, made the
acquaintance of a German officer, who said to him on August 20th, "You
come from Dinant? Don't go back. It's a bad place, and will be
destroyed." Troops on their march towards Andenne announced in villages
through which they passed that they were going to burn the town and
massacre the inhabitants. At Louvain, a German officer, treated
generously by a middle-class family, and appreciating their courtesy,
rushed to their house on the 25th at 11 o'clock in the morning,[27] and
earnestly pressed his hosts to leave without delay, refusing to give
them any explanation. The family, puzzled and perturbed by his appeal,
went off and so escaped.

* * * * *

In the eyes of the moralist the worst of all their crimes will perhaps
be this, that the wretches tried to dishonour Belgium, after first
assassinating her. They have dared to say, write, and proclaim publicly,
and affirm to Neutrals, that Belgian women and girls had mutilated
German wounded soldiers, blinding them with scissors or with boiling
water. The reports of the Belgian Commission of Enquiry have been
replied to in a counter report[28] published as a German White Book.
This enquiry and these documents will live in history. In centuries to
come they will hang as a heavy weight on the Kaiser's memory and the
conscience of Germany. Listen to the pathetic conclusion of the Belgian
reply: "Before God and before man, the Belgian Government has no
hesitation in giving this as its opinion of the conduct of the German
Government towards the Belgian nation: 'He is twice guilty who violates
the rights of others and then attempts, with singular audacity, to
justify himself by imputing to his victim faults that were never
committed.'"[29]

It still remains to be explained how, by what means, by what deadly
influences, this German nation, consisting of men who, as individuals,
are not all brigands, has reached and been led to this state of
savagery? In the preparations for this _collective madness_ of a
people, what part has been played by its leaders of thought and its
politicians, by race and by education? This is a disturbing phenomenon
which students of mental disease[30] will study later, but on the
examination of which we cannot here embark. It is not for us to seek the
pathological cause for this moral decay--this decadence. We have only to
note its _effects_.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Need it be noted here that even if in any loc