The author has before him about one hundred different newspaper reports, alleging the most awful barbarism on the part of the Belgians. Among the numerous statements that Germans were murdered, only two names are mentioned, and both these men are alive to-day; the one is Herr Weber, proprietor of an hotel in Antwerp.
"We have now received full details of the murder of the German, Weber. He had fled from his pursuers and hidden himself in a cellar. As the raging mob could not find him they burnt sulphur in the house, which caused Weber to break into a violent fit of coughing. This betrayed his hiding-place; he was dragged out and murdered."[[97]]
[!-- Note Anchor 97 --][Footnote 97: Hamburger Fremdenblatt, August 12th, and simultaneously in many other journals. On the following day the Vorwärts announced that Herr Weber had returned to Germany in the company of their own correspondent.]
"The German pork-butcher, Deckel, who had a large business in Brussels, was attacked in his house by a crowd of Belgian beasts because he had refused to hang a Belgian flag before his shop; with axes and hatchets the mob cut off his head and hewed his corpse in pieces."[[98]]
[!-- Note Anchor 98 --][Footnote 98: Kölnische Volkszeitung, August 10th.]
A few days later the Berliner Tageblatt informed its readers that Herr Deckel was residing in Rotterdam, and had suffered no harm whatever.
Readers who are acquainted with the official record of brutal crimes committed year by year in Germany and the haughty contempt for civilian rights which the whole German army has consistently shown in the Fatherland, during the orderly times of peace, will require little imagination to conceive that this same army would show still less consideration for civilians in a country which they were wrongfully invading.
The German Press during the last thirty years, as well as many books published in the Fatherland, contains ample proof of German brutality at home, and above all, of the legal brutality of German non-commissioned and commissioned officers. How can Germany expect the world to believe, that these same men, were transformed into decent human beings by the mere act of stepping over the Belgian frontier?
Granted that vulgar elements of the Belgian population did transgress, there still remains incontrovertible evidence that almost unheard-of kindness was shown to the invading army, and that Germans had displayed brutal insolence to Belgians before a state of war had been declared. Nearly every single letter from soldiers, published in German papers, records the fact that in the villages through which they passed they were given water, wine and food, while payment was in many cases refused.
It is part of Germany's policy to blacken Belgium's character in order to justify her own ruthlessness—naturally Wolff's Agency was one of the principal tools to that end.