as their bombs on several occasions.  I see no reason why these should not be used in evidence against them, or why they should not be hanged as murderers when they fall into the hands of the Allies.  The policy is idiotic from a military point of view; one could conceive nothing which would stimulate and harden national resistance more surely than such petty irritations.  But it is a murderous innovation in the laws of war, and unless it is sternly repressed it will establish a most sinister precedent for the future.

As to the treatment of Belgium, what has it been but murder, murder all the way?  From the first days of Vise, when it was officially stated that an example of “frightfulness” was desired, until the present moment, when the terrified population has rushed from the country and thrown itself upon the charity and protection of its neighbors, there has been no break in the record.  Compare the story with that of the occupation of the South of France by Wellington in 1813, when no one was injured, nothing was taken without full payment, and the villagers fraternized with the troops.  What a relapse of civilization is here!  From Vise to Louvain, Louvain to Aerschot, Aerschot to Malines and Termonde, the policy of murder never fails.

It is said that more civilians than soldiers have fallen in Belgium.  Peruse the horrible accounts taken by the Belgian Commission, who took evidence in the most careful and conscientious fashion.  Study the accounts of that dreadful night in Louvain which can only be equaled by the Spanish Fury of Antwerp.  Read the account of the wife of the Burgomaster of Aerschot, with its heartrending description of how her lame son, aged sixteen, was kicked along to his death by an aide de camp.  It is all so vile, so brutally murderous that one can hardly realize that one is reading the incidents of a modern campaign conducted by one of the leading nations in Europe.

Do you imagine that the thing has been exaggerated?  Far from it—­the volume of crime has not yet been appreciated.  Have not many Germans unwittingly testified to what they have seen and done?  Only last week we had the journal of one of them, an officer whose service had been almost entirely in France and removed from the crime centres of Belgium.  Yet were ever such entries in the diary of a civilized soldier?  “Our men behaved like regular Vandals.”  “We shot the whole lot,” (these were villagers.) “They were drawn up in three ranks.  The same shot did for three at a time.”  “In the evening we set fire to the village.  The priest and some of the inhabitants were shot.”  “The villages all around were burning.”  “The villages were burned and the inhabitants shot.”  “At Leppe apparently two hundred men were shot.  There must have been some innocent men among them.”  “In future we shall have to hold an inquiry into their guilt instead of merely shooting them.”  “The Vandals themselves could not have done more damage.  The place is a disgrace to our army.”  So the journal runs on with its tale of infamy.  It is an infamy so shameless that even in the German record the story is perpetuated of how a French lad was murdered because he refused to answer certain questions.  To such a depth of degradation has Prussia brought the standard of warfare.