Germany, though boasting of her culture, her refinement, her honest home-life, and the peaceful efforts of her Emperor, has for ever lost her place among civilized nations. It now stands revealed that when her diplomatic methods of base chicanery and lying fail then she does not hesitate to resort to acts so dastardly and inhuman as to have no parallel. Not only has she broken her most solemn treaties and moral engagements, but all the rules of civilized warfare to which she was a signatory at The Hague she has also violated, merely regarding them as “a scrap of paper.”

Not content with resorting to every act of savagery and every refinement of cruelty which degenerated minds, filled with the blood-lust of war, could conceive, her troops, by order of her generals, have made a practice all along the line of placing before them innocent women and children to act as a living screen, in the hope that the Allies would not, from motives of humanity, fire upon them.

One cannot read a single page of this awful record—the German Black Book—without being thrilled with horror at unspeakable acts of civilized troops, who, at the behest of their Kaiser, and the exposed yet still ruling camarilla at Berlin, have become simply as the Huns of Attila.

The contents of this book are no hearsay stories, but hard facts officially recorded in dossiers in the French and Belgian Ministries of War, most of them, indeed, sworn statements taken before burgomasters, mayors, prefects, and magistrates. Even our brave fellows wounded in the Kaiser’s savage attack upon Europe have brought back from the front similar narratives of the most appalling crimes. Evidence of German trickery and savagery we have, too, in our midst, for trains, sentries, and policemen have been shot at under cover of darkness by men who mean to emulate the methods of their compatriots.

The frightful deeds which have been done over the face of Belgium and in France are, no doubt, intended to be repeated in Great Britain, and, if it were possible, the Red Hand of Destruction would certainly be laid very heavy upon us—more heavily, perhaps, because we, by our honesty of purpose, have incurred the hatred of Kaiserdom.

I would bid all sufferers in Belgium and France to remember that when Attila of old came to Chalons, full of ostentation as the great War-Lord, he came to his own undoing, and his dominion at once disappeared to the winds. There is One with Whom vengeance lies for wrongs, and most assuredly will He mete out the same dread Fate of death and obscurity to the unblushing War-Lord of Germany, who, daily, with his blasphemous impiety, lifts his bloodstained hands and thanks his Maker for his shameful “successes.”

WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Preface [5]
What the Kaiser Said[8]
Foreword[9]
Author’s Note[10]
Introduction[11]
Chapter[I.] Article XXIII. of The Hague Convention[19]
“[II.]My Interview with Belgian Ministers of State[21]
“[III.]The British Press Bureau Statement[26]
“[IV.]Second Report of the Belgian Committee of Inquiry[34]
“[V.]Can these Things be True?[44]
“[VI.]Wanton Brutality[47]
“[VII.]300 Men Shot in Cold Blood[52]
“[VIII.]The Inferno at Visé[54]
“[IX.]The Maiden Tribute[58]
“[X.]Atrocities Round Liége[66]
“[XI.]The Crime of Louvain[73]
“[XII.]French Protest to the Powers[91]
“[XIII.]The Desecration of Churches[101]
“[XIV.]Treatment of English Travellers[105]
“[XV.]What Our Soldiers Say[109]
“[XVI.]The Antwerp Outrage[117]
“[XVII.]“The Hussar-like Stroke”[124]
The Day [127]