Correspondence of official nature has been stopped at the Cape, which should have reached in full time officers of the German Navy, warning them to prepare for mid-July.  Such advance taken by your troops has rendered the task the more difficult for ours.  We were very simple, for we believed in the affirmations of your statesmen.  You state that these are loyal war methods; so be it.  That belongs to the diplomatic rules of loyalty bequeathed by Bismarck to his successors.  But to attempt to carry on this falsehood, you have no longer the excuse of its utility.  It is clear to all, except, it seems, the representatives of science and art in Germany, who are sufficiently devoid of perspicacity to ignore it.

They affirm, moreover, that Germany has not violated the neutrality of Belgium; she merely contented herself with “taking the first step.”  Beyond the authentic proofs which have been published, we would draw your attention to an undeniable fact.  Trusting in the treaty which guaranteed Belgium neutrality—­and at the foot of which figured Germany’s signature—­in the promise made a short while ago to the King of the Belgians by your Emperor, we unfortunately left our northern frontier unguarded.  You must be aware, professor, that the English did not move until Belgian soil had been effectively violated.  It is true that we knew the plan of campaign set forth by Gen. Bernhardi, but we naively believed that, whatever might be the opinion of a General, the Chancellor of the Empire would consider a treaty bearing the imperial signature as something more than a mere “bit of paper.”  Germany has also been untrue to her signature by violating the treaty of neutrality of Luxembourg.  You forgot to state that there also you only “took the first step.”  Your appeal echoes the German papers, which declare that it was the Belgians, and particularly the women, who “began against your troops.”  An American paper replied by stating that if it was the Belgian women who attacked German soldiers on Belgian soil, what were the soldiers doing there?  The truth is that your troops, obeying their officers, as is proved by papers which have been seized and which you would find quoted in the report presented by the Belgian Commission to President Wilson, have executed orders which seem inspired by the ferocious inscriptions of Assyrian Kings, no doubt exhumed on the Bagdad railway line; and you think it quite natural that massacre and arson should have been perpetrated at Louvain because the civil population fired on your soldiers; but an inquiry made together with the representatives of the United States (whom you deign to consider sufficiently to ask them to represent your defenses) proved that the civil population was unarmed.  If you today approve of the burning of the Louvain Library, have you until now approved of the destruction of the library at Alexandria?  It is true there was no Deutsch Kultur there.  The result of German culture as regards military matters is to place your soldiers on a stratum of civilization anterior to that of the Vandals, who, when taking Hippone, spared the library.