of Enquiry came to the following conclusion on this
point: "This allegation is false, and those who put it forward have been
powerless to give it the appearance of truth, even though it has been
their custom to fire shots in the neighbourhood of dwellings, in order
to be able to affirm that they have been attacked by innocent
inhabitants, on whose ruin or massacre they had resolved."

Enquiries conducted by high magistrates have established the fact that
German officials are very frequently guilty of premeditated lies. It is
probable, all the same, that many German soldiers, on entering Belgium
or France, were obsessed by the idea of civilians firing on them. The
cry of a soldier trembling with fear, drunk, or thirsting for
pillage--"Man hat geschossen (they have fired)"--is enough for a
locality to be delivered up at once to the wildest fury. "When an
inhabitant has fired on a regiment," said a soldier at Louvain, "the
place belongs to the regiment." What a temptation for a Boche soldier to
fire a shot that will at once unloose pillage and massacre!

Some mistakes have _possibly_ been made which could have been avoided by
the least enquiry. Read this admission recorded in his diary by a Saxon
officer: "The lovely village of Gue-d'Hossus has been given over to the
flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a cyclist fell off
his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself. As a
consequence there was firing in his direction. Then, the male
inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames. Such
horrors will not be repeated, we must hope ... There ought to be some
compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this
indiscriminate shooting of people."

The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbourhood of,
villages have been those of French or Belgian soldiers covering their
retreat. Sometimes this has been discovered, but too late, and they have
continued their crimes--in order to justify them.

Here is the statement of a neutral: "In one village they found corpses
of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer
in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot.... In
the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish
poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with consideration,
and allowed himself to talk freely: his complaint was the misdeeds of
his soldiers. Near Haelen, he told his h