In the present war, however—­and this is the gravest charge against the German Army—­the evidence shows that the killing of noncombatants was carried out to an extent for which no previous war between nations claiming to be civilized, (for such cases as the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks on the Bulgarian Christians in 1876, and on the Armenian Christians in 1895 and 1896, do not belong to that category,) furnishes any precedent.  That this killing was done as part of a deliberate plan is clear from the facts hereinbefore set forth regarding Louvain, Aerschot, Dinant, and other towns.  The killing was done under orders in each place.  It began at a certain fixed date, and stopped, (with some few exceptions,) at another fixed date.  Some of the officers who carried out the work did it reluctantly, and said they were obeying directions from their chiefs.  The same remarks apply to the destruction of property.  House burning was part of the program; and villages, even large parts of a city, were given to the flames as part of the terrorizing policy.

Citizens of neutral States who visited Belgium in December and January report that the German authorities do not deny that noncombatants were systematically killed in large numbers during the first weeks of the invasion, and this, so far as we know, has never been officially denied.  If it were denied, the flight and continued voluntary exile of thousands of Belgian refugees would go far to contradict a denial, for there is no historical parallel in modern times for the flight of a large part of a nation before an invader.

The German Government have, however, sought to justify their severities on the grounds of military necessity, and have excused them as retaliation for cases in which civilians fired on German troops.  There may have been cases in which such firing occurred, but no proof has ever been given, or, to our knowledge, attempted to be given, of such cases, nor of the stories of shocking outrages perpetrated by Belgian men and women on German soldiers.

The inherent improbability of the German contention is shown by the fact that after the first few days of the invasion every possible precaution had been taken by the Belgian authorities, by way of placards and handbills, to warn the civilian population not to intervene in hostilities.  Throughout Belgium steps had been taken to secure the handing over of all firearms in the possession of civilians before the German Army arrived.  These steps were sometimes taken by the police and sometimes by the military authorities.

The invaders appear to have proceeded upon the theory that any chance shot coming from an unexpected place was fired by civilians.  One favorite form of this allegation was that priests had fired from the church tower.  In many instances the soldiers of the allied armies used church towers and private houses as cover for their operations.  At Aerschot, where the Belgian soldiers were stationed in the church tower and fired upon the Germans as they advanced, it was at once alleged by the Germans when they entered the town, and with difficulty disproved, that the firing had come from civilians.  Thus one elementary error creeps at once into the German argument, for they were likely to confound, and did in some instances certainly confound, legitimate military operations with the hostile intervention of civilians.