The same writer refers to similar hospitality in various parts of his book. After passing through Brussels he continues his diary: "Sunday, August 23rd. Nothing came of our hopes for a rest-day. Shortly after 5 a.m. we were ready for the march. A fine rain was falling as we passed through village after village. We saw the villagers with frightened faces hurrying to church, carrying prayer-books. Notices from the Belgian Government were placarded on the houses, warning the people to avoid every kind of hostility towards the Germans."[[109]]
[!-- Note Anchor 109 --][Footnote 109: Ibid., p. 31.]
From the last sentence it is evident that the Belgian authorities did not incite the civilian population to resistance. Other German war-writers state that the Belgian and French Governments had organized a franc-tireur warfare long before, and this accusation is one of the pillars of Germany's defence for the destruction of Louvain.
"Soon after crossing the frontier we saw the first ruined house. Our route led us down the same road on which a few days before the violent and bitter struggles had taken place between German troops and Belgian soldiers, aided by the inhabitants. The Belgians have supported their troops in a manner which can only be described as bestial and cruel. From the houses they have shot at troops on the march, and of course their homes have been reduced to ashes.
"The road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liége is one long, sad line of desolation.[[110]] Otherwise the district is fertile; now, however, sadness and devastation reign supreme. Nearly every second house is a heap of ruins, while the houses which are still standing are empty and deserted.
[!-- Note Anchor 110 --][Footnote 110: On September 8th, 1914, the Kaiser sent a long telegram to President Wilson, in which he defended the German armies against the charges of ruthless atrocities. He euphemistically stated that "a few villages have been destroyed.">[
"On every side signs of destruction; furniture and house utensils lie around; not a pane of glass but what is broken. Still the inhabitants themselves are to blame, for have they not shot at our poor, tired soldiers?"[[111]]
[!-- Note Anchor 111 --][Footnote 111: "Mit den Königin-Fusilieren durch Belgien" ("With the Queen Fusiliers through Belgium"), by H. Knutz, p. 13.]
That is the utmost sympathy which any German has expressed for Belgium. The German public is fully informed of all that has been done, and considers that they have been brutally, wrongfully treated. Lord Bryce's report as well as the French and Belgian official reports have been dealt with at considerable length in the German Press, but receive no credence whatever; they are lies, all lies invented to blacken the character of poor, noble, generous Germany!
Germans are well aware of the awful number of brutal crimes which their men-folk commit year by year at home. Yet they are absolutely convinced that these same men are immediately transformed into chivalrous knights so soon as they don the Kaiser's uniform. They seem incapable of conceiving that a race which debauches its own women, can hardly be expected to show the crudest forms of respect to the women of an enemy people.