--One can get an idea of the fury of
our soldiers in seeing the destroyed villages. Not one house
left untouched. Everything eatable is requisitioned by the
unofficered soldiers. Several heaps of men and women put to
execution. Young pigs are running about looking for their
mothers. Dogs chained, without food or drink. And the
houses about them on fire. But the just anger of our soldiers
is accompanied also by pure vandalism. In the villages,
already emptied of their inhabitants, the houses are set on
fire. I feel sorry for this population. If they have made use
of disloyal weapons, after all, they are only defending their
own country. The atrocities which these non-combatants are
still committing are revenged after a savage fashion.
_Mutilations of the wounded are the order of the day._

This was written as early as the 12th of August--the tenth day after the
invasion of innocent Belgium--and these wounded creatures that were
tortured had done nothing more than defend their land against
Germany--their native land--which Germany had sworn, not only to respect
but, if need be, to defend. And yet, in many countries pharisees reading
these lines will go forward tranquilly to their churches, or their
temples, or their banking houses, or their foreign offices, saying: "In
what do these things concern us?" "Ja, ja, this is war." Yes, it is war,
but war such as was never made by the soldiers of Marceau, such as never
will be made by the soldiers of Joffre, such as never has been made and
never will be made by France--"Mother of Arts, of Arms, and of Laws."
Yes, it is war, but war such as Attila would not have carried on if he
had subscribed to certain stipulations; for, in subscribing them, he
would have awakened to the notion, which _alone_ distinguishes the
civilized man from the barbarian, distinguishes a nation from a
horde--respect for the word once given. Yes, it is war, but war the
theory of which could only be made up by such pedant megalomaniacs as
the Julius von Hartmanns, the Bernhardis, and the Treitschkes; the
theory which accords to the elect people the right to uproot from the
laws and customs of war what centuries of humanity, of Christianity, and
chivalry have at great pains injected into it; the theory of systematic
and organized ferocity; today exposed to public reprobation, not only as
an odious thing, but no less silly and absurd. For have we