken the character of poor, noble, generous Germany!

Germans are well aware of the awful number of brutal crimes which their men-folk commit year by year at home.  Yet they are absolutely convinced that these same men are immediately transformed into chivalrous knights so soon as they don the Kaiser’s uniform.  They seem incapable of conceiving that a race which debauches its own women, can hardly be expected to show the crudest forms of respect to the women of an enemy people.

Herr Knutz—­an elementary school-teacher in civilian attire, and a non-commissioned officer when in the German army—­seems to possess some rays of human feeling.  “Just as I was leaving the fort I saw seven or eight Belgian civilians guarded by our men with fixed bayonets.  They were charged with firing on German soldiers.  I must say that the lamentations of these men—­aged from 20 to 50—­made a deep impression on me.  They had thrown themselves upon their knees, and with raised hands were weeping and beseeching that their lives might be spared.

“The villagers are exceedingly ignorant, and when their land is in danger, believe themselves justified in seizing any old shot-gun or revolver which lies at hand.  Probably some of the more prudent are aware that it is a mad enterprise, but the instinct of self-defence is so innate in the simple country people that advice does not help in the least.” (Von Bethmann-Hollweg and von Tirpitz justify the use of gas, the sinking of merchant vessels containing women and children, the dropping of bombs on open towns, etc., etc., by the plea of self-defence.—­Author.)