“But it is otherwise with regard to the atrocities on our wounded; these are a stain on Belgium’s national honour which will not easily be wiped out.  A German would never perpetrate such monstrous crimes,[112] and that we can say without any overweening opinion of ourselves."[113]

[Footnote 112:  This is hypocrisy or ignorance.—­Author.]

[Footnote 113:  Ibid., pp. 18-19.]

Herr Knutz offers no proof of the alleged atrocities; he has heard of them, believes and repeats the story.  I have some fifty German books describing the war in Belgium, and in all of them similar legends are mentioned, but in no single instance is a case proved and nailed down.  No victim is named, and the scene of the alleged atrocity is never given, hence it seems to be the usual German artifice to make Stimmung, i.e., to raise feeling.

One thumb-nail picture from the teacher’s diary shows that the Germans created only too well a Stimmung of abject terror among the Belgians.

“This morning, August 19th, we searched a small wood for Belgians, but found none.  On leaving the wood a touching picture met our eyes.  Several families were fleeing with their children, and the barest necessaries of life, into a neighbouring village.  An old woman on crutches was trying in vain to keep up; a young mother with a sucking child was sobbing and pressing the babe to her bosom.  The boys were weeping bitterly and holding their hands high to prove that they were harmless.  We passed by the ruins of Roosbeck, where civilians had shot on the 20th Artillery Regiment, for which reason it was burnt down."[114]

[Footnote 114:  Ibid., p. 27.]

Among the various interesting pictures of the Fatherland sketched by German authors perhaps the following is the most naive:  “English, French and Belgians, hand in hand; how nicely it was all thought out; Belgian neutrality—­so solemnly pledged by all the Powers—­was nothing but a screen behind which they wrought the most devilish plans against Germany.  It was a neutrality which had long since been betrayed and sold by the Belgian Government.

“But the German people—­a pure fool-like Parsifal, who could not conceive such treachery and knavery because it was incapable of such things itself—­toiled and worked day by day, enjoyed the blessings of peace, was happy in its existence and ignorant of the looming clouds gathering on its frontiers.  All hail to our chosen leaders who kept watch and ward over a dreaming people, and did not allow themselves to be lulled into watchlessness by the lies of our enemies, who while talking of peace intrigued for our annihilation."[115]

[Footnote 115:  “Von Luettich bis Flandern” ("From Liege to Flanders"), by Wilhelm Kotzde.  Weimar, 1914; p. 5.]

The same author’s opinion of the Belgians coincides with that expressed by many of his fellow countrymen.  “What did our troops find by the roadside?  On all sides haversacks, straps, cartridges, caps, tunics and rifles.  To our soldiers this was a remarkable sign of flight, for they are accustomed to military training of a different sort.  In the forts, it is true, they found among the soldiers also civilians wearing patent-leather shoes.  Indeed, the whole Belgian campaign has shown how badly the army was prepared and equipped.