7: Ibid., pp. 54-5.]

The above document may be said, without presumption, to possess historic
importance. It is a frank admission by the German War Office that
Belgian civilians were actually shot down without rhyme or reason.
Apparently German soldiers (!) had a _carte blanche_ to shoot whom they
liked, without rendering or being expected to render a report of their
doings.

The Rev. Duhr writes: "The incredible speed with which these lying tales
of horror spread on all sides must be classed as a morbid phenomenon, a
sort of blood-cult. Their consequences could only be to act upon the
national soul as a stimulant, inspiring fear and brutality."[128]

[Footnote 128: Ibid., p. 9.]

The author of this work is prepared to go much farther than the Rev.
Father, and maintain that the foul, diseased imaginations which could
invent such monstrous horrors are also capable of perpetrating them.
They did not spring from the imagination of an Edgar Allan Poe, but
arose in the minds of Germany's brutal peasantry and bloodthirsty
working classes, who together every year commit in times of peace 9,000
acts of brutal, immoral bestiality, and maliciously wound 175,000 of
their fellow German citizens.[129]

[Footnote 129: _Vide_ Vol. 267 _Vierteljahrshefte_, published by the
Berlin Government, 1914.]

To-day Germany shouts in ecstasy that she is the chosen power of God;
that her _Kultur_ will regenerate the world. Let it first regenerate the
"Augean Stable" known to the world as Germany. Without further comment
readers are left to form their own opinion of a Press which breeds such
filth, and the cultural level of a people which consumes such garbage.
But the world owes a debt of gratitude to the Rev. Bernhard Duhr, S.J.,
and the "Pax" Society in Cologne.

The accusations of plundering on the part of German soldiers is
naturally denied _in toto_ by all parties in the Fatherland. Indeed, it
has been discovered that the British army was guilty of wilful
destruction in Belgium. A certain Major Krusemarck, commanding the 2nd
battalion of the 12th Infantry Reserve Regiment, is responsible for the
story. "On October 10th I entered Wilryk, near Antwerp, and took up my
quarters in the Italian Consulate. All the houses had been deserted by
the inhabitants. Immediately after entering the house I perceived that
English soldiers had been here and behaved in a barbarous manner.
Mirrors, valuable objects of art, etc., had been smashed in a wa