Clement Wood, in the Socialist paper, The New York Call, writes: "This book attempts more of a summing up of German offenses, and, being written to sustain an opinion rather than to give impartially the facts, correspondingly loses in interest and persuasiveness. Its usefulness to the general reader or the person who desires an unbiased understanding of the conflict is slight." He speaks of "the alleged German atrocities in Belgium."
My statements do not deal with opinion but with things seen. Apparently it is an offense to take sides on this war. One is a trusthworthy witness if one has seen only picturesque incidents that do not reveal the method of warfare practiced by an invading army. One is fair-minded only by shutting the eyes to the burned houses of Melle, Termonde and Lorraine, and the dead bodies of peasants; and by closing the ears to the statements of outraged persons. One is judicial only by defending the Germans against the acts of their soldiers, and the written evidence of their officers and privates.
The Independent says: "He saw the wreck of the convent school, but learned none of the sisters had been harmed."
The critic selects that portion of my testimony on the convent school which relieves the Germans of the charge of rape. As always, I have given every bit of evidence in favor of the Germans that came my way. I have told of the individual soldier who was revolted by his orders. I have published the diaries of German soldiers which revealed nobility. But is that scrupulous care of mine a justification to the Independent for omitting to tell the humiliations visited on that convent school?
My testimony of bayonetted dying peasants is "credible in so far as no testimony from the other side was obtainable."
"Mr. Gleason also saw the ruins of bombarded Belgian cities."
Is it fair of the Independent to be inaccurate? My evidence is not of bombarded Belgian cities. It is of Belgian cities, burned house by house, with certain houses spared where "Do not burn by incendiary methods" was chalked on the door.
"Otherwise his evidence is at second or third hand mainly."
On the contrary, I have quoted witnesses whom I can produce.
The Times, of Los Angeles, says: "He is quite rabid. He writes with the frenzy of a zealot."