[5] Belgium alone accounts for about 20,000.

[6] This fact is quoted in the admirable book by Captain A. de Gerlache, entitled “Belgium and the Belgians during the War,” published by the firm of Berger-Levrault.

[7] See note at foot of page 31. (this is foot-note 11)

MURDER

Not having sufficient space for a complete catalogue, we shall here simply mention the judicial murders of Miss Cavell, Eugene Jacquet, Battisti, and others, in order to honour the memory of those noble victims.  For the same reason, as they are now well known to everyone, we content ourselves with merely recalling the criminal torpedoing of the Lusitania,[8] Ancona, Portugal, Amiral-Ganteaume.... all merchant steamers, without any military character whatever, employed in carrying passengers of every nationality, and the last-named crowded with refugees.

We may pass over the crimes committed from a distance, so to speak, on unfortified towns, with fieldpieces, long-range guns, aeroplanes, and Zeppelins, merely noting that the Germans were the first to fire shells into the centre of towns indiscriminately.  If they made an exception, it was to aim at the cathedral square, when people were leaving after Mass, as at Nancy, or into the market-place at the time when women are busiest, as they did at Luneville.

We only mention here such outrages as were committed at close quarters with hand-weapons, bayonets or rifles.  The list is a long one.  Will the exact number of victims ever be known?  In Belgium alone it has been proved that up to now more than 5,000 civilians have been assassinated:  grown men, old people, women and children.  They slaughtered their victims sometimes one by one, sometimes in groups, often in masses.  They were not content only with killing.  At one place they organised round the massacre such tragic scenes, and at another displayed such refinements of cruelty, that reason falters in face of their acts, and asks what terrible madness has brought this race to such low depths?  Is it possible?  Yes, it is.  Judge by the following examples:—­

At Foret, the village schoolmaster was shot for refusing to trample under foot the national flag, torn down from the front of the school.[9] At Schaffen, A. Willem was tied to a tree and burnt alive, and two other unfortunate men were buried alive.  Madame Luykx and her little girl, 12 years old, were shot together in a cellar.  J. Reynders and his young nephew, 10 years of age, were both shot in the street.  At Sompuis, an old man named Jacquemin, aged 70, was bound to his bed by an officer and left there without food for three days, dying soon after his release.