e diary of Barthel, when still in Germany on Aug. 10, shows that he
believed that the Oberburgomaster of Liege had murdered a Surgeon
General. The fact is that no violence was inflicted on the inhabitants
at Liege until the 19th, and no one who studies these pages can have any
doubt that Liege would immediately have been given over to murder and
destruction if any such incident had occurred.

Letters written to their homes which have been found on the bodies of
dead Germans bear witness, in a way that now sounds pathetic, to the
kindness with which they were received by the civil population. Their
evident surprise at this reception was due to the stories which had been
dinned into their ears of soldiers with their eyes gouged out,
treacherous murders, and poisoned food--stories which may have been
encouraged by the higher military authorities in order to impress the
mind of the troops, as well as for the sake of justifying the measures
which they took to terrify the civil population. If there is any truth
in such stories, no attempt has been made to establish it. For instance,
the Chancellor of the German Empire, in a communication made to the
press on Sept. 2 and printed in the Nord Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of
Sept. 21, said as follows:

"Belgian girls gouged out the eyes of the German wounded.
Officials of Belgian cities have invited our officers to
dinner and shot and killed them across the table. Contrary to
all international law, the whole civilian population of
Belgium was called out and, after having at first shown
friendliness, carried on in the rear of our troops terrible
warfare with concealed weapons. Belgian women cut the throats
of soldiers whom they had quartered in their homes while they
were sleeping."

No evidence whatever seems to have been adduced to prove these tales,
and though there may be cases in which individual Belgians fired on the
Germans, the statement that "the whole civilian population of Belgium
was called out" is utterly opposed to the fact.

An invading army may be entitled to shoot at sight a civilian caught
redhanded, or any one who, though not caught redhanded, is proved guilty
on inquiry. But this was not the practice followed by the German troops.
They do not seem to have made any inquiry. They seized the civilians of
the villages indiscriminately and killed them, or such as they selected
from among them, without the least regard