reason we have been compelled to ignore the just protests of the Governments of Luxemburg and Belgium.  The injustice which we thus commit we will repair as soon as our military object has been attained.

It has been shown how much value can be attached to the assertion of the alleged intention of France to invade Belgium.  That intention, and the realization of that intention belongs exclusively to Germany and they must be left in her possession.  This is especially the case in view of the fact that the military dispositions undertaken by France absolutely refute the allegations of the German Chancellor.  So true is this that when the violation of Belgian territory became an accomplished fact, and when the King of Belgium appealed under the terms of the treaty of 1839 for support, in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium which these powers had guaranteed, France was so little prepared to invade Belgium that it took her more than ten days to get her troops into the country.

The world is familiar with the way Germany has repaired in Belgium the injustice of which she was guilty, to use the words of the German Chancellor.

Atrocities in Belgium.

Under the pretext that her troops were attacked by civilians, and even under no pretext at all, whole villages have been razed to the ground.  Important towns whose boast it was to represent part of the common inheritance of civilization were not spared.  Their monuments, which have been respected during the centuries in all of the constant wars of which Belgium has been the theatre, were deliberately destroyed.  Open cities were bombarded.  Exorbitant taxation was imposed upon conquered towns, and when the inhabitants were unable to pay the taxes, a large number of their houses were set on fire.  That is what happened to Wavre, among other cities, whose 8,500 inhabitants were unable to pay a tax of $600,000.  Termonde, with 10,000 inhabitants, was utterly destroyed.  On the 15th of September, there only remained in that town 282 houses out of 1,400.  The town of Aerschot, with 8,000 inhabitants, is now nothing but a mass of ruins and more than 150 of its inhabitants have been shot.  Dirigible balloons have thrown bombs at night upon Antwerp.  It cannot be maintained by those who were in the balloons that they were trying to hit the forts, as the forts are outside the boundaries of the town, and a good distance outside them as well.  Nor could the bombs thrown have had any effect upon the forts, which are even stronger than those of Liege.  There was no warning of this bombardment, a fact which constitutes a violation of Article 26 of the Fourth Convention of The Hague, and more than a dozen people were killed, all of them non-combatants and several of them women and children.