[German Cartoon]

[Illustration: It's a Long Way to Constantinople

_--From Simplicissimus, Munich._

The English soldiers have a war song "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."

This has been changed; they now sing "It's a Long Way to

Constantinople."]

[English Cartoon]

[Illustration: Canada!

_--From Punch, London._

Ypres: April 22-24, 1915.]

[French Cartoon]

[Illustration: Our Colors Advance!

_--From La Vie Parisienne, Paris._

War is teaching geography to the women of France. Alas! it is _by heart_

they are learning their lessons.]

[German Cartoon]

[Illustration: The English Chameleon

_--From Lustige Blaetter, Berlin._

When the Beast sees the enemy coming it changes its British colors and

appears in neutral hues.

The Merchant Flag of Norway

The Merchant Flag of Great Britain

(Although this cartoon depends on color for its full value, the effect

of the blending of the two flags is preserved in the black and white

reproduction.)]

[English Cartoon]

[Illustration: A Great Naval Triumph

_--From Punch, London._

GERMAN SUBMARINE OFFICER: "This ought to make them jealous in the sister

service. Belgium saw nothing better than this."

(Although Punch did not disclose the artist's allusion to Revelations,

xiii., 18, contained in the number of the submarine "U-666," it may not

be amiss to quote the passage: "Let him that hath understanding count

the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number

is six hundred three score and six.")]

[German Cartoon]

[Illustration: Opening of the Bathing Season--Feb. 18

_--From Kladderadatsch, Berlin._

The German stickle-backs worry the "Ruler of the Seas."]

What Is Our Duty?

By Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst

The position of the British suffragettes, who suspended their

militant program and are zealously supporting the cause of the

Allies, is stated in this speech by Mrs. Pankhurst, delivered

in the Sun Hall, Liverpool, and reported in The Suffragette of

April 23, 1915.

I think that throughout our agitation for the franchise for political

emancipation, on platforms and on other places--even in prisons--we have

talked about rights, and fought for rights; at the same time we have

always coupled with the claim for rights clear statements as to duty. We

have never lost sight of the fact that to possess rights puts upon human

beings grave responsibilities and serious duties. We have fought for

rights because, in order to perform your duty and fulfill your

responsibilities properly, in time of peace, you must have certain

citizen rights. When the State is in danger, when the very liberties in

your possession are imperiled, is, above all, the time to think of duty.

And so, when the war broke out, some of us who, convalescing after our

fights, decided that one of the duties of the Women's Social and

Political Union in war time was to talk to men about their duty to the

nation--the duty of fighting to preserve the independence of our

country, to preserve what our forefathers had won for us, and to protect

the nation from foreign invasion.

There are people who say, "What right have women to talk to men about

fighting for their country, since women are not, according to the custom

of civilization, called upon to fight?" That used to be said to us in

times of peace. Certainly women have the right to say to men, "Are you

going to fight to defend your country and redeem your promise to women?"

Men have said to women, not only that they fight to defend their

country, but that they protect women from all the dangers and

difficulties of life, and they are proud to be in the position to do it.

Why, then, we say to those men, "You are indeed now put to the test.

The men of Belgium, the men of France, the men of Serbia, however

willing they were to protect women from the things that are most

horrible--and more horrible to women than death itself--have not been

able to do it."

It is only by an accident, or a series of accidents, for which no man

here has the right to take credit, that British women on British soil

are not now enduring the horrors endured by the women of France, the

women of Belgium, and the women of Serbia. The least that men can do is

that every man of fighting age should prepare himself to redeem his word

to women, and to make ready to do his best, to save the mothers, the

wives, and the daughters of Great Britain from outrage too horrible even

to think of.

We have the right to say to the men, "Fight for your country, defend the

shores of this land of ours. Fight for your homes, for the women, and

for the children." We have the right if that was the only reason, but in

these days, when women are taking larger views of their duty to the

State, we go further than that; we claim the right to hold recruiting

meetings and ask men to fight for bigger reasons than are advanced

ordinarily. We say to men, "In this war there are issues at stake bigger

even than the safety of your homes and your own country. Your honor as a

nation is at stake."

We have our duties in this war. First of all, this duty begins at

home--this duty to our home, because I always feel that if we are not

ready to do our duty to those nearest to us we are not fit to do our

duty far away. And so the first duty is to ourselves and to our homes.

Then there is the duty to protect those who, having made a gallant

fight for self-defense--and by that I mean the country of Belgium--what

we owe to Belgium we can never repay, because now the whole German plan

of campaign is perfectly plain to all those who are not prejudiced, and

who are not affected by pan-Germanism; and, unfortunately, in their

methods of warfare--and their methods of warfare are many--they not only

fight physically, but they fight mentally and morally as well, and in

this country and in France, and in every country in Europe, long before

the war broke out, in fact, ever since the year 1870, they have been

preparing by subtle means to take possession of Europe, and I believe

their ambitions are not limited by that, they want to rule the whole

world. The whole thing is clear to any unprejudiced observer.

It is very difficult for your attacking bully to imagine that a small

State--I mean small numerically, and weak physically--will ever have

the courage to stand up and resist the bully when he prepares to attack.

The Germans did not expect Belgium to keep them at bay while the other

countries involved prepared, but there is absolutely no doubt that the

plan was to press through Belgium, to take possession of Paris, and

then, having humiliated and crippled France, to cross the Channel and

defeat us. There is no doubt that was the plan; it is perfectly clear.

And that being so, we owe--civilization owes--to Belgium a debt which it

can never repay.

Then we have our duty to our ally, France. How much democracy owes to

France! France is the mother of European democracy. There is no doubt

about her claim to that. If there had been nothing else worth fighting

for in this war, in my opinion that alone would have been worth fighting

for, to preserve that spirit and that democracy--which France has given

to the world, and which would perish if France were destroyed. The

people of France are a people who never have been, and I believe never

will be, corrupted in the sense of thinking that material things are of

more value than spiritual things. The people of France have always been

ready to sacrifice themselves for ideals. They have been ready to

sacrifice life, they have been ready to sacrifice money, they have been

ready to sacrifice everything for an ideal.

You know the old saying, that men should work and women should weep?

That is not true, for it is for all of us to work and for all of us to

weep when there is occasion to do so. Therefore, it is because in the

French Nation you have splendid qualities combined in both sexes,

because the history of the French Nation is so magnificent, because the

French Nation has contributed so much to civilization, and so much in

art, beauty, and in great qualities, it is our duty to stand by France,

and to prevent her being crushed by the oversexed, that is to say,

overmasculine, country of Germany.

It is our duty as women to do what we can to help our country in this

war, because if the unthinkable thing happened, and Germany were to win,

the women's movement, as we know it in Europe, would be put back fifty

years at least; there is no doubt about it. Whether it ever could rise

again is to my mind extremely doubtful. The ideal of women in Germany is

the lowest in Europe. Infantile mortality is very high, immorality is

widespread, and, in consequence, venereal disease is rampant. Notice,

too, the miserable and niggardly pittance that is being paid to the

wives and families of German soldiers, while nothing whatever is being

paid to unmarried wives and their children. True security for women and

children is for women to have control over their own destiny. And so it

is a duty, a supreme duty, of women, first of all as human beings and as

lovers of their country, to co-operate with men in this terrible crisis

in which we find ourselves.

If all were trained to contribute something to the community, both in

time of peace and in time of war, how much better it would be.

What bitterness there was in the hearts of many women when they saw work

and business going on as usual, carried on by men who ought to be in the

fighting line. There were thousands upon thousands of women willing,

even if they were not trained, to do that work and release men, and we

have urged the authorities to take into account the great reserve force

of the nation, the women who are or might be quite capable to step into

the shoes of the men when they were called up to fight.

The Board of Trade issued its appeal to women just before Easter to

register their names as willing to do national service in any capacity

during the course of the war. I want to tell you tonight that I am very

proud of the women of the country. When the first recruiting appeals

were made to men, the hoardings were covered with placards and appeals

and they were making efforts by recruiting bands, in places of

pleasure--everywhere in the columns of the newspapers there were

recruiting appeals to men. Then the time came when the Board of Trade

wished to know to what extent it could depend upon the services of the

women of the country, and what was done in the case of women? There were

no posters for us; there were no recruiting meetings for us; there were

no appeals from great names to us; no attractive pictures, "Your King

and Country Want You"--nothing of that kind. And yet, in spite of that,

in one week 34,000 women sent in their names as volunteers for a

national service. [Loud applause.]

And now, something about this talk of peace, and the terms of peace.

Well, I consider it very sinister and very dangerous. Very dangerous,

indeed, because nothing heartens the Kaiser and his advisers so much as

weakness in any of the allied nations. It is no use expecting Germany to

understand that the people who are talking about peace are animated by a

genuine love for peace. I go further as regards peace movements. I think

that in this country, and in America, and in all the neutral countries,

there are a great many very well-meaning people who are genuine lovers

of peace. What woman does not dread the effects of war? Germans are

encouraging the call for peace. The Kaiser knows he is going to be

beaten, and he wants to get out of it on as easy terms as possible, and

so it is worth while for German-Americans to run a peace movement in

America. They want America, which is a great neutral country, to

intervene to try to force peace and to let the Germans down easily

without having to pay for all that they have done in Belgium and in

France. Similar tactics are being pursued in this country.

Only those who have been in close touch with people who know what goes

on, and what has gone on, since the year 1870, after the Franco-German

war, can realize how insidious this German influence is, and so I say to

you who love peace (and who does not love peace?) if you take part in

any of these peace movements you are playing the German game and helping

Germany. [Loud applause.] They talk of peace, but consider the position

of our allies. The Germans in possession of the North of France,

devastating the country, even today driving thousands of innocent,

helpless people at the point of the bayonet, outraging women, and

burning homes! And people in this country--an allied nation--allowing

themselves to talk about terms of peace.

It is for Germany to talk of peace, not for us. [Loud applause.] It is

for us to show a strong and determined front, because if we do anything

else we are misunderstood, and advantage is taken of the situation.

Since some women have responded to an invitation to take part in a peace

conference at The Hague, I feel bound to say that they do not represent

the mass of Englishwomen. [Loud applause.] The mass of Englishwomen are

whole-hearted in our support of our own Government in this matter and in

the support of our allies--[loud applause]--and we are prepared to face

all the necessary sacrifices to bring this war to a successful issue

from our point of view, because we know, because we feel, that this

terrible business, forced upon us, has to be properly finished to save

us from the danger of another war perhaps in ten years' time.

[Applause.]

We have clear consciences on this matter. We did not want this war.

France did not want this war. Belgium did not want this war. I do not

believe that Russia wanted this war. It has been forced upon us, and

since Germany took up the sword, the sword must be held in the hands of

the Allies until Germany has had enough of war and does not want any

more of it. [Loud applause.] For us to talk about peace now, for us to

weaken our side now, is to make the condition of those men who are

laying down their lives for us in France more terrible than it already

is. We have to support them, and to stand loyally by them, and to make

our sacrifices and show our patriotism to them.

And, speaking of sacrifices, let us consider this drink question. What

is our duty in that matter? Well, I think our duty is this, that, if the

Government of this country seriously think it is necessary for our

success in this war to stop drink altogether until the war is ended, it

is our duty loyally to support and accept that decision. [Loud

applause.]

At any rate, in time of war we should be ready to say, "Let us

sacrifice a personal pleasure in order to get a great national good."

Would not that be a something to lift up a nation and make it a

wonderful and a great nation?

I believe that in this war we are fighting for things undying and great;

we are fighting for liberty; we are fighting for honor; we are fighting

to preserve the great inheritance won for us by our forefathers, and it

is worth while to fight for those things, and it is worth while to die

for them--to die a glorious death in defense of all that makes life

worth having is better than to live unending years of inglorious life.

And so, out of this great trial that has come upon us, I believe a

wonderful transformation will come to the people of this country and we

shall emerge from it stronger and better and nobler and more worthy of

our great traditions than ever we should perhaps have been without it.

[Loud and continued applause.]

The Soldiers Pass

By MAURICE HEWLETT.

[From "Sing Songs of the War."]

The soldiers pass at nightfall,

A girl within each arm,

And kisses quick and light fall

On lips that take no harm.

Lip language serves them better

Who have no parts of speech:

No syntax there to fetter

The lore they love to teach.

What waist would shun th' indenture

Of such a gallant squeeze?

What girl's heart not dare venture

The hot-and-cold disease?

Nay, let them do their service

Before the lads depart!

That hand goes where the curve is

That billows o'er the heart.

Who deems not how 'tis given,

What knows he of its worth?

'Tis either fire of heaven

Or earthiness of earth.

And if the lips are fickle

That kiss, they'll never know

If tears begin to trickle

Where they saw roses blow.

"The girl I left behind me,"

He'll sing, nor hear her moan,

"The tears they come to blind me

As I sit here alone."

What else had you to offer,

Poor spendthrift of the town?

Lay out your unlockt coffer--

The Lord will know His own.

The Great End

By Arnold Bennett.

Fear that the British Government in its discussion of peace

terms with Germany might defer to the policy of France and

Russia of keeping important negotiations secret inspired the

writing of this article, which appeared in The London Daily

News of April 1, 1915, and is here published by the author's

permission. Mr. Bennett points out that despite her alliance

Great Britain is essentially a democracy subject to the

mandates of her people.

The well-meant but ingenuous efforts of the Government to produce

pessimism among the citizens have failed. The object of these efforts

was clear; it has, I think, been attained by more direct and wiser

means. Munitions of war are now being more satisfactorily manufactured,

though the country still refuses to be gloomy. "Eyewitness" pretended to

quake, but Przemysl fell. He tried again, but Sir John French announced

that he did not believe in a protracted war. Since Sir John French said

also that he believed in victory, it follows that he believes in a

victory not long delayed. The incomparable and candid reports of the

French War Office about the first stages of the war increased our

confidence, and at the same time showed to us the inferiority of our own

reports. Only victors could publish such revelations, and Britain, with

her passion for forgetting mistakes and her hatred of the confessional,

could never bring herself to publish them. These reports were confirmed

and capped by the remarkable communications of General Joffre to a

journalistic friend. The New York Stock Exchange began to gamble about

the date of victory. The London Stock Exchange took on a new firmness.

Not even the sinister losses at Neuve Chapelle, nor the rumors

concerning the same, could disturb our confidence. Peace, therefore, in

the general view, and certainty in the view of those who knew most, is

decidedly nearer than when I wrote last about peace.

A short while ago Mr. Asquith referred with sarcasm and reproof to those

who talk of peace. But, for once, his meaning was not clear. If he meant

that to suggest peace to the enemy at this stage is both dangerous and

ridiculous, he will be approved by the nation. But if he meant that

terms of peace must not even be mentioned among ourselves, he will find

people ready to disagree with him, and to support the weight of his

sarcasm and his reproof. I am one of those people. Bellicose by

disposition, I nevertheless like to know what I am fighting for. This is

perhaps an idiosyncrasy, but many persons share it, and they are not to

be ignored. It may be argued that Mr. Asquith has defined what we are

fighting for. He has not. He has only defined part of what we are

fighting for. His reference to the overthrow of Prussian militarism is

futile, because it gives no indication of the method to be employed. The

method of liberating and compensating Belgium and other small

communities is clear; but how are you to overthrow an ideal? Prussian

militarism will not be destroyed by a defeat in the field. Militarism

cannot overthrow militarism; it can only breed militarism. The point is

of the highest importance.

I do not assume that Mr. Asquith's notions about the right way to

overthrow militarism are not sound notions. I assume that they are

sound. I think that his common sense is massive. Though it is evident

that he lets his Ministerial colleagues do practically what they choose

in their own spheres, and though there are militarists in the Cabinet, I

do not, like The Morning Post, consider that the Prime Minister exists

in a stupor of negligence. On the contrary, I assume that at the end of

the war, as at the beginning, Mr. Asquith will control the foolish, and

that common sense will prevail in the Cabinet when a treaty is the

subject of converse. Still further, I will assume that, contrary to

nearly all precedent, the collective sagacity of the Ministry has not

been impaired, and its self-conceit perilously tickled, by the long

exercise of absolute power in face of a Parliament of poltroons. And,

lastly, I will abandon my old argument that the discussion of peace

terms might shorten the war, without any risk of prolonging it. And

still I very strongly hold that peace terms ought to be discussed.

It appears to me that there is a desire--I will not say a conspiracy--on

the part of the Government to bring this war to an end in the same

manner as it will be brought to an end in Germany--that is to say,

autocratically, without either the knowledge or the consent of the

nation. The projected scheme, I imagine, is to sit tight and quiet, and

in due course inform the nation of a fact accomplished. It can be done,

and I think it will be done, unless the House of Commons administers to

itself a tonic and acquires courage. Already colonial statesmen have

been politely but firmly informed that they are not wanted in England

this year! The specious excuse for keeping the nation in the dark is

that we are allied to Russia, where the people are never under any

circumstances consulted, and to France, where for the duration of the

war the Government is as absolute in spirit and in conduct, as that of

Russia; and that we must not pain those allied Governments by any

exhibition of democracy in being. Secrecy and a complete autocratic

control of the people are the watchwords of the allied Governments, and

therefore they must be the watchwords of our Government.

This is very convenient for British autocrats, but the argument is not

convincing. The surrender of ideals ought not to be so one-sided. We do

not dream of suggesting to the Russian and the French Governments how

they ought to conduct themselves toward their peoples; and similarly we

should not allow them to influence the relations between our Government

and ourselves.

The basis of peace negotiations must necessarily be settled in advance

by representatives of all the allied Governments in conclave. The

mandate of each Government in regard to the conclave is the affair of

that Government, and it is the affair of no other Government. The

mandate of our Government is, therefore, the affair of our Government,

and the allied Governments are just as much entitled to criticise or

object to it as we, for example, are entitled to suggest to the Czar how

he ought to behave in Finland. Our Government, being a democratic

Government, has no right to go into conclave without a mandate from the

people who elected it. It possesses no mandate of the kind. It has a

mandate, and a mighty one, to prosecute the war, and it is prosecuting

the war to the satisfaction of the majority of the electorate. But a

peace treaty is a different and an incomparably more important thing. Up

to the present the mind of the nation has found no expression, and it

probably will not find any expression unless the Government recognizes

fairly that it is a representative Government and behaves with the

deference which is due from a representative Government. As matters

stand, the mandate of the British Government will come, not from

Britain, but from Russia and France.

The great argument drawn from the Government's alleged duty to the

allied Governments is, no doubt, reinforced, in the minds of Ministers

and at Cabinet meetings, by two subsidiary arguments. The first of these

rests in the traditional assumption that all international politics must

be committed, perpetrated, and accomplished in secret. This strange

traditional notion will die hard, but some time it will have to die, and

at the moment of its death excellent and sincere persons will be

convinced that the knell of the British Empire has sounded. The knell of

the British Empire has frequently sounded. It sounded when capital

punishment was abolished for sheep-stealing, when the great reform bill

was passed, when purchase was abolished in the army, when the deceased

wife's sister bill was passed, when the Parliament act became law; and

it will positively sound again when the mediaeval Chinese traditions of

the Diplomatic Service are cast aside. There are many important people

alive today who are so obsessed by those traditions as to believe

religiously that if the British people, and by consequence the German

Government, were made aware of the peace terms, the German Army would in

some mysterious way be strengthened and encouraged, and our own ultimate

success imperiled. Such is the power of the dead hand, and against this

power the new conviction that in a democratic and candid foreign policy

lies the future safety of the world will have to fight hard.

The other subsidiary argument for ignoring the nation is that Ministers

are wiser than the nation, and therefore that Ministers must save the

nation from itself by making it impotent and acting over its head. This

has always been the argument of autocrats, and even of tyrants. It is a

ridiculous argument, and it was never more ridiculous than when applied

to the British Government and the British Nation today. Throughout the

war the Government has underestimated the qualities of the

nation--courage, discipline, fortitude, and wisdom. It is still

underestimating them. For myself, I have no doubt that in the making of

peace the sagacity of the nation as a whole would be greater than the

sagacity of the Government. But even if it were not, the right of the

nation to govern itself in the gravest hour of its career remains

unchallengeable. All arguments in favor of depriving the nation of that

right amount to the argument of Germany in favor of taking Belgium--"We

do it in your true interests, and in our own."

If the Government does not on its own initiative declare that it will

consult--and effectively consult--Parliament concerning the peace terms,

then it is the duty of Parliament, and especially of the House of

Commons, to make itself unpleasant and to produce that appearance of

internal discord which (we are told by all individuals who dislike being

disturbed) is so enheartening to Germany. There have always been, and

there still are, ample opportunities for raising questions of foreign

policy in the House of Commons. If foreign policy has seldom or never

been adequately handled by the House of Commons, the reason simply is

that the House has not been interested in it. Not to the tyranny of

Ministries, but to the supineness and the ignorance of the people's

representatives, is the present state of affairs due. Hence the rank and

file of Radicals should organize themselves. They would unquestionably

receive adequate support in the press and at public meetings. And none

but they can do anything worth doing. And among the rank and file of

Radicals the plain common-sense men should make themselves heard.

Foreign policy debates in the House are usually the playground of cranks

of all varieties, and the plain common-sense man seems to shrink from

being vocal in such company. It is a pity. The plain common-sense man

should believe in himself a little more. The result would perhaps

startle his modesty. And he should begin instantly on the resumption of

Parliament. He will of course be told that he is premature. But no

matter. When he gets up and makes a row he will be told that he is

premature, until Sir Edward Grey is in a position to announce in the icy

cold and impressive tones of omniscience and omnipotence and perfect

wisdom that the deed is irrevocably done and only the formal

ratification of the people is required. We have been through all that

before, and we shall go through it again unless we start out immediately

to be unpleasant.

I hope nobody will get the impression that I think we are a nation of

angels under a Government of earthy and primeval creatures. I do not. We

are not in a Christian mood, and we don't want to be in a Christian

mood. When last week a foolish schoolmaster took advantage of his august

position to advocate Christianity at the end of the war, we frightened

the life out of him, and he had to say that he had been "woefully

misunderstood." In spite of this, the nation, being cut off from direct

communication with foreign autocracy and reaction, is in my view very

likely to be less unwise than the Government at the supreme crisis. And

even if it isn't, even at the worst, it is and should be the master and

not the slave of the Government.

German Women Not Yet For Peace

By Gertrude Baumer, President of the Bund Deutscher Frauen.

_An emphatic refusal of German women to take part in the recent Women's

Peace Conference at The Hague was issued by the Bund Deutscher Frauen

(League of German Women) signed by Gertrude Baumer as President, and

published by the Frankfurter Zeitung in its issue of April 29, 1915. The

manifesto reads:_

On April 28 begins the Peace Congress to which women of Holland have

invited the women of neutral and belligerent nations. The German woman's

movement has declined to attend the congress, by unanimous resolution of

its Executive Committee. If individual German women visit the congress

it can be only such as have no responsible position in the organization

of the German woman's movement and for whom the organization is,

therefore, not responsible.

This decimation must not be understood to mean that the German women do

not feel as keenly as the women of other countries the enormous

sacrifices and sorrows which this war has caused, or that they refuse to

recognize the good intentions that figure in the institution of this

congress. None can yearn more eagerly than we for an end of these

sacrifices and sorrows. But we realize that in our consciousness of the

weight of these sacrifices we are one with our whole people and

Government; we know that the blood of those who fall out there on the

field cannot be dearer to us women than to the men who are responsible

for the decisions of Germany. Because we know that, we must decline to

represent special desires in an international congress. We have no other

desires than those of our entire people: a peace consonant with the

honor of our State and guaranteeing its safety in the future.

The resolutions that are to be laid before the women's congress at The

Hague are of two kinds. One kind denounces war as such, and recommends

peaceful settlement of international quarrels. The other offers

suggestions for hastening the concluding of peace.

As concerns the first group of suggestions, there are in the German

woman's movement women who are in principle very much in sympathy with

the aims of the peace movement. But they, too, are convinced that

negotiations about the means of avoiding future wars and conquering the

mutual distrust of nations can be considered only after peace has again

been concluded. But we must most vigorously reject the proposition of

voting approval to a resolution in which the war is declared to be an

"insanity" that was made possible only through a "mass psychosis." Shall

the German women deny the moral force that is impelling their husbands

and sons into death, that has led home countless German men, amid a

thousand dangers, from foreign lands, to battle for their threatened

Fatherland, by declaring in common with the women of hostile States that

the national spirit of self-sacrifice of our men is insanity and a

psychosis? Shall we psychologically attack in the rear the men who are

defending our safety by scoffing at and deprecating the internal forces

that are keeping them up? Whoever asks us to do that cannot have

experienced what thousands of wives and mothers have experienced, who

have seen their husbands and sons march away.

Just as in these fundamental questions the women of the belligerent

States must feel differently from those of neutral States, so, too,

there is naturally a difference of opinion among the women of the

different belligerent States concerning the time of the conclusion of

peace. Inasmuch as the prospects of the belligerent States depend upon

the time of the conclusion of peace and therewith the future fate of the

nations involved in the war, there can likewise be no international

conformity of opinion on this question either.

Dear to us German women as well, are the relations that bind us to the

women of foreign lands, and we sincerely desire that they may survive

this time of hatred and enmity. But precisely for that reason

international negotiations seem fraught with fate to us at a time when

we belong exclusively to our people and when strict limits are set to

the value of international exchange of views in the fact that we are

citizens of our own country, to strengthen whose national power of

resistance is our highest task.

Diagnosis of the Englishman

By John Galsworthy

This article originally appeared in the Amsterdaemer Revue,

having been written during the lull of the war while England

fitted her volunteer armies for the Spring campaign, and is

here published by special permission of the author.

After six months of war search for the cause thereof borders on the

academic. Comment on the physical facts of the situation does not come

within the scope of one who, by disposition and training, is concerned

with states of mind. Speculation on what the future may bring forth may

be left to those with an aptitude for prophecy.

But there is one thought which rises supreme at this particular moment

of these tremendous times: The period of surprise is over; the forces

known; the issue fully joined. It is now a case of "Pull devil, pull

baker," and a question of the fibre of the combatants. For this reason

it may not be amiss to try to present to any whom it may concern as

detached a picture as one can of the real nature of that combatant who

is called the Englishman, especially since ignorance in Central Europe

of his character was the chief cause of this war, and speculation as to

the future is useless without right comprehension of this curious

creature.

The Englishman is taken advisedly because he represents four-fifths of

the population of the British Isles and eight-ninths of the character

and sentiment therein.

And, first, let it be said that there is no more deceptive,

unconsciously deceptive person on the face of the globe. The Englishman

certainly does not know himself, and outside England he is but guessed

at. Only a pure Englishman--and he must be an odd one--really knows the

Englishman, just as, for inspired judgment of art, one must go to the

inspired artist.

Racially, the Englishman is so complex and so old a blend that no one

can say what he is. In character he is just as complex. Physically,

there are two main types--one inclining to length of limb, narrowness of

face and head, (you will see nowhere such long and narrow heads as in

our islands,) and bony jaws; the other approximating more to the

ordinary "John Bull." The first type is gaining on the second. There is

little or no difference in the main character behind.

In attempting to understand the real nature of the Englishman certain

salient facts must be borne in mind:

THE SEA.--To be surrounded generation after generation by the sea has

developed in him a suppressed idealism, a peculiar impermeability, a

turn for adventure, a faculty for wandering, and for being sufficient

unto himself in far surroundings.

THE CLIMATE.--Whoso weathers for centuries a climate that, though

healthy and never extreme, is perhaps the least reliable and one of the

wettest in the world, must needs grow in himself a counterbalance of dry

philosophy, a defiant humor, an enforced medium temperature of soul. The

Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate; against its

damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort of

bluntness.

THE POLITICAL AGE OF HIS COUNTRY.--This is by far the oldest settled

Western power, politically speaking. For eight hundred and fifty years

England has known no serious military disturbance from without; for over

one hundred and fifty she has known no military disturbance, and no

serious political turmoil within. This is partly the outcome of her

isolation, partly the happy accident of her political constitution,

partly the result of the Englishman's habit of looking before he leaps,

which comes, no doubt, from the mixture in his blood and the mixture in

his climate.

THE GREAT PREPONDERANCE FOR SEVERAL GENERATIONS OF TOWN OVER COUNTRY

LIFE.--Taken in conjunction with centuries of political stability this

is the main cause of a certain deeply ingrained humaneness of which,

speaking generally, the Englishman appears to be rather ashamed than

otherwise.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.--This potent element in the formation of the modern

Englishman, not only of the upper but of all classes, is something that

one rather despairs of making understood--in countries that have no

similar institution. But, imagine one hundred thousand youths of the

wealthiest, healthiest, and most influential classes passed during each

generation at the most impressionable age, into a sort of ethical mold,

emerging therefrom stamped to the core with the impress of a uniform

morality, uniform manners, uniform way of looking at life; remembering

always that these youths fill seven-eighths of the important positions

in the professional administration of their country and the conduct of

its commercial enterprise; remembering, too, that through perpetual

contact with every other class their standard of morality and way of

looking at life filters down into the very toes of the land. This great

character-forming machine is remarkable for an unself-consciousness

which gives it enormous strength and elasticity. Not inspired by the

State, it inspires the State. The characteristics of the philosophy it

enjoins are mainly negative and, for that, the stronger. "Never show

your feelings--to do so is not manly and bores your fellows. Don't cry

out when you're hurt, making yourself a nuisance to other people. Tell

no tales about your companions, and no lies about yourself. Avoid all

'swank,' 'side,' 'swagger,' braggadocio of speech or manner, on pain of

being laughed at." (This maxim is carried to such a pitch that the

Englishman, except in his press, habitually understates everything.)

"Think little of money, and speak less of it. Play games hard, and keep

the rules of them even when your blood is hot and you are tempted to

disregard them. In three words, 'play the game,'" a little phrase which

may be taken as the characteristic understatement of the modern

Englishman's creed of honor in all classes. This great, unconscious

machine has considerable defects. It tends to the formation of "caste";

it is a poor teacher of sheer learning, and, aesthetically, with its

universal suppression of all interesting and queer individual traits of

personality, it is almost horrid. But it imparts a remarkable

incorruptibility to English life; it conserves vitality by suppressing

all extremes, and it implants everywhere a kind of unassuming stoicism

and respect for the rules of the great game--Life. Through its

unconscious example and through its cult of games it has vastly

influenced even the classes not directly under its control.

Three more main facts must be borne in mind:

THE ESSENTIAL DEMOCRACY OF THE GOVERNMENT.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE PRESS.

ABSENCE OF COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE.

These, the outcome of the quiet and stable home life of an island

people, have done more than anything to make the Englishman a deceptive

personality to the outside eye. He has for centuries been permitted to

grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler--until he really has

something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no

such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really

so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger might well think

from his utterances that he was spoiled by the freedom of his life,

unprepared to sacrifice anything for a land in such a condition.

Threaten that country, and with it his liberty, and you will find that

his grumbles have meant less than nothing. You will find, too, that

behind the apparent slackness of every arrangement and every individual

are powers of adaptability to facts, elasticity, practical genius, a

latent spirit of competition and a determination that are staggering.

Before this war began it was the fashion among a number of English to

lament the decadence of the race. These very grumblers are now foremost

in praising, and quite rightly, the spirit shown in every part of their

country. Their lamentations, which plentifully deceived the outside ear,

were just English grumbles, for if in truth England had been decadent

there could have been no such universal display for them to be praising

now. But all this democratic grumbling and habit of "going as you

please" serve a deep purpose. Autocracy, censorship, compulsion destroy

humor in a nation's blood and elasticity in its fibre; they cut at the

very mainsprings of national vitality. Only free from these baneful

controls can each man arrive in his own way at realization of what is or

is not national necessity; only free from them will each man truly

identify himself with a national ideal--not through deliberate

instruction or by command of others, but by simple, natural conviction

from within.

Two cautions are here given to the stranger trying to form an estimate

of the Englishman: The creature must not be judged from his press,

which, manned (with certain exceptions) by those who are not typically

English, is too highly colored altogether to illustrate the true English

spirit; nor can he be judged by such of his literature as is best known

on the Continent. The Englishman proper is inexpressive, unexpressed.

Further, he must be judged by the evidences of his wealth. England may

be the richest country in the world per head of population, but not 5

per cent. of that population have any wealth to speak of, certainly not

enough to have affected their hardihood, and, with inconsiderable

exceptions, those who have enough are brought up to worship hardihood.

For the vast proportion of young Englishmen active military service is

merely a change from work as hard, and more monotonous.

From these main premises, then, we come to what the Englishman really

is.

When, after months of travel, one returns to England one can taste,

smell, feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral--the

curious, damp, blunt, good-humored, happy-go-lucky, old-established,

slow-seeming formlessness of everything. You hail a porter, you tell him

you have plenty of time; he muddles your things amiably, with an air of

"It'll be all right," till you have only just time. But suppose you tell

him you have no time; he will set himself to catch that train for you,

and he will catch it faster than a porter of any other country. Let no

stranger, however, experiment to prove the truth of this, for that

porter--and a porter is very like any other Englishman--is incapable of

taking the foreigner seriously and, quite friendly but a little pitying,

will lose him the train, assuring the unfortunate gentleman that he

really doesn't know what train he wants to catch--how should he?

The Englishman must have a thing brought under his nose before he will

act; bring it there and he will go on acting after everybody else has

stopped. He lives very much in the moment, because he is essentially a

man of facts and not a man of imagination. Want of imagination makes

him, philosophically speaking, rather ludicrous; in practical affairs it

handicaps him at the start, but once he has "got going," as we say, it

is of incalculable assistance to his stamina. The Englishman, partly

through this lack of imagination and nervous sensibility, partly through

his inbred dislike of extremes and habit of minimizing the expression of

everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is

very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative,

practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition--not

to say pugnacity--so strong that it will often show through the coating

of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a

peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but

inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism--and you get some notion

of the pudding of English character. Its main feature is a kind of

terrible coolness, a rather awful level-headedness. The Englishman makes

constant small blunders; but few, almost no, deep mistakes. He is a slow

starter, but there is no stronger finisher because he has by temperament

and training the faculty of getting through any job that he gives his

mind to with a minimum expenditure of vital energy; nothing is wasted in

expression, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as

near to the practical heart of the matter as possible. He is--to the eye

of an artist--distressingly matter-of-fact, a tempting mark for satire.

And yet he is in truth an idealist, though it is his nature to snub,

disguise, and mock his own inherent optimism. To admit enthusiasms is

"bad form" if he is a "gentleman"; "swank" or mere waste of good heat if

he is not a "gentleman." England produces more than its proper

percentage of cranks and poets; it may be taken that this is Nature's

way of redressing the balance in a country where feelings are not shown,

sentiments not expressed, and extremes laughed at. Not that the

Englishman lacks heart; he is not cold, as is generally supposed--on the

contrary he is warm-hearted and feels very strongly; but just as

peasants, for lack of words to express their feelings, become stolid, so

it is with the Englishman from sheer lack of the habit of

self-expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but

his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings,

often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has

not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to

confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to

want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable

to express himself, _even to himself_, that he has never realized this

truth, much less confessed it--hence his appearance of hypocrisy.

He is quite wrongly credited with being attached to money. His island

position, his early discoveries of coal, iron, and processes of

manufacture have made him, of course, into a confirmed industrialist

and trader; but he is more of an adventurer in wealth than a heaper-up

of it. He is far from sitting on his money-bags--has absolutely no vein

of proper avarice, and for national ends will spill out his money like

water, when he is convinced of the necessity.

In everything it comes to that with the Englishman--he must be

convinced, and he takes a lot of convincing. He absorbs ideas slowly,

reluctantly; he would rather not imagine anything unless he is obliged,

but in proportion to the slowness with which he can be moved is the

slowness with which he can be removed! Hence the symbol of the bulldog.

When he does see and seize a thing he seizes it with the whole of his

weight, and wastes no breath in telling you that he has got hold. That

is why his press is so untypical; it gives the impression that he does

waste breath. And, while he has hold, he gets in more mischief in a

shorter time than any other dog because of his capacity for

concentrating on the present, without speculating on the past or future.

For the particular situation which the Englishman has now to face he is

terribly well adapted. Because he has so little imagination, so little

power of expression, he is saving nerve all the time. Because he never

goes to extremes, he is saving energy of body and spirit. That the men

of all nations are about equally endowed with courage and self-sacrifice

has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that

one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman

does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further

forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful

and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various

combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting,

(though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are than any

others; you will gain, too, a profound, a deadly conviction that behind

them is a fibre like rubber, that may be frayed, and bent a little this

way and that, but can neither be permeated nor broken.

When this war began the Englishman rubbed his eyes steeped in peace; he

is still rubbing them just a little, but less and less every day. A

profound lover of peace by habit and tradition, he has actually realized

by now that he is in for it up to the neck. To any one who really knows

him--_c'est quelque chose_!

It shall be freely confessed that, from an aesthetic point of view, the

Englishman, devoid of high lights and shadows, coated with drab, and

super-humanly steady on his feet, is not too attractive. But for the

wearing, tearing, slow, and dreadful business of this war, the

Englishman--fighting of his own free will, unimaginative, humorous,

competitive, practical, never in extremes, a dumb, inveterate optimist,

and terribly tenacious--is undoubtedly equipped with Victory.

Bernard Shaw's Terms of Peace

_A letter written by G. Bernard Shaw to a friend in Vienna is published

in the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten and in the Frankfurter Zeitung of

April 21, 1915. Mr. Shaw says:_

We are already on the way out of the first and worst phase. When reason

began to bestir itself, I appeared each week in great open meetings in

London; and when the newspapers discovered that I was not only not being

torn to pieces, but that I was growing better and better liked, then the

feeling that patriotism consists of insane lies began to give place to

the discovery that the presentation of the truth is not so dangerous as

every one had believed.

At that time scarcely one of the leading newspapers took heed of my

insistence that this war was an imperialistic war and popular only in so

far as all wars are for a time popular. But I need hardly assure you

that if Grey had announced: "We have concluded a treaty of alliance with

Germany and Austria and must wage war upon France and Russia," he would

have evoked precisely the same patriotic fervor and exactly the same

democratic anti-Prussianism, (with the omission of the P.) Then the

German Kaiser would have been cheered as the cousin of our King and our

old and faithful friend.

As concerns myself, I am not unqualifiedly what is called a pan-German;

the Germans, besides, would not have a spark of respect left for me if

now, when all questions of civilization are buried, I did not hold to my

people. But neither am I an anti-German.

Militarism has just compelled me to pay about £1,000 as war tax, in

order to help some "brave little Serbian" or other to cut your throat,

or some Russian mujik to blow out your brains, although I would rather

pay twice as much to save your life or to buy in Vienna some good

picture for our National Gallery, and although I should mourn far less

about the death of a hundred Serbs or mujiks than for your death.

I am, even aside from myself, sorry for your sake that my plays

are no longer produced. Why does not the Burgtheater play the

"Schlachtenlenker"? Napoleon's speech about English "Realpolitik" would

prove an unprecedented success. If the English win, I shall call upon

Sir Edward Grey to add to the treaty of peace a clause in which Berlin

and Vienna shall be obliged each year to produce at least 100

performances of my plays for the next twenty-five years.

In London during August the usual cheap evening orchestra concerts,

so-called promenade concerts, were announced in a patriotic manner, with

the comment that no German musician would be represented on the program.

Everybody applauded this announcement, but nobody attended the concerts.

A week later a program of Beethoven, Wagner, and Richard Strauss was

announced. Everybody was indignant, and everybody went to hear it. It

was a complete and decisive German victory, without a single man being

killed.

A Policy of Murder

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This article is taken from Conan Doyle's book "The German

War," and is reproduced by permission of the author.

When one writes with a hot heart upon events which are still recent one

is apt to lose one's sense of proportion. At every step one should check

one's self by the reflection as to how this may appear ten years hence,

and how far events which seem shocking and abnormal may prove themselves

to be a necessary accompaniment of every condition of war. But a time

has now come when in cold blood, with every possible restraint, one is

justified in saying that since the most barbarous campaigns of Alva in

the Lowlands, or the excesses of the Thirty Years' War, there has been

no such deliberate policy of murder as has been adopted in this struggle

by the German forces. This is the more terrible since these forces are

not, like those of Alva, Parma, or Tilly, bands of turbulent and

mercenary soldiers, but they are the nation itself, and their deeds are

condoned or even applauded by the entire national press. It is not on

the chiefs of the army that the whole guilt of this terrible crime must

rest, but it is upon the whole German Nation, which for generations to

come must stand condemned before the civilized world for this reversion

to those barbarous practices from which Christianity, civilization, and

chivalry had gradually rescued the human race. They may, and do, plead

the excuse that they are "earnest" in war, but all nations are earnest

in war, which is the most desperately earnest thing of which we have any

knowledge. How earnest we are will be shown when the question of

endurance begins to tell. But no earnestness can condone the crime of

the nation which deliberately breaks those laws which have been indorsed

by the common consent of humanity.

War may have a beautiful as well as a terrible side, and be full of

touches of human sympathy and restraint which mitigate its unavoidable

horror. Such have been the characteristics always of the secular wars

between the British and the French. From the old glittering days of

knighthood, with their high and gallant courtesy, through the eighteenth

century campaigns where the debonair guards of France and England

exchanged salutations before their volleys, down to the last great

Napoleonic struggle, the tradition of chivalry has always survived. We

read how in the Peninsula the pickets of the two armies, each of them as

earnest as any Germans, would exchange courtesies, how they would shout

warnings to each other to fall back when an advance in force was taking

place, and how to prevent the destruction of an ancient bridge, the

British promised not to use it on condition that the French would forgo

its destruction--an agreement faithfully kept upon either side. Could

one imagine Germans making war in such a spirit as this? Think of that

old French bridge, and then think of the University of Louvain and the

Cathedral of Rheims. What a gap between them--the gap that separates

civilization from the savage!

Let us take a few of the points which, when focused together, show how

the Germans have degraded warfare--a degradation which affects not only

the Allies at present, but the whole future of the world, since if such

examples were followed the entire human race would, each in turn, become

the sufferers. Take the very first incident of the war, the mine laying

by the Königin Luise. Here was a vessel, which was obviously made ready

with freshly charged mines some time before there was any question of a

general European war, which was sent forth in time of peace, and which,

on receipt of a wireless message, began to spawn its hellish cargo

across the North Sea at points fifty miles from land in the track of all

neutral merchant shipping. There was the keynote of German tactics

struck at the first possible instant. So promiscuous was the effect that

it was a mere chance which prevented the vessel which bore the German

Ambassador from being destroyed by a German mine. From first to last

some hundreds of people have lost their lives on this tract of sea, some

of them harmless British trawlers, but the greater number sailors of

Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing their commerce as they had every right

to do. It was the first move in a consistent policy of murder.

Leaving the sea, let us turn to the air. Can any possible term save a

policy of murder be applied to the use of aircraft by the Germans? It

has always been a principle of warfare that unfortified towns should not

be bombarded. So closely has it been followed by the British that one of

our aviators, flying over Cologne in search of a Zeppelin shed,

refrained from dropping a bomb in an uncertain light, even though

Cologne is a fortress, lest the innocent should suffer. What is to be

said, then, for the continual use of bombs by the Germans which have

usually been wasted in the destruction of cats or dogs, but which have

occasionally torn to pieces some woman or child? If bombs were dropped

on the forts of Paris as part of a scheme for reducing the place, then

nothing could be said in objection, but how are we to describe the

action of men who fly over a crowded city dropping bombs promiscuously

which can have no military effect whatever, and are entirely aimed at

the destruction of innocent civilians? These men have been obliging

enough to drop their cards as well as their bombs on several occasions.

I see no reason why these should not be used in evidence against them,

or why they should not be hanged as murderers when they fall into the

hands of the Allies. The policy is idiotic from a military point of

view; one could conceive nothing which would stimulate and harden

national resistance more surely than such petty irritations. But it is

a murderous innovation in the laws of war, and unless it is sternly

repressed it will establish a most sinister precedent for the future.

As to the treatment of Belgium, what has it been but murder, murder all

the way? From the first days of Visé, when it was officially stated that

an example of "frightfulness" was desired, until the present moment,

when the terrified population has rushed from the country and thrown

itself upon the charity and protection of its neighbors, there has been

no break in the record. Compare the story with that of the occupation of

the South of France by Wellington in 1813, when no one was injured,

nothing was taken without full payment, and the villagers fraternized

with the troops. What a relapse of civilization is here! From Visé to

Louvain, Louvain to Aerschot, Aerschot to Malines and Termonde, the

policy of murder never fails.

It is said that more civilians than soldiers have fallen in Belgium.

Peruse the horrible accounts taken by the Belgian Commission, who took

evidence in the most careful and conscientious fashion. Study the

accounts of that dreadful night in Louvain which can only be equaled by

the Spanish Fury of Antwerp. Read the account of the wife of the

Burgomaster of Aerschot, with its heartrending description of how her

lame son, aged sixteen, was kicked along to his death by an aide de

camp. It is all so vile, so brutally murderous that one can hardly

realize that one is reading the incidents of a modern campaign conducted

by one of the leading nations in Europe.

Do you imagine that the thing has been exaggerated? Far from it--the

volume of crime has not yet been appreciated. Have not many Germans

unwittingly testified to what they have seen and done? Only last week we

had the journal of one of them, an officer whose service had been almost

entirely in France and removed from the crime centres of Belgium. Yet

were ever such entries in the diary of a civilized soldier? "Our men

behaved like regular Vandals." "We shot the whole lot," (these were

villagers.) "They were drawn up in three ranks. The same shot did for

three at a time." "In the evening we set fire to the village. The priest

and some of the inhabitants were shot." "The villages all around were

burning." "The villages were burned and the inhabitants shot." "At Leppe

apparently two hundred men were shot. There must have been some innocent

men among them." "In future we shall have to hold an inquiry into their

guilt instead of merely shooting them." "The Vandals themselves could

not have done more damage. The place is a disgrace to our army." So the

journal runs on with its tale of infamy. It is an infamy so shameless

that even in the German record the story is perpetuated of how a French

lad was murdered because he refused to answer certain questions. To such

a depth of degradation has Prussia brought the standard of warfare.

And now, as the appetite for blood grows ever stronger--and nothing

waxes more fast--we have stories of the treatment of prisoners. Here is

a point where our attention should be most concentrated and our action

most prompt. It is the just duty which we owe to our own brave soldiers.

At present the instances are isolated, and we will hope that they do not

represent any general condition. But the stories come from sure sources.

There is the account of the brutality which culminated in the death of

the gallant motor cyclist Pearson, the son of Lord Cowdray. There is the

horrible story in a responsible Dutch paper, told by an eyewitness, of

the torture of three British wounded prisoners in Landen Station on Oct.

9.

The story carries conviction by its detail. Finally, there are the

disquieting remarks of German soldiers, repeated by this same witness,

as to the British prisoners whom they had shot. The whole lesson of

history is that when troops are allowed to start murder one can never

say how or when it will stop. It may no longer be part of a deliberate,

calculated policy of murder by the German Government. But it has

undoubtedly been so in the past, and we cannot say when it will end.

Such incidents will, I fear, make peace an impossibility in our

generation, for whatever statesmen may write upon paper can never affect

the deep and bitter resentment which a war so conducted must leave

behind it.

Other German characteristics we can ignore. The consistent, systematic

lying of the German press, or the grotesque blasphemies of the Kaiser,

can be met by us with contemptuous tolerance. After all, what is is, and

neither falsehood nor bombast will alter it. But this policy of murder

deeply affects not only ourselves but the whole framework of

civilization, so slowly and painfully built upward by the human race.

The Soldier's Epitaph

"HE DIED FOR ENGLAND."

[Inscription on the tombstone of a private soldier, recently killed in

action.]

These four short words his epitaph,

Sublimely simple, nobly plain;

Who adds to them but addeth chaff,

Obscures with husks the golden grain.

Not all the bards of other days,

Not Homer in his loftiest vein,

Not Milton's most majestic strain,

Not the whole wealth of Pindar's lays,

Could bring to that one simple phrase

What were not rather loss than gain;

That elegy so briefly fine,

That epic writ in half a line,

That little which so much conveys,

Whose silence is a hymn of praise

And throbs with harmonies divine.

The Will to Power

By Eden Phillpotts

A distinction between power as physical force and as expressed

in terms of spiritual value is drawn by Mr. Phillpotts in his

article, appearing in The Westminster Gazette of March 27,

1915, which is here reproduced.

It has not often happened in the world's history that any generation

can speak with such assured confidence of future events as at present.

When the living tongue is concerned with destiny it seldom does more

than indicate the trend of things to come, examine tendencies and

movements and predict, without any sure foreknowledge or conviction,

what generations unborn may expect to find and the conditions they will

create. Destiny for us, who speak of it, is an unknown sea whose waves,

indeed, drive steadily onward before strong winds, but whose shore is

still far distant. We know that we men of the hour can never see these

billows break upon the sands of future time.

But today we may look forward to stupendous events; today there are

mighty epiphanies quickening earth, not to be assigned to periods of

future time, but at hand, so near that our living selves shall see their

birth, and participate in their consequences. Nor can we stand as

spectators of this worldwide hope; we must not only hear the evangel

whose first mighty murmur is drifting to our ears from the future, we

must take it up with heart and voice and help to sound and resound it.

There is tremendous work lying ahead, not only for our children, but for

us. Weighty deeds will presently have to be performed by all adult

manhood and womanhood--deeds, perhaps, greater than any living man has

been called to do--deeds that exalt the doer and make sacred for all

history the hour in which they shall be done.

On Time's high canopy the years are as stars great and small, some of

lesser magnitude, some forever bright with the splendor of supreme

human achievements; and now there flashes out a year concerning which,

indeed, no man can say as yet how great it will be; but all men know

that it must be great. It is destined to drown all lesser years, even as

sunrise dims the morning stars with day; it is a year bright with

promise and bodeful with ill-tidings also; for in the world at this

moment there exist stupendous differences that this year will go far to

set at rest. This year must solve profound problems, determine the trend

of human affairs for centuries, and influence the whole future history

of civilization. This year may actually see the issue; at least it will

serve to light the near future when that issue shall be accomplished.

There has risen, then, a year that is great with no less a thing than

the future welfare of the whole earth. It must embrace the victory of

one ideal over another, and include a decision which shall determine

whether the sublime human hope of freedom and security for all mankind

is to guide human progress henceforth, or the spirit of domination and

slavery to win a new lease of life. On the one hand, this year of the

first magnitude will shine with the glory of such a victory for

democratic ideas as we have not seen, or expected to see, in our

generation; on the other, its bale-fire will blaze upon the overthrow of

all great ideals, the destruction of a weak nation by a powerful one,

and the triumph of that policy of "blood and iron" from which every

enlightened man of this age shrinks with horror. The situation cannot be

stated in simpler terms; no words can make it less than tremendous; and

it is demanded from us to make it personal--as personal to ourselves as

it is to the King of England, the Emperor of Germany, or the Czar of

all the Russias.

They live who, when this far-flung agony of war is ended, when the last

hero has fallen and lies in his grave, when the final cannon has sounded

its knell, must be called upon to make the great peace. They live who

will weave a shroud of death for the exhausted world, or plant the tree

of life upon her bosom; and since we, inspired by the splendor of our

cause, are assured that the day-spring will be ours, we already feel and

know that we shall see that tree of life planted. But do we also feel

and know that we must help to plant it, that the labor and toil of each

of us is vital, that none is so weak but that there is a part of that

planting for which he was born, a part consecrated to his individual

effort, a part that will go undone if he does not do it?

Look to yourself, man, woman, child, that with heart and soul and

strength you perform your part in the great world work lying ahead;

remember that not princes and rulers, not regiments of your kinsmen, not

the armed might of nations can do your appointed task for you. Fail of

it, and by so much will the life tree lack in her planting; succeed, and

by so much will she be the more splendid and secure. Her name is Freedom

and her fruits are for the weak and humble as well as the strong and

great, for the foolish as well as the wise, for all subjects as well as

for all States. Put out your power, then, for that most sacred tree;

deny yourself no pang that she may flourish; labor according to your

strength that her blossom shall win the worship of humanity and her

fruit be worthy of the blood of heroes that has poured for her planting.

Much we hear of the Will to Power, and because that great impulse has

lifted our enemies on the full flood tide of their might and manhood in

one overwhelming torrent, Germany has been condemned. But not for her

united effort and whole-hearted sacrifice should we condemn her--not for

her patriotism and response to the call. Her reply is wholly

magnificent, and it only stands condemned for the evil ends and ignoble

ambitions toward which it is directed. The spectacle of a great nation

at one, inspired by a single ideal and pouring its life, its wealth, its

energy, with a single impulse in the name of the Fatherland can only be

called sublime. The tragedy lies in the fact that this stupendous effort

is not worthy of the cause; that for false hopes, false ambitions and

mistaken sense of right and justice Germany has wasted her life and

given her soul.

Who blames the Will to Power? Power is the mightiest weapon fate can

forge for a nation--a treasure beyond the strength of commerce, or

armies, or navies, or intellect of man to produce. But it is necessary

that we define power in terms of spiritual value; and then, surely, it

appears that Power and Force can never be the same. A Frederick I., or a

Napoleon, may pretend to confound power with force, and believe that

their might must be right. They possessed a giant's strength and used it

like giants. But true Power is ever the attribute of Right and they who

strive for it must cleanse their souls, see that their ambition is

worthy of such a possession, and, before all else, strive to realize the

awful responsibility that goes with Power.

Never was a moment more golden than the present for this nation to Will

to Power. For once our hearts are single, our resolutions pure, our

patriotism, as well as the objects that we seek to attain, sure set upon

the line of human progress. In the sane and sacred name of Freedom,

therefore, and at her ancient inspiration it becomes us now to strive by

all that is highest and best in us to fulfill our noblest possibilities

and give soul and strength that the united Will to Power of our nation

may surmount that of her enemies, even as our goal and purpose surmount

theirs.

It is for the victory that must crown this victory we should labor, and

cease not while hand can toil, mind achieve, and heart sacrifice to make

the vital issue assured.

Alleged German Atrocities

Report of the Committee Appointed by the British Government

and Presided Over by

The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce

_Formerly British Ambassador at Washington_

Proofs of alleged atrocities committed by the German armies in

Belgium--proofs collected by men trained in the law and

presented with unemotional directness after a careful

inquiry--are presented in the report of the "Committee on

Alleged German Atrocities" headed by Viscount Bryce, the

English historian and formerly British Ambassador at

Washington. The document was made public simultaneously in

London and the United States on May 12, 1915, four days after

the sinking of the Lusitania. It was pointed out at the time

that this was a coincidence, as the report had been prepared

several weeks before and forwarded by mail from England for

publication on May 12.

WARRANT OF APPOINTMENT.

I hereby appoint--

The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M.;

The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, Bt., K.C.;

The Right Hon. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C.;

Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C.;

Mr. H.A.L. Fisher, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield; and

Mr. Harold Cox;

to be a committee to consider and advise on the evidence collected on

behalf of his Majesty's Government as to outrages alleged to have been

committed by German troops during the present war, cases of alleged

maltreatment of civilians in the invaded territories, and breaches of

the laws and established usages of war; and to prepare a report for his

Majesty's Government showing the conclusion at which they arrive on the

evidence now available.

And I appoint Viscount Bryce to be Chairman, and Mr. E. Grimwood Mears

and Mr. W.J.H. Brodrick, barristers at law, to be Joint Secretaries to

the committee.

(Signed) H.H. ASQUITH.

15th December, 1914.

Sir Kenelm E. Digby, K.C., G.C.B., was appointed an additional member

of the committee on 22d January, 1915.

To the Right Hon. H.H. Asquith, &c., &c., First Lord of H.M. Treasury.

The committee have the honor to present and transmit to you a report

upon the evidence which has been submitted to them regarding outrages

alleged to have been committed by the German troops in the present war.

By the terms of their appointment the committee were directed

"to consider and advise on the evidence collected on behalf of

his Majesty's Government as to outrages alleged to have been

committed by German troops during the present war, cases of

alleged maltreatment of civilians in the invaded territories,

and breaches of the laws and established usages of war; and to

prepare a report for his Majesty's Government showing the

conclusion at which they arrive on the evidence now

available."

It may be convenient that before proceeding to state how we have dealt

with the materials, and what are the conclusions we have reached, we

should set out the manner in which the evidence came into being, and its

nature.

In the month of September, 1914, a minute was, at the instance of the

Prime Minister, drawn up and signed by the Home Secretary and the

Attorney General. It stated the need that had arisen for investigating

the accusations of inhumanity and outrage that had been brought against

the German soldiers, and indicated the precautions to be taken in

collecting evidence that would be needed to insure its accuracy.

Pursuant to this minute steps were taken under the direction of the Home

Office to collect evidence, and a great many persons who could give it

were seen and examined.

For some three or four months before the appointment of the committee,

the Home Office had been collecting a large body of evidence.[A] More

than 1,200 depositions made by these witnesses have been submitted to

and considered by the committee. Nearly all of these were obtained under

the supervision of Sir Charles Mathews, the Director of Public

Prosecutions, and of Mr. E. Grimwood Mears, barrister of the Inner

Temple, while in addition Professor J.H. Morgan has collected a number

of statements mainly from British soldiers, which have also been

submitted to the committee.

[Footnote A: Taken from Belgian witnesses, some soldiers, but most of

them civilians from those towns and villages through which the German

Army passed, and from British officers and soldiers.]

The labor involved in securing, in a comparatively short time, so large

a number of statements from witnesses scattered all over the United

Kingdom, made it necessary to employ a good many examiners. The

depositions were in all cases taken down in this country by gentlemen of

legal knowledge and experience, though, of course, they had no authority

to administer an oath. They were instructed not to "lead" the witnesses

or make any suggestions to them, and also to impress upon them the

necessity for care and precision in giving their evidence.

They were also directed to treat the evidence critically, and as far as

possible satisfy themselves, by putting questions which arose out of the

evidence, that the witnesses were speaking the truth. They were, in

fact, to cross-examine them, so far as the testimony given provided

materials for cross-examination.

We have seen and conversed with many of these gentlemen, and have been

greatly impressed by their ability and by what we have gathered as to

the fairness of spirit which they brought to their task. We feel certain

that the instructions given have been scrupulously observed.

In many cases those who took the evidence have added their comments upon

the intelligence and demeanor of the witnesses stating the impression

which each witness made, and indicating any cases in which the story

told appeared to them open to doubt or suspicion. In coming to a

conclusion upon the evidence the committee have been greatly assisted by

these expressions of opinion, and have uniformly rejected every

deposition on which an opinion adverse to the witness has been recorded.

This seems to be a fitting place at which to put on record the

invaluable help which we have received from our secretaries, Mr. E.

Grimwood Mears and Mr. W.J.H. Brodrick, whose careful diligence and

minute knowledge of the evidence have been of the utmost service.

Without their skill, judgment, and untiring industry the labor of

examining and appraising each part of so large a mass of testimony would

have occupied us for six months instead of three.

The marginal references in this report indicate the particular

deposition or depositions on which the statements made in the text are

based.[A]

[Footnote A: Marginal references are omitted in this

reproduction.--EDITOR.]

The depositions printed in the appendix themselves show that the stories

were tested in detail, and in none of these have we been able to detect

the trace of any desire to "make a case" against the German Army. Care

was taken to impress upon the witness that the giving of evidence was a

grave and serious matter, and every deposition submitted to us was

signed by the witness in the presence of the examiner.

A noteworthy feature of many of the depositions is that, though taken

at different places and on different dates, and by different lawyers

from different witnesses, they often corroborate each other in a

striking manner.

The evidence is all couched in the very words which the witnesses used,

and where they spoke, as the Belgian witnesses did, in Flemish or

French, pains were taken to have competent translators, and to make

certain that the translation was exact.

Seldom did these Belgian witnesses show a desire to describe what they

had seen or suffered. The lawyers who took the depositions were

surprised to find how little vindictiveness, or indeed passion they

showed, and how generally free from emotional excitement their

narratives were. Many hesitated to speak lest what they said, if it

should ever be published, might involve their friends or relatives at

home in danger, and it was found necessary to give an absolute promise

that names should not be disclosed.

For this reason names have been omitted.

A large number of depositions, and extracts from depositions, will be

found in Appendix A, and to these your attention is directed.

In all cases these are given as nearly as possible (for abbreviation was

sometimes inevitable) in the exact words of the witness, and wherever a

statement has been made by a witness tending to exculpate the German

troops, it has been given in full. Excisions have been made only where

it has been felt necessary to conceal the identity of the deponent or to

omit what are merely hearsay statements, or are palpably irrelevant. In

every case the name and description of the witnesses are given in the

original depositions and in copies which have been furnished to us by

H.M. Government. The originals remain in the custody of the Home

Department, where they will be available, in case of need, for reference

after the conclusion of the war.

The committee have also had before them a number of diaries taken from

the German dead.

It appears to be the custom in the German Army for soldiers to be

encouraged to keep diaries and to record in them the chief events of

each day. A good many of these diaries were collected on the field when

British troops were advancing over ground which had been held by the

enemy, were sent to headquarters in France, and dispatched thence to the

War Office in England. They passed into the possession of the Prisoners

of War Information Bureau, and were handed by it to our secretaries.

They have been translated with great care. We have inspected them and

are absolutely satisfied of their authenticity. They have thrown

important light upon the methods followed in the conduct of the war. In

one respect, indeed, they are the most weighty part of the evidence,

because they proceed from a hostile source and are not open to any such

criticism on the ground of bias as might be applied to Belgian

testimony. From time to time references to these diaries will be found

in the text of the report. In Appendix B they are set out at greater

length both in the German original and in an English translation,

together with a few photographs of the more important entries.

In Appendix C are set out a number of German proclamations. Most of

these are included in the Belgian Report No. VI., which has been

furnished to us. Actual specimens of original proclamations issued by or

at the bidding of the German military authorities, and posted in the

Belgian and French towns mentioned, have been produced to us, and copies

thereof are to be found in this appendix.

Appendix D contains the rules of The Hague Convention dealing with the

conduct of war on land as adopted in 1907, Germany being one of the

signatory powers.

In Appendix E will be found a selection of statements collected in

France by Professor Morgan.

These five appendices are contained in a separate volume.

In dealing with the evidence we have recognized the importance of

testing it severely, and so far as the conditions permit we have

followed the principles which are recognized in the courts of England,

the British overseas dominions, and the United States. We have also (as

already noted) set aside the testimony of any witnesses who did not

favorably impress the lawyers who took their depositions, and have

rejected hearsay evidence except in cases where hearsay furnished an

undersigned confirmation of facts with regard to which we already

possessed direct testimony from some other source, or explained in a

natural way facts imperfectly narrated or otherwise perplexing.[A]

[Footnote A: For instance, the dead body of a man is found lying on the

doorstep, or a woman is seen who has the appearance of having been

outraged. So far the facts are proved by the direct evidence of the

person by whom they have been seen. Information is sought for by him as

to the circumstances under which the death or outrages took place. The

bystanders who saw the circumstances but who are not now accessible,

relate what they saw, and this is reported by the witness to the

examiner and is placed on record in the depositions. We have had no

hesitation in taking such evidence into consideration.]

It is natural to ask whether much of the evidence given, especially by

the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained

emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean

to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have

been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that

they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came

to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as

already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected,

or appended a note of distrust to, the testimony of those who failed to

impress them favorably. We have carried the sifting still further by

also omitting from the depositions those in which we found something

that seemed too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness

only, or too little supported by other evidence pointing to like facts.

Many depositions have thus been omitted on which, though they are

probably true, we think it safer not to place reliance.

Notwithstanding these precautions, we began the inquiry with doubts

whether a positive result would be attained. But the further we went and

the more evidence we examined so much the more was our skepticism

reduced. There might be some exaggeration in one witness, possible

delusion in another, inaccuracies in a third. When, however, we found

that things which had at first seemed improbable were testified to by

many witnesses coming from different places, having had no communication

with one another, and knowing nothing of one another's statements, the

points in which they all agreed became more and more evidently true. And

when this concurrence of testimony, this convergence upon what were

substantially the same broad facts, showed itself in hundreds of

depositions, the truth of those broad facts stood out beyond question.

The force of the evidence is cumulative. Its worth can be estimated only

by perusing the testimony as a whole. If any further confirmation had

been needed, we found it in the diaries in which German officers and

private soldiers have recorded incidents just such as those to which the

Belgian witnesses depose.

The experienced lawyers who took the depositions tell us that they

passed from the same stage of doubt into the same stage of conviction.

They also began their work in a skeptical spirit, expecting to find much

of the evidence colored by passion, or prompted by an excited fancy. But

they were impressed by the general moderation and matter-of-fact

level-headedness of the witnesses. We have interrogated them,

particularly regarding some of the most startling and shocking incidents

which appear in the evidence laid before us, and where they expressed a

doubt we have excluded the evidence, admitting it as regards the cases

in which they stated that the witnesses seemed to them to be speaking

the truth, and that they themselves believed the incidents referred to

have happened. It is for this reason that we have inserted among the

depositions printed in the appendix several cases which we might

otherwise have deemed scarcely credible.

The committee has conducted its investigations and come to its

conclusions independently of the reports issued by the French and

Belgian commissions, but it has no reason to doubt that those

conclusions are in substantial accord with the conclusions that have

been reached by these two commissions.

ARRANGEMENT OF THE REPORT.

As respects the framework and arrangement of the report, it has been

deemed desirable to present first of all what may be called a general

historical account of the events which happened, and the conditions

which prevailed in the parts of Belgium which lay along the line of the

German march, and thereafter to set forth the evidence which bears upon

particular classes of offenses against the usages of civilized warfare,

evidence which shows to what extent the provisions of The Hague

Convention have been disregarded.

This method, no doubt, involves a certain amount of overlapping, for

some of the offenses belonging to the latter part of the report will

have been already referred to in the earlier part which deals with the

invasion of Belgium. But the importance of presenting a connected

narrative of events seems to outweigh the disadvantage of occasional

repetition. The report will therefore be found to consist of two parts,

viz.:

(1) An analysis and summary of the evidence regarding the

conduct of the German troops in Belgium toward the civilian

population of that country during the first few weeks of the

invasion.

(2) An examination of the evidence relating to breaches of the

rules and usages of war and acts of inhumanity, committed by

German soldiers or groups of soldiers, during the first four

months of the war, whether in Belgium or in France.

This second part has again been subdivided into two sections:

a. Offenses committed against noncombatant civilians during

the conduct of the war generally.

b. Offenses committed against combatants, whether in Belgium

or in France.

PART I.

THE CONDUCT OF THE GERMAN TROOPS IN BELGIUM.

Although the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by a treaty

signed in 1839 to which France, Prussia, and Great Britain were parties,

and although, apart altogether from any duties imposed by treaty, no

belligerent nation has any right to claim a passage for its army across

the territory of a neutral State, the position which Belgium held

between the German Empire and France had obliged her to consider the

possibility that in the event of a war between these two powers her

neutrality might not be respected. In 1911 the Belgian Minister at

Berlin had requested an assurance from Germany that she would observe

the Treaty of 1839; and the Chancellor of the empire had declared that

Germany had no intention of violating Belgian neutrality. Again in 1913

the German Secretary of State at a meeting of a Budget Committee of the

Reichstag had declared that "Belgian neutrality is provided for by

international conventions and Germany is determined to respect those

conventions." Finally, on July 31, 1914, when the danger of war between

Germany and France seemed imminent, Herr von Below, the German Minister

in Brussels, being interrogated by the Belgian Foreign Department,

replied that he knew of the assurances given by the German Chancellor in

1911, and that he "was certain that the sentiments expressed at that

time had not changed." Nevertheless on Aug. 2 the same Minister

presented a note to the Belgian Government demanding a passage through

Belgium for the German Army on pain of an instant declaration of war.

Startled as they were by the suddenness with which this terrific war

cloud had risen on the eastern horizon, the leaders of the nation

rallied around the King in his resolution to refuse the demand and to

prepare for resistance. They were aware of the danger which would

confront the civilian population of the country if it were tempted to

take part in the work of national defense. Orders were accordingly

issued by the Civil Governors of provinces, and by the Burgomasters of

towns, that the civilian inhabitants were to take no part in hostilities

and to offer no provocation to the invaders. That no excuse might be

furnished for severities, the populations of many important towns were

instructed to surrender all firearms into the hands of the local

officials.[1]

[Footnote 1: Copies of typical proclamations have been printed in

_L'Allemagne et la Belgique_, Documents Annexés, xxxvi.]

[Illustration: [map of Belgium]]

This happened on Aug. 2. On the evening of Aug. 3 the German troops

crossed the frontier. The storm burst so suddenly that neither party had

time to adjust its mind to the situation. The Germans seem to have

expected an easy passage. The Belgian population, never dreaming of an

attack, were startled and stupefied.

LIÈGE AND DISTRICT.

On Aug. 4 the roads converging upon Liège from northeast, east, and

south were covered with German Death's Head Hussars and Uhlans pressing

forward to seize the passage over the Meuse. From the very beginning of

the operations the civilian population of the villages lying upon the

line of the German advance were made to experience the extreme horrors

of war. "On the 4th of August," says one witness, "at Herve," (a village

not far from the frontier,) "I saw at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon,

near the station, five Uhlans; these were the first German troops I had

seen. They were followed by a German officer and some soldiers in a

motor car. The men in the car called out to a couple of young fellows

who were standing about thirty yards away. The young men, being afraid,

ran off and then the Germans fired and killed one of them named D." The

murder of this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning

and pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighborhood, to the

indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the organized

military execution of batches of selected males. Thus at Herve some

fifty men escaping from the burning houses were seized, taken outside

the town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet west of Herve, forty men were

shot. In one household alone the father and mother (names given) were

shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was

wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness,

"near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a

girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a

house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one

after the other, as they tried to escape."

The burning of the villages in this neighborhood and the wholesale

slaughter of civilians, such as occurred at Herve, Micheroux, and

Soumagne, appear to be connected with the exasperation caused by the

resistance of Fort Fléron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la

Chapelle to Liège. Enraged by the losses which they had sustained,

suspicious of the temper of the civilian population, and probably

thinking that by exceptional severities at the outset they could cow the

spirit of the Belgian Nation, the German officers and men speedily

accustomed themselves to the slaughter of civilians. How rapidly the

process was effected is illustrated by an entry in the diary of Kurt

Hoffman, a one-year's man in the First Jägers, who on Aug. 5 was in

front of Fort Fléron. He illustrates his story by a sketch map. "The

position," he says, "was dangerous. As suspicious civilians were hanging

about--houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, were cleared, the owners arrested, (and

shot the following day.) Suddenly village A was fired at. Out of it

bursts our baggage train, and the Fourth Company of the Twenty-seventh

Regiment who had lost their way and been shelled by our own artillery.

From the point D.P., (shown in diary,) I shoot a civilian with rifle at

400 meters slap through the head, as we afterward ascertained." Within a

few hours, Hoffman, while in house 3, was himself under fire from his

own comrades and narrowly escaped being killed. A German, ignorant that

house 8 had been occupied, reported, as was the fact, that he had been

fired upon from that house. He had been challenged by the field patrol,

and failed to give the countersign. Hoffman continues:

"Ten minutes later, people approach who are talking

excitedly--apparently Germans. I call out 'Halt, who's there?'

Suddenly rapid fire is opened upon us, which I can only escape

by quickly jumping on one side--with bullets and fragments of

wall and pieces of glass flying around me. I call out 'Halt,

here Field Patrol.' Then it stops, and there appears

Lieutenant Römer with three platoons. A man has reported that

he had been shot at out of our house; no wonder, if he does

not give the countersign."

The entry, though dated Aug. 5, was evidently written on the 6th or

later, because the writer refers to the suspicious civilians as having

been shot on that day. Hoffman does not indicate of what offense these

civilians were guilty, and there is no positive evidence to connect

their slaughter with the report made by the German who had been fired on

by his comrades. They were "suspicious" and that was enough.

The systematic execution of civilians, which in some cases, as the diary

just cited shows, was founded on a genuine mistake, was given a wide

extension through the Province of Liège. In Soumagne and Micheroux very

many civilians were summarily shot. In a field belonging to a man named

E. fifty-six or fifty-seven were put to death. A German officer said:

"You have shot at us." One of the villagers asked to be allowed to

speak, and said: "If you think these people fired kill me, but let them

go." The answer was three volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. Their

corpses were seen in the field that night by another witness. One at

least had been mutilated. These were not the only victims in Soumagne.

The eyewitness of the massacre saw, on his way home, twenty bodies, one

that of a young girl of thirteen. Another witness saw nineteen corpses

in a meadow.

At Blegny Trembleur, on the 6th, some civilians were captured by German

soldiers, who took steps to put them to death forthwith, but were

restrained by the arrival of an officer. The prisoners subsequently were

taken off to Battice and five were shot in a field. No reason was

assigned for their murder.

In the meantime house burners were at work. On the 6th, Battice was

destroyed in part. From the 8th to the 10th over 300 houses were burned

at Herve, while mounted men shot into doors and windows to prevent the

escape of the inhabitants.

At Heure le Romain on or about the 15th of August all the male

inhabitants, including some bedridden old men, were imprisoned in the

church. The Burgomaster's brother and the priest were bayoneted.

On or about the 14th and 15th the village of Visé was completely

destroyed. Officers directed the incendiaries, who worked methodically

with benzine. Antiques and china were removed from the houses, before

their destruction, by officers who guarded the plunder, revolver in

hand. The house of a witness, which contained valuables of this kind,

was protected for a time by a notice posted on the door by officers.

This notice has been produced to the committee. After the removal of the

valuables this house also was burned.

German soldiers had arrived on the 15th at Blegny Trembleur and seized a

quantity of wine. On the 16th prisoners were taken; four, including the

priest and the Burgomaster, were shot. On the same day 200 (so-called)

hostages were seized at Flémalle and marched off. There they were told

that unless Fort Flémalle surrendered by noon they would be shot. It did

surrender and they were released.

Entries in a German diary show that on the 19th the German soldiers gave

themselves up to debauchery in the streets of Liège, and on the night

of the 20th (Thursday) a massacre took place in the streets, beginning

near the Café Carpentier, at which there is said to have been a dinner

attended by Russian and other students. A proclamation issued by General

Kolewe on the following day gave the German version of the affair, which

was that his troops had been fired on by Russian students. The diary

states that in the night the inhabitants of Liège became mutinous and

that fifty persons were shot. The Belgian witnesses vehemently deny that

there had been any provocation given, some stating that many German

soldiers were drunk, others giving evidence which indicates that the

affair was planned beforehand. It is stated that at 5 o'clock in the

evening, long before the shooting, a citizen was warned by a friendly

German soldier not to go out that night.

Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known

with certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de

l'Université and the Quai des Pêcheurs were systematically fired with

benzine, and many inhabitants were burned alive in their houses, their

efforts to escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were

shot, while trying to escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses.

The Liège Fire Brigade turned out but was not allowed to extinguish the

fire. Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of

civilian corpses to the Town Hall. The fire burned on through the night

and the murders continued on the following day, the 21st. Thirty-two

civilians were killed on that day in the Place de l'Université alone,

and a witness states that this was followed by the rape in open day of

fifteen or twenty women on tables in the square itself.

No depositions are before us which deal with events in the City of Liège

after this date. Outrages, however, continued in various places in the

province.

For example, on or about the 21st of August, at Pepinster two witnesses

were seized as hostages and were threatened, together with five others,

that, unless they could discover a civilian who was alleged to have

shot a soldier in the leg, they would be shot themselves. They escaped

their fate because one of the hostages convinced the officer that the

alleged shooting, if it took place at all, took place in the Commune of

Cornesse and not that of Pepinster, whereupon the Burgomaster of

Cornesse, who was old and very deaf, was shot forthwith.

The outrages on the civilian population were not confined to the

villages mentioned above, but appear to have been general throughout

this district from the very outbreak of the war.

An entry in one of the diaries says:

"We crossed the Belgian frontier on 15th August, 1914, at

11:50 in the forenoon, and then we went steadily along the

main road till we got into Belgium. Hardly were we there when

we had a horrible sight. Houses were burned down, the

inhabitants chased away and some of them shot. Not one of the

hundreds of houses were spared. Everything was plundered and

burned. Hardly had we passed through this large village before

the next village was burned, and so it went on continuously.

On the 16th August, 1914, the large village of Barchon was

burned down. On the same day we crossed the bridge over the

Meuse at 11:50 in the morning. We then arrived at the town of

Wandre. Here the houses were spared, but everything was

examined. At last we were out of the town and everything went

in ruins. In one house a whole collection of weapons was

found. The inhabitants without exception were shot. This

shooting was heart-breaking, as they all knelt down and

prayed, but that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out

and they fell back into the green grass and slept for ever."

["Die Einwohner wurden samt und sonders herausgeholt und

erschossen: aber dieses Erschiessen war direkt herzzerreisend

wie sie alle knieben und beteten, aber dies half kein

Erbarmen. Ein paar Schüsse krackten und die fielen rücklings

in das grüne Gras und erschliefen für immer."]

VALLEYS OF MEUSE AND SAMBRE.

While the First Army, under the command of General Alexander von Kluck,

was mastering the passages of the Meuse between Visé and Namur, and

carrying out the scheme of devastation which has already been described,

detachments of the Second German Army, under General von Bülow, were

proceeding up the Meuse valley toward Namur. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, the

town of Huy, which stands half way between Namur and Liège, was seized.

On Aug. 20 German guns opened fire on Namur itself. Three days later the

city was evacuated by its defenders, and the Germans proceeded along the

valley of the Sambre through Tamines and Charleroi to Mons. Meanwhile a

force under General von Hausen had advanced upon Dinant, by Laroche,

Marche, and Achène, and on Aug. 15 made an unsuccessful assault upon

that town. A few days later the attack was renewed and with success,

and, Dinant captured, von Hausen's army streamed into France by Bouvines

and Rethel, firing and looting the villages and shooting the inhabitants

as they passed through.

The evidence with regard to the Province of Namur is less voluminous

than that relating to the north of Belgium. This is largely due to the

fact that the testimony of soldiers is seldom available, as the towns

and villages once occupied by the Germans were seldom reoccupied by the

opposing troops, and the number of refugees who have reached England

from the Namur district is comparatively small.

ANDENNE.

Andenne is a small town on the Meuse between Liège and Namur, lying

opposite the village of Seilles, (with which it is connected by a bridge

over the river,) and was one of the earlier places reached on the German

advance up the Meuse. In order to understand the story of the massacre

which occurred there on Thursday Aug. 20, the following facts should be

borne in mind: The German advance was hotly contested by Belgian and

French troops. From daybreak onward on the 19th of August the Eighth

Belgian Regiment of the Line were fighting with the German troops on the

left bank of the Meuse on the heights of Seilles. At 8 A.M. on the 19th

the Belgians found further resistance impossible in the district, and

retired under shelter of the forts of Namur. As they retired they blew

up Andenne Bridge. The first Germans arrived at Andenne at about 10

A.M., when ten or twelve Uhlans rode into the town. They went to the

bridge and found it was destroyed. They then retired, but returned about

half an hour afterward. Soon after that several thousand Germans entered

the town and made arrangements to spend the night there. Thus, on the

evening of the 19th of August, a large body of German troops were in

possession of the town, which they had entered without any resistance on

the part of the allied armies or of the civilian population.

About 4:30 on the next afternoon shots were fired from the left bank of

the Meuse and replied to by the Germans in Andenne. The village of

Andenne had been isolated from the district on the left bank of the

Meuse by the destruction of the bridge, and there is nothing to suggest

that the firing on the left came from the inhabitants of Andenne. Almost

immediately, however, the slaughter of these inhabitants began, and

continued for over two hours and intermittently during the night.

Machine guns were brought into play. The German troops were said to be

for the most part drunk, and they certainly murdered and ravaged

unchecked. A reference to the German diaries in the appendix will give

some idea of the extent to which the army gave itself up to drink

through the month of August.

When the fire slackened about 7 o'clock, many of the townspeople fled in

the direction of the quarries; others remained in their houses. At this

moment the whole of the district around the station was on fire and

houses were flaming over a distance of two kilometers in the direction

of the hamlet of Tramaka. The little farms which rise one above the

other on the high ground of the right bank were also burning.

At 6 o'clock on the following morning, the 21st, the Germans began to

drag the inhabitants from their houses. Men, women, and children were

driven into the square, where the sexes were separated. Three men were

then shot, and a fourth was bayoneted. A German Colonel was present

whose intention in the first place appeared to be to shoot all the men.

A young German girl who had been staying in the neighborhood interceded

with him, and after some parleying, some of the prisoners were picked

out, taken to the banks of the Meuse and there shot. The Colonel accused

the population of firing on the soldiers, but there is no reason to

think that any of them had done so, and no inquiry appears to have been

made.

About 400 people lost their lives in this massacre, some on the banks of

the Meuse, where they were shot according to orders given, and some in

the cellars of the houses where they had taken refuge. Eight men

belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close to a

machine gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body home

on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked it, and

piled up all the eatables in a heap on the floor and relieved themselves

upon it.

A hairdresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was sitting with a

child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. After this

came the general sack of the town. Many of the inhabitants who escaped

the massacre were kept as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of

corpses and bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently

used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the Germans

had built across the river, and were so used to prevent the Belgian

forts from firing upon it.

A few days later the Germans celebrated a _Fête Nocturne_ in the square.

Hot wine, looted in the town, was drunk, and the women were compelled to

give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing "Deutschland über Alles."

NAMUR DISTRICT.

The fight around Namur was accompanied by sporadic outrages. Near

Marchovelette wounded men were murdered in a farm by German soldiers.

The farm was set on fire. A German cavalryman rode away holding in front

of him one of the farmer's daughters crying and disheveled.

At Temploux, on the 23d of August, a professor of modern languages at

the College of Namur was shot at his front door by a German officer.

Before he died he asked the officer the reason for this brutality, and

the officer replied that he had lost his temper because some civilians

had fired upon the Germans as they entered the village. This allegation

was not proved. The Belgian Army was still operating in the district,

and it may well be that it was from them that the shots in question

proceeded. After the murder the house was burned.

On the 24th and 25th of August massacres were carried out at Surice, in

which many persons belonging to the professional classes, as well as

others, were killed.

Namur was entered on the 24th of August. The troops signalized their

entry by firing on a crowd of 150 unarmed unresisting civilians, ten

alone of whom escaped.

A witness of good standing who was in Namur describes how the town was

set on fire systematically in six different places. As the inhabitants

fled from the burning houses they were shot by the German troops. Not

less than 140 houses were burned.

On the 25th the hospital at Namur was set on fire with inflammable

pastilles, the pretext being that soldiers in the hospital had fired

upon the Germans.

At Denée, on the 28th of August, a Belgian soldier who had been taken

prisoner saw three civilian fellow-prisoners shot. One was a cripple and

another an old man of eighty who was paralyzed. It was alleged by two

German soldiers that these men had shot at them with rifles. Neither of

them had a rifle, nor had they anything in their pockets. The witness

actually saw the Germans search them and nothing was found.

CHARLEROI DISTRICT.

In Tamines, a large village on the Meuse between Namur and Charleroi,

the advance guard of the German Army appeared in the first fortnight in

August, and in this as well as in other villages in the district, it is

proved that a large number of civilians, among them aged people, women,

and children, were deliberately killed by the soldiers. One witness

describes how she saw a Belgian boy of fifteen shot on the village

green at Tamines, and a day or two later on the same green a little girl

and her two brothers, (name given,) who were looking at the German

soldiers, were killed before her eyes for no apparent reason.

The principal massacre at Tamines took place about Aug. 28. A witness

describes how he saw the public square littered with corpses, and after

a search found those of his wife and child, a little girl of seven.

Another witness, who lived near Tamines, went there on Aug. 27, and

says: "It is absolutely destroyed and a mass of ruins."

At Morlanwelz, about this time, the British Army, together with some

French cavalry, were compelled to retire before the German troops. The

latter took the Burgomaster and his man servant prisoner and shot them

both in front of the Hôtel de Ville at Péronne, (Belgium,) where the

bodies were left in the street for forty-eight hours. They burned the

Hôtel de Ville and sixty-two houses. The usual accusation of firing by

civilians was made. It is strenuously denied by the witness, who

declares that three or four days before the arrival of the Germans,

circulars had been distributed to every house and placards had been

posted in the town ordering the deposit of all firearms at the Hôtel de

Ville and that this order had been complied with.

At Monceau-sur-Sambre, on the 21st of August, a young man of eighteen

was shot in his garden. His father and brother were seized in their

house and shot in the courtyard of a neighboring country house. The son

was shot first. The father was compelled to stand close to the feet of

his son's corpse and to fix his eyes upon him while he himself was shot.

The corpse of the young man shot in the garden was carried into the

house and put on a bed. The next morning the Germans asked where the

corpse was. When they found it was in the house, they fetched straw,

packed it around the bed on which the corpse was lying, and set fire to

it and burned the house down. A great many houses were burned in

Monceau.

A vivid picture of the events at Montigny-sur-Sambre has been given by

a witness of high standing who had exceptional opportunities of

observation. In the early morning of Saturday, Aug. 22, Uhlans reached

Montigny. The French Army was about four kilometers away, but on a hill

near the village were a detachment of French, about 150 to 200 strong,

lying in ambush. At about 1:30 o'clock the main body of the German Army

began to arrive. Marching with them were two groups of so-called

hostages, about 400 in all. Of these, 300 were surrounded with a rope

held by the front, rear, and outside men. The French troops in ambush

opened fire, and immediately the Germans commenced to destroy the town.

Incendiaries with a distinctive badge on their arm went down the main

street throwing handfuls of inflammatory and explosive pastilles into

the houses. These pastilles were carried by them in bags, and in this

way about 130 houses were destroyed in the main street. By 10:30 P.M.

some 200 more hostages had been collected. These were drawn from

Montigny itself, and on that night about fifty men, women, and children

were placed on the bridge over the Sambre and kept there all night. The

bridge was similarly guarded for a day or two, apparently either from a

fear that it was mined or in the belief that these men, women, and

children would afford some protection to the Germans in the event of the

French attempting to storm the bridge. At one period of the German

occupation of Montigny, eight nuns of the Order of Ste. Marie were

captives on the bridge. House burning was accompanied by murder, and on

the Monday morning twenty-seven civilians from one parish alone were

seen lying dead in the hospital.

Other outrages committed at Jumet, Bouffioulx, Charleroi,

Marchiennes-au-Pont, Couillet, and Maubeuge are described in the

depositions given in the appendix.

DINANT.