[18] Prisoners, as well as wounded, have very often been massacred on the field of battle.  As to the treatment that prisoners—­French, Belgian, Russian and English—­have undergone in German camps, it is a pitiful tale that we do not intend to begin here.  Some day it must be written.  With the actual evidence before us, the lot of the German prisoners in England, Russia and France must be compared with that of ours in Germany.  The most indifferent reader will feel his heart stirred within him, and will hesitate to say whether we were “generous,” or whether we were “fools.”

[19] We speak of those who have left—­but what of those who have remained in Belgium and France, under the German heel?  The time has not yet come for writing this piece of history, but we cannot refrain from referring to the sufferings of these children of the North, boys and girls, torn from their families, carried off like bands of slaves to other invaded regions to be employed on forced labour.  France has apprised the neutral countries of these facts:  Will they remain silent?

[20] Further on it will be seen that much worse happened on numerous other journeys.

[21] “We got one pound of black sour bread per diem.  In the morning we had a tepid decoction intended for coffee; at mid-day a pint and a half of thick soup, and at night rather less than a pint of thin soup.  On three occasions only did we get potatoes, but never once meat.  Cabbage soup was the usual thing and after a certain time it turned our stomachs.  Certain prisoners were employed in chopping up the cabbages to make sauerkraut, and they had to keep the broken leaves, as these were used up for our soup.”

[22] Through an old habit, the Commission makes use of this word; they are not “hostages,” of course.

[23] It must also be noted that when the Commissioners making the enquiry saw the repatriated people, they had had some time in which to recover, first in Switzerland, and then in France.  The arrival of these pitiable drafts gave rise (even among those of the Swiss people who were in principle the least hostile to Germany) to such a feeling of horror for their executioners that the Kaiser took warning and thought it wiser to suspend the repatriations for several months.  For the welcome and the kind care which our poor martyrs received at the hands of the Swiss, our grateful thanks and salutations are due!

GERMAN EXCUSES:  LIES AND CALUMNY

The Boches have taken up three positions in succession.  In the first place, in their speeches, in their writings and by commemorative pictures and medals, they have gloried in their misdeeds, thus declaring that Kultur is above morality (as stated by their writer, Thomas Mann), and that the right of German might is above everything.  Then, in the second place, when they discovered that in the world outside them there was something known as a “moral conscience,” not understood by them, but still to be reckoned with, they cynically denied the charges.  Finally, when they were driven from this second trench, when simple negation became impossible, they had perforce to explain their crimes.