ed Von Bissing's
policy as too mild, and there was a quarrel; Von Bissing went to Berlin
to protest, threatened to resign, but did not. He returned, and a German
official said that Belgium would now be subjected to a more terrible
regime, would learn what war was. The prophecy has been vindicated.

"The deportations began in October in the Etape, at Ghent and at
Bruges. The policy spread; the rich industrial districts at Hainaut, the
mines and steel works about Charleroi were next attacked, and they
seized men in Brabant, even in Brussels, despite some indications and
even predictions of the civil authorities that the policy was about to
be abandoned.

"As by one of the ironies of life the winter has been more excessively
cold than Belgium has ever known it and while many of those who
presented themselves were adequately protected against the cold, many of
them were without overcoats. The men, shivering from cold and fear, the
parting from weeping wives and children, the barrels of brutal Uhlans,
all this made the scene a pitiable and distressing one.

RAGE, TERROR AND DESPAIR.

"The rage, the terror and despair excited by this measure all over
Belgium were beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans
poured into Brussels. The delegates of the commission for relief in
Belgium, returning to Brussels, told the most distressing stories of the
scenes of cruelty and sorrow attending the seizures. And daily, hourly
almost, since that time, appalling stories have been related by Belgians
coming to the legation. It is impossible for us to verify them, first
because it is necessary for us to exercise all possible tact in dealing
with the subject at all, and secondly because there is no means of
communication between the Occupations Gebiet and the Etappey Gebiet.

"I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium that tend
to bear the stories one constantly hears of brutality and cruelty. A
number of men sent back to Mons are said to be in a dying condition,
many of them tubercular. At Molines and at Antwerp returned men have
died, their friends asserting that they have been victims of neglect and
cruelty, of cold, of exposure, of hunger.

"I have had requests from the burgomasters of ten communes asking that
permission be obtained to send to the deported men in Germany packages
of food similar to those that are being sent to prisoners of war. Thus
far the German authorities have refused to permit