on have been or can be pleaded.
Soldiers suppressing an insurrection may have sometimes slain civilians
mingled with insurgents, and Napoleon's forces in Spain are said to have
now and then killed promiscuously when trying to clear guerrillas out of
a village. But in Belgium large bodies of men, sometimes including the
Burgomaster and the priest, were seized, marched by officers to a spot
chosen for the purpose, and there shot in cold blood, without any
attempt at trial or even inquiry, under the pretense of inflicting
punishment upon the village, though these unhappy victims were not even
charged with having themselves committed any wrongful act, and though,
in some cases at least, the village authorities had done all in their
power to prevent any molestation of the invading force. Such acts are no
part of war, for innocence is entitled to respect even in war. They are
mere murders, just as the drowning of the innocent passengers and crews
on a merchant ship is murder and not an act of war.

That these acts should have been perpetrated on the peaceful population
of an unoffending country which was not at war with its invaders, but
merely defending its own neutrality, guaranteed by the invading power,
may excite amazement and even incredulity. It was with amazement and
almost with incredulity that the committee first read the depositions
relating to such acts. But when the evidence regarding Liege was
followed by that regarding Aerschot, Louvain, Andenne, Dinant, and the
other towns and villages, the cumulative effect of such a mass of
concurrent testimony became irresistible, and we were driven to the
conclusion that the things described had really happened. The question
then arose, how they could have happened. Not from mere military
license, for the discipline of the German Army is proverbially
stringent, and its obedience implicit. Not from any special ferocity of
the troops, for whoever has traveled among the German peasantry knows
that they are as kindly and good-natured as any people in Europe, and
those who can recall the war of 1870 will remember that no charges
resembling those proved by these depositions were then established. The
excesses recently committed in Belgium were, moreover too widespread and
too uniform in their character to be mere sporadic outbursts of passion
or rapacity.

The explanation seems to be that these excesses were committed--in some
cases ordered, in others allowed--on a system and i