German Atrocities: An Official Investigation

GERMAN ATROCITIES
Copyright, 1916, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY Printed in the U.S.A.
TO M. ARMAND MOLLARD MINISTRE PLENIPOTENTIAIRE, MEMBER OF “LA COMMISSION INSTITUÉE EN VUE DE CONSTATER LES ACTES COMMIS PAR L’ENNEMI EN VIOLATION DU DROIT DES GENS,” THIS WORK IS DEDICATED IN RECOGNITION OF HIS COURTESY AND COLLABORATION IN THE PURSUIT OF A COMMON TASK.
Professor Morgan desires to express his obligations to the Russian Embassy, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the French Ministry of War, and the General Headquarters Staff of the British Expeditionary Force for the assistance which they have given him. For the opinions expressed in Part IV. of the Introductory Chapter Professor Morgan is alone responsible. The whole of the documents given in the “Documentary Chapter” of this book (except the Memorandum from the German White Book which has been published in German, though not, of course, in English) are now published for the first time.
GERMAN ATROCITIES
The second chapter of this book has already appeared in the pages of the June issue of the Nineteenth Century and After . At the time of its appearance numerous suggestions were made—notably by the Morning Post and the Daily Chronicle —that it should be republished in a cheaper and more accessible form. A similar suggestion has come to us from the Ministry of War in Paris, reinforced by the intimation that the review containing the article was not obtainable owing to its having immediately gone out of print. Since then an official reprint has been largely circulated in neutral countries by the British Government, and an abbreviated reprint of it has been published by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee in the form of a pamphlet. The Secretary to the Committee informs me that considerably over a million and a half copies of this pamphlet have been circulated.
I will not attempt to prejudice that analysis at this stage. I shall have something to say later in this chapter as to the credibility of the German Government in these matters. It is a rule of law that, when a defendant puts his character in issue, or makes imputations on the prosecutor or his witnesses, as the Germans have done, his character may legitimately be the subject of animadversion. To impeach it at this stage might appear, however, to beg the question of the value of the White Book, which is best examined as a matter of internal evidence without the importation of any reflections on the character of its authors.