1. These stories came to us first from responsible correspondents of all
our leading newspapers, who took them down for the most part at first
hand from eye-witnesses and from the poor victims themselves.
2. A committee of eminent lawyers, assisted by the Belgian Minister of
Justice, made a searching inquiry, sifting vague reports from actual
facts.
3. The evidence of the atrocities thus collected was formulated in an
Official Report to be presented to the President of the United States by
the Belgian Delegation of Ministers of State, now on their way to
America.
4. The British Official Press Bureau issued, on the 25th August, a
statement of the representations made to them, which I have already
quoted.
5. The Report of the Belgian Government was confirmed by the French
protest against German atrocities which was addressed on September 2nd
to the Powers by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
6. Mr. Richard Harding Davis, an eminent American author and
correspondent in Belgium of the _New York Tribune_, has entirely
confirmed, in cables sent to this leading American journal, things he
has seen with his own eyes.
7. I have narrated the information given to me verbally by M. Van der
Velde himself. “I myself examined the bodies of a peasant and his son
which have been cut to pieces by bayonet thrusts.”
8. While at first the reports of these atrocities were received in this
country with some reserve, the accumulated and overwhelming evidence,
aggravated from day to day since the very commencement of the war, has
provoked the public men of England, and every responsible newspaper in
the country, as well as all our leading weeklies like the _Spectator_,
the _Saturday Review_, the _Nation_, the _British Weekly_, and others,
into a passionate protest against the inhuman and barbarous methods of
warfare that have stained the name of Germany for ever.
9. Germany herself has admitted her wanton deeds, and sought to excuse
them in a way that makes her guilt all the more deplorable. We are told
that these barbarian atrocities against the civil population and
unoffending peasants, the sacking, looting, and burning of towns and
villages, are part of the general plan of attack, and that they are
accomplished in cold blood for purely strategical considerations.
Unfortunately they are not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of
marauding and buccaneering soldiers.
“The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population
has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples
which by their frightfulness would be a warning to the whole country.”
To prevent “surprise attacks” tortures were inflicted on helpless old
men, women, and children, peaceful villagers were hanged, innocent
children were savagely sabred by German officers, wounded soldiers and
officers shot and mutilated. There was the burning of Visé and the
terrible massacre at Seraing, the sacking and plundering of many another
harmless village, the bombardment of Malines, and the crowning sacrilege
of all, the burning and sacking of Louvain, the torture and massacre of
its defenceless people. Abler pens than mine have told the story of
these blood-guilty ruffians, and abler historians will yet chronicle for
future generations the record of the modern Huns of Attila. “For every
vile deed wrought under the impious benedictions of the monarch who is
ravaging Europe ample reparation will be exacted.... The memory of them
will burn in the heart and mind of every Englishman.” So said the
_Times_. I affirm this is the feeling of every true Britisher.