listen to Cardinal Mercier’s protests.  The Huns, as most strong men, made a point of keeping their word.  The Germans seem to make a point of breaking theirs.  When I compared the fight of Belgium and Germany to the unequal fight of Jack and the Giant, of David and Goliath, I was forgetting that David and Jack were cleverer than their antagonists.  Folklore and fairy-tales always equalize the chances by granting more wit to the small people than to the big ones.  It is a healthy inspiration.  But we are confronted to-day with a new monster, a wise giant, a cunning dragon, a subtle beast.

We must therefore not imagine that Governor von Bissing got up one fine morning, called for pen and ink, like King Cole for his bowl, and wrote a proclamation to the effect that all Belgians of military age would be reduced to slavery and obliged, under the penalty of physical torture and under the whip of German sentries, to dig trenches behind the Western front or to turn shells in a German factory.  Any fool—­any Goliath—­might have done that.

Every German crime is preceded by a series of false promises and followed by a series of calumnies.  Between such a prelude and such a finale, you may perform a symphony of frightfulness with Dr. Strauss’ orchestration—­it will sound as innocent and artless as the three notes of a shepherd’s pipe.  The violation of Belgian neutrality is bad enough, but if you begin to lull Belgium to slumber by repeating, on every occasion, that she has nothing to fear, and if you end by declaring to the civilised world that Belgium was plotting with England and France a traitorous attack against Germany, then it becomes quite plausible.  To massacre 6,000 civilians and burn 20,000 houses in cold blood looks rather harsh, but if you begin by giving “a solemn guarantee to the people that they will not have to suffer from the war” (General von Emmich’s first proclamation) and end by saying that women have emptied buckets of boiling water on the heads of your soldiers and that children have put out the eyes of your wounded, it becomes almost a kind proceeding.  In the same way, to seize and deport hundreds of thousands of men and compel them to work in exile against their country seems the act of Barbarians, but if you accumulate assurances that “normal conditions will be maintained” and that nobody need fear deportation, and if you end by declaring that the Belgian working classes are exclusively composed of loafers and drunkards, it becomes a measure of providence and wisdom for which your victims in particular, and the whole civilised world in general, ought to be deeply grateful.

The promise testifies to your good intentions and the calumny explains how you were regretfully obliged not to fulfill them.  The promise keeps your victims within reach, the calumnies shift to them the responsibility for your crime.  Who doubts that every town visited by a Zeppelin is fortified, that every ship sunk by a U boat carries troops or guns?  The old Hun killed everything which stood in his way; the modern Hun does the same and then declares that he is the victim.  The old Hun left the dead bodies of his enemies to the crows; the modern Hun throws mud at them.  The old Hun tried to kill the body; the modern Hun tries to ruin the soul.