Yet everyone ought to know how the Germans carry on war.  We have therefore made selections from these documents in order to compile this small pamphlet.  A dismal task, this wading through mud and blood!  And a hard task, to run through all these reports, pencil in hand, with the idea of underlining the essential facts!  You find yourself noting down each page, marking each paragraph; and, lo and behold, at the end of the book, you have selected everything—–­ that is to say, nothing.  One might as well start to gather the hundred finest among the leaves of a forest, or to pick up the hundred most glittering grains among the sand on a beach.  All we can do is to take the first examples which come to hand.  This, then, is not a collection of the most stirring and striking German crimes, but simply a book of samples.  Until complete statistics are forthcoming, two classes of outrage stand out, and must remain ever present to the mind:  murdered civilians can be counted in thousands; houses wilfully burned, in tens of thousands.

For want of time and space we have concerned ourselves here only with crimes committed in Belgium and France, and we have had no thought of separating the two neighbouring sister nations.

Our part in this work is a modest one.  Taking at random a certain number of facts, we have grouped them under different headings to make perusal easier for the reader.  To indicate the references would have been impossible.  Each line would have required a foot-note; the notes would have been as long as the text, and both the length of, and the cost of producing this pamphlet would have been doubled.

It is enough to state that there is not a single fact published here that cannot be verified by our readers in one or other of the documents already referred to.  Nothing but facts are set down, absolute bare facts, and it is for the reader to form his own conclusions.  When he has studied these “samples,” and begins by means of them to learn the truth, then, and only then, will he have the right to choose, according to his conscience, between remembrance and oblivion, between pardon and punishment.

L. Mirman, Prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle.

G. Simon, Mayor of Nancy.

G. Keller, Mayor of Luneville.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] The members of this Commission were mm.  G. Payelle (Premier President de la Cour des Comptes), A. Mollard (Ministre Plenipotentiaire), G. Maringer (Conseiller d’Etat), E. Paillot (Conseiller a la Cour de Cassation)—­Rapports et Proces-verbaux, vols i., ii., iii., iv., Imprimerie Nationale.

[2] The Commission, consisting of men of the highest position in Belgium, is presided over by M. Van Iseghem (President de la Cour de Cassation).  Its reports and the “Reply to the German White Book” have been published by Berger-Levrault, from which firm we have also “Carnets de Route” (J. de Dampierre) and “Paroles Allemandes.”  “Crimes allemands d’apres des te-moi gnages allemands,” by J. Bedier, is published by Colin.