n work. There can be no baser
abuse than the suppression of these crimes with the view of letting the
Germans appear to be criminals, only for having justly punished these
assassins for their wicked deeds.

_It is not true_ that our troops treated Louvain brutally. Furious
inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our
troops with aching hearts were obliged to fire a part of the town as a
punishment. The greatest part of Louvain has been preserved. The famous
Town Hall stands quite intact; for at great self-sacrifice our soldiers
saved it from destruction by the flames. Every German would of course
greatly regret if in the course of this terrible war any works of art
should already have been destroyed or be destroyed at some future time,
but inasmuch as in our great love for art we cannot be surpassed by any
other nation, in the same degree we must decidedly refuse to buy a
German defeat at the cost of saving a work of art.

_It is not true_ that our warfare pays no respect to international laws.
It knows no indisciplined cruelty. But in the east the earth is
saturated with the blood of women and children unmercifully butchered by
the wild Russian troops, and in the west dumdum bullets mutilate the
breasts of our soldiers. Those who have allied themselves with Russians
and Servians, and present such a shameful scene to the world as that of
inciting Mongolians and negroes against the white race, have no right
whatever to call themselves upholders of civilization.

_It is not true_ that the combat against our so-called militarism is not
a combat against our civilization, as our enemies hypocritically pretend
it is. Were it not for German militarism German civilization would long
since have been extirpated. For its protection it arose in a land which
for centuries had been plagued by bands of robbers as no other land had
been. The German Army and the German people are one and today this
consciousness fraternizes 70,000,000 of Germans, all ranks, positions,
and parties being one.

We cannot wrest the poisonous weapon--the lie--out of the hands of our
enemies. All we can do is to proclaim to all the world that our enemies
are giving false witness against us. You, who know us, who with us have
protected the most holy possessions of man, we call to you:

Have faith in us! Believe that we shall carry on this war to the end as
a civilized nation, to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a
K