nd Belgian
soldiers, aided by the inhabitants. The Belgians have supported their
troops in a manner which can only be described as bestial and cruel.
From the houses they have shot at troops on the march, and of course
their homes have been reduced to ashes.

"The road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liege is one long, sad line of
desolation.[110] Otherwise the district is fertile; now, however,
sadness and devastation reign supreme. Nearly every second house is a
heap of ruins, while the houses which are still standing are empty and
deserted.

[Footnote 110: On September 8th, 1914, the Kaiser sent a long telegram
to President Wilson, in which he defended the German armies against the
charges of ruthless atrocities. He euphemistically stated that "a few
villages have been destroyed."]

"On every side signs of destruction; furniture and house utensils lie
around; not a pane of glass but what is broken. Still the inhabitants
themselves are to blame, for have they not shot at our poor, tired
soldiers?"[111]

[Footnote 111: "Mit den Koenigin-Fusilieren durch Belgien" ("With the
Queen Fusiliers through Belgium"), by H. Knutz, p. 13.]

That is the utmost sympathy which any German has expressed for Belgium.
The German public is fully informed of all that has been done, and
considers that _they_ have been brutally, wrongfully treated. Lord
Bryce's report as well as the French and Belgian official reports have
been dealt with at considerable length in the German Press, but receive
no credence whatever; they are lies, all lies invented to blacken the
character of poor, noble, generous Germany!

Germans are well aware of the awful number of brutal crimes which their
men-folk commit year by year at home. Yet they are absolutely convinced
that these same men are immediately transformed into chivalrous knights
so soon as they don the Kaiser's uniform. They seem incapable of
conceiving that a race which debauches its own women, can hardly be
expected to show the crudest forms of respect to the women of an enemy
people.

Herr Knutz--an elementary school-teacher in civilian attire, and a
non-commissioned officer when in the German army--seems to possess some
rays of human feeling. "Just as I was leaving the fort I saw seven or
eight Belgian civilians guarded by our men with fixed bayonets. They
were charged with firing on German soldiers. I must say that the
lamentations of these men--aged from 20 to 50--made a deep impression on
me.