will shudder when it reads the "Red Book," the book of horrors!
Doubtless war is war, it is not afternoon tea! You can excuse individual outrages, the unbridling of instincts on the part of a soldiery in delirium, of brutes drunk with fury and blood. But how can you forgive deliberate outrages committed by order? A Belgian lady, whose care and devotion had healed a German soldier, begged him, on saying good-bye, to wage war with mercy, and not to massacre the women and children. The soldier replied: "We must, we have to do it." Alas! no truer word! It is massacre by order! We have unimpeachable proofs of it, A placard affixed in Hasselt on August 17 bears these words: "In the case where inhabitants fire on the soldiers of the German army, a third of the male population will be shot."
On August 22 General von Bulow imposed on the town of Wavre a war tax of 3,000,000 francs, and the Burgomaster received this notice: "The town of Wavre will be burnt and destroyed if payment is not made on the stated day; without respect of any one, the innocent will suffer with the guilty." On October 5, a notice affixed in Brussels gave a list of the depredations committed on the railway, telegraph, and telephone lines and added: "In the future, the places nearest the spots where similar misdeeds are done—it matters not whether they are accomplices or not—will be punished without mercy."
Belgium has suffered a cruel martyrdom. Her fields laid waste, her houses destroyed, her towns and monuments ransacked—Dinant, which mired herself in the clear waters of the Meuse; Dixmude, graceful and coquettish; Ypres, crowned with her majestic halles; Louvain, with her treasure houses and her priceless library. A million Belgians are exiled from their country—families are separated; terrible physical sufferings, still greater moral sufferings. But in all her suffering and martyrdom there still remains to us the pride and consolation of our Army—all that remains to unfortunate Belgium. Our Army still stands and fights on. It was with anxious hearts that the members of the government watched it, on the day of mobilization, dash itself against the German Colossus; these lads, accustomed to peace, absorbed in intellectual pursuits or being trained for business, how would they behave on the battlefield? They have shown themseves to be an army of heroes. It was the
