In dealing with the evidence we have recognized the importance of testing it severely, and so far as the conditions permit we have followed the principles which are recognized in the courts of England, the British overseas dominions, and the United States.  We have also (as already noted) set aside the testimony of any witnesses who did not favorably impress the lawyers who took their depositions, and have rejected hearsay evidence except in cases where hearsay furnished an undersigned confirmation of facts with regard to which we already possessed direct testimony from some other source, or explained in a natural way facts imperfectly narrated or otherwise perplexing.[A]

[Footnote A:  For instance, the dead body of a man is found lying on the doorstep, or a woman is seen who has the appearance of having been outraged.  So far the facts are proved by the direct evidence of the person by whom they have been seen.  Information is sought for by him as to the circumstances under which the death or outrages took place.  The bystanders who saw the circumstances but who are not now accessible, relate what they saw, and this is reported by the witness to the examiner and is placed on record in the depositions.  We have had no hesitation in taking such evidence into consideration.]

It is natural to ask whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw.  Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, fully recognized this possibility.  The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected, or appended a note of distrust to, the testimony of those who failed to impress them favorably.  We have carried the sifting still further by also omitting from the depositions those in which we found something that seemed too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness only, or too little supported by other evidence pointing to like facts.  Many depositions have thus been omitted on which, though they are probably true, we think it safer not to place reliance.

Notwithstanding these precautions, we began the inquiry with doubts whether a positive result would be attained.  But the further we went and the more evidence we examined so much the more was our skepticism reduced.  There might be some exaggeration in one witness, possible delusion in another, inaccuracies in a third.  When, however, we found that things which had at first seemed improbable were testified to by many witnesses coming from different places, having had no communication with one another, and knowing nothing of one another’s statements, the points in which they all agreed became more and more evidently true.  And when this concurrence