airship bombs two days
earlier; shortly afterwards followed the attack by airship on civilians
in Antwerp.

The author has before him about one hundred different newspaper reports,
alleging the most awful barbarism on the part of the Belgians. Among the
numerous statements that Germans were murdered, only two names are
mentioned, and both these men are alive to-day; the one is Herr Weber,
proprietor of an hotel in Antwerp.

"We have now received full details of the murder of the German, Weber.
He had fled from his pursuers and hidden himself in a cellar. As the
raging mob could not find him they burnt sulphur in the house, which
caused Weber to break into a violent fit of coughing. This betrayed his
hiding-place; he was dragged out and murdered."[97]

[Footnote 97: _Hamburger Fremdenblatt_, August 12th, and simultaneously
in many other journals. On the following day the _Vorwaerts_ announced
that Herr Weber had returned to Germany in the company of their own
correspondent.]

"The German pork-butcher, Deckel, who had a large business in Brussels,
was attacked in his house by a crowd of Belgian beasts because he had
refused to hang a Belgian flag before his shop; with axes and hatchets
the mob cut off his head and hewed his corpse in pieces."[98]

[Footnote 98: _Koelnische Volkszeitung_, August 10th.]

A few days later the _Berliner Tageblatt_ informed its readers that Herr
Deckel was residing in Rotterdam, and had suffered no harm whatever.

Readers who are acquainted with the official record of brutal crimes
committed year by year in Germany and the haughty contempt for civilian
rights which the whole German army has consistently shown in the
Fatherland, during the orderly times of peace, will require little
imagination to conceive that this same army would show still less
consideration for civilians in a country which they were wrongfully
invading.

The German Press during the last thirty years, as well as many books
published in the Fatherland, contains ample proof of German brutality at
home, and above all, of the legal brutality of German non-commissioned
and commissioned officers. How can Germany expect the world to believe,
that these same men, were transformed into decent human beings by the
mere act of stepping over the Belgian frontier?

Granted that vulgar elements of the Belgian population did transgress,
there still remains incontrovertible evidence that almost unheard-of
kindness was shown to th