Similarly at Stockholm:  “The Germans had suffered a severe repulse.”

Again a dispatch from Paris to Rome:  “The Germans had been driven back behind the Moselle and were begging for an armistice; the French had passed Namur and were pressing forward in forced marches, while 500,000 English were falling upon the German flank.”

Still another official report from Paris:  “Liege is becoming the grave of the 150,000 Germans who are breaking their heads against its walls; the Belgians had taken 3,000 prisoners, who were in a terrible condition; but for their good fortune of falling into captivity they would have starved to death.”

In contrast to all this let us take the unvarnished truth as in the reported simple words of the German Quartermaster General: 

We are now able to report upon Liege Without doing any harm....  We had only a weak force at Liege four days ago, for it is not possible to prepare for such a bold undertaking by collecting large masses of men.  That we attained the desired end in spite of this is due to the excellent preparation, the valor of our troops, their energetic leadership, and the help of God.  The courage of the enemy was broken, and his troops fought badly.  The difficulties against us lay in the exceedingly unfavorable topography of the surroundings, which consisted of hills and woods, and in the treacherous participation of the entire population in the fighting, not even excluding women.  The people fired upon our troops from ambush, from villages and forests—­fired upon our physicians who were treating the wounded, and upon the wounded themselves.  Hard and bitter fighting occurred; whole villages had to be destroyed in order to break the resistance, before our brave troops penetrated the girdle of forts and took possession of the city.  It is true that a part of the forts still held out, but they no longer fired.  The Kaiser did not want to waste a drop of blood in storming the forts, which no longer hindered the carrying out of our plans.  We were able to await the arrival of heavy artillery to level the forts one after the other at our leisure, and without the sacrifice of a single life—­in case their garrisons should not surrender sooner....  So far as can be judged at present the Belgians had more men for the defense of the city than we had for storming it.  Every expert can measure from this fact the greatness of our achievement; it is without a parallel....

     (Signed) von Stein,

     Quartermaster General.

It is not the German people alone that will have cause to remember Liege; the whole world will do well to learn from the case of Liege that an organized manufactory of lies is trying to deceive the public opinion of all the nations.  Glorious victories are converted into “defeats with heavy losses,” and the strong moral discipline of the German troops is slanderously described in the reports of the imaginative, phrase-loving French as cruelty—­just as in 1870 the Prussian Uhlans were described as thrusting through with their lances all the French babies and pinning them fast to the walls.