“My dear Sir, how is it possible to fight with these people?  They
     seem to have no mercy, no decency.  It really seems impossible to
     know how to meet them.”

He had with him several of his staff officers and one of them was charged with making a report upon the atrocities committed.  He allowed me to read several of these reports and showed me photographs of one incident that impressed me greatly.  These photographs this officer had taken himself and in order to prove that he had seen the incident and was on the ground he was himself in the photograph.  This special happening was as follows: 

In some little town to the east the Germans had taken out sixteen peasants and field laborers.  They bound their hands either in front or at the back, tied them in bunches of five, cut their suspenders and unbuttoned their trousers so that escape was impossible and shot them in an open field.  The report contained the names and ages of these poor chaps.  The oldest, I remember, was 67, and several were over 50.  The French had been able to get no explanation whatever of what had occurred, as the village was absolutely deserted.  The persecution of women seems to be quite prevalent.

From here we returned to Paris, passing by Creil and Chantilly without any incident, arriving in Paris at about 8 o’clock at night.

WHITNEY WARREN.

* * * * *

WHO BEGAN THE WAR, AND WHY?

THE SOCIALISTS’ PART

* * * * *

[Illustration:  EMIL VAN DER VELDE, Belgian Minister of State and Chairman International Socialist Bureau. (Photo from Wiener Agency.)]

HOW INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS ARMED AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Concluding Remarks of Emil Vandervelde, Belgian Minister of State, Chairman International Socialist Bureau, in Harlem Casino, New York, Sept. 21.

You in the United States represent the International within a nation.  You have undertaken to do what no nation of Europe has ever accomplished.  You have taken the men and women and children of all nationalities and molded of them one uniform nation of peace.

This meeting here tonight is a demonstration of this.  The International, unfortunately divided by war, has not been seen in Europe in weeks.  I find it again in the United States.  These United States, which are to be, not merely the United States of America, or the United States of capitalism, but the United States of the Socialism of the world.

At the last meeting of the International Socialist Bureau in Paris I can see gathered at the same table, Hugo Haase, the Chairman of the Parliamentary group of the German Social Democracy, drafting resolutions of peace on behalf of the entire International.  And at the same table sat our unforgettable Jean Leon Jaures, who fell at the first mad rush of the war tide.  What a frightful succession of events have taken place since that time!