“ ‘If you feel for my safety as deeply as that, General,’ I said earnestly, ‘you can make quite sure of my coming to no harm by sending no more Zeppelins.’
“ ‘Well, Herr Powell,’ said he, laughing, ‘we will think about it, and,’ he continued gravely, ‘I trust that you will tell the American people through your great paper what I have told you to-day. Let them hear our side of this atrocity business. It is only justice that they should be made familiar with both sides of the question.’
“I have quoted my conversation with General von Boehn as nearly verbatim as I can remember it. I have no comments to make.
“I will leave it to the readers of the World to decide for themselves just how convincing are the answers of the German General to the Belgian accusations.”
“We cannot doubt their (the Belgian Commission) competency for the task entrusted to them; nor can we mistrust their good faith. And of what nature is the story which their report, item by item, unrolls? They recount a series of acts committed by the German soldiery which, if even a half or a quarter be true, are enough to condemn them to everlasting shame as barbarians grosser and more criminal than Huns or Visigoths, or the hordes led by Yenghis Khan or Tamerlane the Great.”
—From the Daily Telegraph.
X.
Atrocities Around Liége.
Belgian officials reported from Liége devilish atrocities committed in the town and suburbs. In the Place de l’Université, the Rue des Pitteurs, and the Quai des Pecheurs most of the houses were burned. The occupants, who had been awakened by the acrid smoke, fled in terror, and fifteen persons, men, women, and children, were killed as they ran, while in one instance a family were called together, and father and son were killed and then mutilated in front of them. Apparently many of the soldiers breaking into cafés were drunk, and after firing accused the inhabitants of it, taking vengeance by burning and murders without restraint. This indeed appeared to be part of the German campaign, for not only in Belgium, but also in France, the same inhuman and dastardly excuses were resorted to in order to attempt to justify the awful crimes which these “cultured” barbarians committed.