Still hold same opinions.
"We have a ring of politicians who hold that might makes right (Machtpolitiker) who despise the forces of the inner life and believe that they must eliminate all ethical points of view * * * from foreign and social politics. For them, Germany of the present and of the future is the country of the Krupps and Borsigs, of the Zeppelins and the U-boats. Any idea of a connection between politics and morals is rejected and any reference to the right of a moral method of consideration is ridiculed as delusion and sentimentality."
Belgian warning of danger.
Naturally the reports of the atrocities committed by the Germans and the Emperor's declaration that the war would henceforth assume a terrible character (grausamen Charakter) caused grave anxiety among the Belgians. In order to avoid the danger of reprisals, the Belgian Government, at the beginning of the invasion, had every Belgian newspaper publish each day the following notice on its first page, in large print:
"TO CIVILIANS.
"The Minister of the Interior advises civilians in case the enemy should show himself in their district:
"Not to fight;
"To utter no insulting or threatening words;
"To remain within their houses and close the windows; so that it will be impossible to allege that there was any provocation;
"To evacuate any houses or isolated hamlet which the soldiers may occupy in order to defend themselves, so that it cannot be alleged that civilians have fired;
"An act of violence committed by a single civilian would be a crime for which the law provides arrest and punishment. It is all the more reprehensible in that it might serve as a pretext for measures of oppression, resulting in bloodshed or pillage, or the massacre of the innocent population with the women and children."
In the hope of arousing the sympathy and securing the aid of the neutral nations, the Belgian Government appointed a committee to ascertain the facts about the German practices. The evidence collected by the Belgian commissioners is detailed and explicit, and their reports give names, places, and dates. It is not possible, however, to include in this pamphlet more than the following summary of the charges they make against the Germans:
"1. That thousands of unoffending civilians, including women and children, were murdered by the Germans.
"2. That women had been outraged.
"3. That the custom of the German soldiers immediately on entering a town was to break into wineshops and the cellars of private houses and madden themselves with drink.
"4. That German officers and soldiers looted on a gigantic and systematic scale, and, with the connivance of the German authorities, sent back a large part of the booty to Germany.
"5. That the pillage had been accompanied by wanton destruction and by bestial and sacrilegious practices.
"6. That cities, towns, villages, and isolated buildings were destroyed.
"7. That in the course of such destruction human beings were burnt alive.
"8. That there was a uniform practice of taking hostages and thereby rendering great numbers of admittedly innocent people responsible for the alleged wrongdoings of others.
"9. That large numbers of civilian men and women had been virtually enslaved by the Germans, being forced against their will to work for the enemies of their country, or had been carried off like cattle into Germany, where all trace of them had been lost.
"10. That cities, towns, and villages had been fined and their inhabitants maltreated because of the success gained by the Belgian over the German soldiers.
"11. That public monuments and works of art had been wantonly destroyed by the invaders.
"12. And that generally the Regulations of the Hague Conference and the customs of civilized warfare had been ignored by the Germans, and that amongst other breaches of such regulations and customs, the Germans had adopted a new and inhuman practice of driving Belgian men, women, and children in front of them as a screen between them and the allied soldiers."
The German authorities undertook to defend themselves against the terrible indictment in the report published by the Belgian Government and appointed a German commission, which collected a huge mass of materials designed to show that their acts of cruelty were merely acts of reprisal necessitated by the deeds of the Belgians. This mass of testimony was published in a German White Book with the title Die völkerrechtswidrige Führung des Belgischen Volkskriegs.
The German commission declared in its findings that the German soldiers had acted with humanity, restraint, and Christian forbearance. But the sworn statements of German soldiers, which the commission published, show the reverse to be true.