pecially the case in view of
the fact that the military dispositions undertaken by France absolutely
refute the allegations of the German Chancellor. So true is this that
when the violation of Belgian territory became an accomplished fact, and
when the King of Belgium appealed under the terms of the treaty of 1839
for support, in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium which these powers
had guaranteed, France was so little prepared to invade Belgium that it
took her more than ten days to get her troops into the country.

The world is familiar with the way Germany has repaired in Belgium the
injustice of which she was guilty, to use the words of the German
Chancellor.

Atrocities in Belgium.

Under the pretext that her troops were attacked by civilians, and even
under no pretext at all, whole villages have been razed to the ground.
Important towns whose boast it was to represent part of the common
inheritance of civilization were not spared. Their monuments, which have
been respected during the centuries in all of the constant wars of which
Belgium has been the theatre, were deliberately destroyed. Open cities
were bombarded. Exorbitant taxation was imposed upon conquered towns,
and when the inhabitants were unable to pay the taxes, a large number of
their houses were set on fire. That is what happened to Wavre, among
other cities, whose 8,500 inhabitants were unable to pay a tax of
$600,000. Termonde, with 10,000 inhabitants, was utterly destroyed. On
the 15th of September, there only remained in that town 282 houses out
of 1,400. The town of Aerschot, with 8,000 inhabitants, is now nothing
but a mass of ruins and more than 150 of its inhabitants have been shot.
Dirigible balloons have thrown bombs at night upon Antwerp. It cannot be
maintained by those who were in the balloons that they were trying to
hit the forts, as the forts are outside the boundaries of the town, and
a good distance outside them as well. Nor could the bombs thrown have
had any effect upon the forts, which are even stronger than those of
Liege. There was no warning of this bombardment, a fact which
constitutes a violation of Article 26 of the Fourth Convention of The
Hague, and more than a dozen people were killed, all of them
non-combatants and several of them women and children.

The town of Louvain, with its 42,000 inhabitants, was one of the centres
of Belgian culture. It had no mercy shown to it and has been nearly
obliterated. Several quar