confidence in any pledge of Germany. And all the time the news from just
beyond the border grew more and more horrible. Towns and villages were
looted and burned. Civilians were massacred; women outraged; children
brought to death. Heavy fines and ransoms were imposed for slight or
imaginary offenses. (They amounted to more than $40,000,000 in addition
to the "war contribution" exacted, which by August, 1917, had reached
$288,000,000.) Churches were ruined. Priests were shot. The country was
stripped and laid waste. All the scruples and rules by which men had
sought to moderate the needless cruelties of war were mocked and flung
aside. Ruin marked the track of the German troops, and terror ran before
their advance.

On August 19 Aerschot was sacked and 150 of its inhabitants killed. On
the 20th Andenne met the same fate and the number of the slain was 250.
On the 23d Dinant was wrecked and more than 600 men and women were
murdered. On the 25th the university library at Louvain was set on fire
and burned. The pillage and devastation of the city and its environs
continued for ten days. More than 2,000 houses were destroyed, and more
than 100 civilians were butchered. Time would fail me to tell of the
industrious little towns and the quaint Old World hamlets that were
wrecked, or of the men and women and young children who were tortured,
and had trial of mockings and bonds and imprisonment, and were slain by
the sword and by fire. Is it not all set down by sworn witnesses in the
great gray book of the Kingdom of Belgium, and in the blue book of the
committee of which Lord Bryce was the head? Have I not heard with my own
ears the agony of those whose parents were shot down before their eyes,
whose children were slain or ravished, whose wives or husbands were
carried into captivity, whose homes were made desolate, and who
themselves barely escaped with their lives?

Find an explanation for these Belgian atrocities if you can. What if a
few shots were fired by ignorant and infuriated civilians from the
windows of houses? It has not been proved. But even if it were, it would
be no reason for the martyrdom of a whole population, for the
destruction of distant and unincriminated towns, for the massacre of
evidently innocent persons.

Was it the drink found in the cellars of the houses that made the German
officers and soldiers mad? Perhaps so. But that makes the case no
better. It was stolen drink.

Was it the carrying out