“24.8.14.  We took about 1,000 prisoners:  at least 500 were
     shot.  The village was burned because inhabitants had also
     shot.  Two civilians were shot at once.”

We may now sum up and endeavor to explain the character and significance of the wrongful acts done by the German Army in Belgium.

If a line is drawn on a map from the Belgian frontier to Liege and continued to Charleroi, and a second line drawn from Liege to Malines, a sort of figure resembling an irregular Y will be formed.  It is along this Y that most of the systematic (as opposed to isolated) outrages were committed.  If the period from Aug. 4 to Aug. 30 is taken it will be found to cover most of these organized outrages.  Termonde and Alost extend, it is true, beyond the Y lines, and they belong to the month of September.  Murder, rape, arson, and pillage began from the moment when the German Army crossed the frontier.  For the first fortnight of the war the towns and villages near Liege were the chief sufferers.  From Aug. 19 to the end of the month, outrages spread in the directions of Charleroi and Malines and reach their period of greatest intensity.  There is a certain significance in the fact that the outrages around Liege coincide with the unexpected resistance of the Belgian Army in that district, and that the slaughter which reigned from Aug. 19 to the end of the month is contemporaneous with the period when the German Army’s need for a quick passage through Belgium at all costs was deemed imperative.

Here let a distinction be drawn between two classes of outrages.

Individual acts of brutality—­ill-treatment of civilians, rape, plunder, and the like—­were very widely committed.  These are more numerous and more shocking than would be expected in warfare between civilized powers, but they differ rather in extent than in kind from what has happened in previous though not recent wars.

In all wars many shocking and outrageous acts must be expected, for in every large army there must be a proportion of men of criminal instincts whose worst passions are unloosed by the immunity which the conditions of warfare afford.  Drunkenness, moreover, may turn even a soldier who has no criminal habits into a brute, who may commit outrages at which he would himself be shocked in his sober moments, and there is evidence that intoxication was extremely prevalent among the German Army, both in Belgium and in France, for plenty of wine was to be found in the villages and country houses which were pillaged.  Many of the worst outrages appear to have been perpetrated by men under the influence of drink.  Unfortunately, little seems to have been done to repress this source of danger.