But in focusing our attention upon the violations of the code, we are apt to forget the greater atrocity of the violation of Belgium, and the whole hideous atrocity of the great war.  That is getting things out of proportion, for the sufferings entailed by these technical atrocities are infinitesimal alongside of those resulting from the war itself.

Another point has been quite overlooked.  In recounting the atrocities wrought by Prussian Imperialism, no mention is made of those that it has committed upon its own people.  And yet at any rate a few Germans suffered in the claws of the German eagle quite as cruelly as any Belgians did.  One fine morning in September three Germans came careening into Ghent in a great motor car.  They were dazed to find no evidence of their army which they supposed was in possession.  Before the men became aware of their mistake, a Belgian mitrailleuse poured a stream of lead into their midst, killing two of them outright.  The third German, with a ball in his neck, was rescued by Van Hee and placed under the protection of the American flag.

Incidentally that summary action, followed by a quick visit to the German general in his camp on the outskirts, saved the city.  That is a long story.  It is told in Alexander Powell’s “Fighting in Flanders,” but it suffices here to state that by a pact between the Belgian burgomaster of Ghent and the German commandant it was understood that the wounded man was not to be considered a prisoner, but under the jurisdiction of the American Consulate.

A week after this incident Van Hee paid his first visit to this wounded man in the Belgian hospital.  He was an honest fellow of about forty—­the type of working-man who had aspired to nothing beyond a chance to toil and raise a family for the Fatherland.  Weltpolitik, with its vaunting boast of “World-power or Downfall,” was meaningless to him and his comrades gathered in the beer-gardens on a Sunday.

Suddenly out of this quiet, uneventful life he was called to the colors and sent killing and burning through the Belgian villages.  His officers had told him that it would be a sorry thing for any German soldier to be captured, for these Belgians, maddened by the pillage of their country, would take a terrible revenge upon any luckless wretches that fell into their hands.  Now, more suddenly than anything else had ever happened in his life, a bullet had stabbed him in the throat and he found himself a prisoner at the mercy of these dreaded Belgians.

“Why are they tending me so carefully during these last seven days?” “Are they getting me ready for the torturing?” “Are they making me well in order that I may suffer all the more?” Grim speculation of that kind must have been running through his simple mind.  For when we opened the door of his room, he slunk cowering over to his bed, staring at us as if we were inquisitors about to lead him away to the torture chamber, there to suffer vicariously for all the crimes of the German army.