AThe text of the Belgian Government’s reply was as follows:—

By its Note of August 2, 1914, the German Government makes it known that according to its certain information the French forces have had the intention of marching upon the Meuse by way of Givet and Dinant, and that Belgium, notwithstanding her good intention, would not be in a condition to repel without assistance an advance march of the French troops.

The German Government feels itself under the obligation to prevent that attack and to violate Belgian territory. Under these circumstances Germany proposes to the King’s Government to adopt in reference to her a friendly attitude, and engages at the moment of peace to guarantee the integrity of the kingdom and its possessions in all their extent.

The Note adds that if Belgium puts difficulties in the way of the forward movement of the German troops, Germany will be obliged to consider her as an enemy, and leave the final settlement between the two States, one with the other, to the decision of arms.

This Note has provoked in the King’s Government a profound and grievous astonishment.

The intentions it attributes to France are in contradiction with the formal declarations which have been made to us on August I in the name of the Government of the Republic.

Moreover, if, contrary to our expectation, a violation of Belgian neutrality should come to be made by France, Belgium would fulfil all her international duties and her army would oppose to the invader the most vigorous resistance.

The Treaties of 1839, confirmed by the Treaties of 1870, consecrate the independence and neutrality of Belgium under the guarantee of the Powers, and notably under that of his Majesty the King of Prussia.

Belgium has ever been faithful to her international obligations; she has accomplished her duties in a spirit of loyal impartiality; she has neglected no effort to maintain her neutrality and to have it respected.

The attempt upon her independence which the German Government threatens would constitute a flagrant violation f the rights of nations. No strategic consideration justifies violation of right.

Were it to accept the propositions that have been put to it, the Belgian Government would sacrifice the honour of the nations and at the same time go back on its duties towards Europe.

Conscious of the part that Belgium has played for more than eighty years in the world’s civilisation, it refuses to believe that the independence of Belgium can be preserved only at the price of violation of her neutrality.

If that hope is ill-founded, the Belgian Government is firmly resolved to repel by every means in its power any attempt upon its right.

England agrees to co-operate as guarantor in the defence of our territory. The English Fleet will assure the free passage of the Scheldt for the revictualling of Antwerp.

BThis has been officially denied from Berlin; but the Belgians declare that priests seemed specially to be marked out for attack. It is certain that a number lost their lives.

CA story published at Berlin gives the account sent in a letter from Lieut. von der Linde, of the Potsdam Guards, of how he carried out the capture of Fort Malonne at Namur. The lieutenant states that he was ordered to advance on the fort with 500 men by a route where mines were suspected. He advanced with four men on the bridge across the moat of the fort, and called upon the commander to surrender immediately, threatening him that otherwise the artillery would at once begin to bombard the fort. The commander, taken by surprise, allowed the lieutenant and his four men to enter and surrendered his sword. Besides the commander, five officers and twenty men were taken prisoners. The remainder of the garrison, consisting of 400 men, had escaped. Four heavy guns and considerable war material were captured. For this exploit Lieut. von der Linde received from the Kaiser the Order of Merit, and it is recorded that he was the youngest officer in the German service to receive that distinction. He was only twenty-two. No reference is made in this account to the mist and rain which alone could have made such an adventure possible, much less successful. The story illustrates the difficulty of defending, under the conditions described, a fortress situated among hills, and also the facilities offered for escape.

DSee, among other evidence, the details collected by and given in the Fifth Report of the Belgian Official Commission of Inquiry.

EAlleged to be a Major von Manteuffel. In a German Official Inquiry afterwards held at Brussels an officer of that name was reported to have been cashiered for this affair; but it is doubtful if he was more than an official scapegoat.

FThe narrative was given to Reuter’s special correspondent at Rotterdam.

GWriting in the Daily Telegraph of the destroyed art treasures of Louvain, Sir Claude Phillips says: “The chief treasures of the church of Saint-Pierre de Louvain were two famous paintings by Dierick (or Thierry) Bouts, who is as closely identified with the now destroyed university city of Belgium as are the Van Eycks with Ghent and Bruges, and Roger van der Weyden with Tournay and Brussels. The earlier of these paintings is (or rather was) the remarkable triptych with the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus in the central panel, and the figures of St. Jerome and St. Bernard in the wings. This was seen at the Bruges retrospective exhibition of 1904. But perhaps the masterpiece of Dierick Bouts, and certainly one of the finest examples of Flemish fifteenth-century art, was the polyptych painted by him for the altar of the Holy Sacrament in the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre.

“The central panel of this work, whereupon was represented the Last Supper, was, until a few days ago, the chief adornment of that church and of the ancient city. One of the most accomplished writers on modern Netherlandish art, M. FiÉrens-Gevaert, has written thus of this ‘Last Supper,’ by Bouts: ‘La CÈne est une des oeuvres les plus profondes, les mieux peintes du XV^me siÈcle, et si l’on dressait une liste des cinq ou six chefs-d’oeuvre de nos primitifs, il faudrait l’y comprendre.’ And in committing this act of hideous, wanton violence, this crime for which posterity will refuse to find words of pardon or excuse, the Prussian commander has also been guilty of an act of incredible ignorance, of boundless stupidity. For, strange to say, the splendid wings which once completed this famous altarpiece, and would, if a reconstruction could have been effected, have caused Bouts’s polyptych to stand forth one of the most important works of Flemish fifteenth-century art in existence—these wings are in Germany. In the Alte Pinakothek of Munich are preserved the ‘Gathering of the Manna’ and the ‘Meeting of Abraham and Melchisedech.’

“In the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum of Berlin are to be found ‘The Prophet Elijah in the Desert’ and the ‘Feast of Passover.’ It would obviously have been far better to steal this ‘Last Supper,’ this central jewel of the doomed city’s pictorial adornment, to confide it either to Munich or to Berlin, than thus to blot it out for ever. It would have been cruel, iniquitous, to despoil heroic Belgium; it is infamous, and, above all, it is stupid to tear out the heart of a masterpiece, to rob the world, and in punishing Belgium to punish Germany, to punish Europe. Napoleon, the ruthless plunderer of museums and churches, was mild and humane in comparison. If he stole, whether under forcibly imposed treaty or by sheer brute force, the accepted masterpieces of painting and sculptur belonging to the States which he overcame, he stole, with a certain reverence; much as the believer steals the most sacred treasures from the temple, or the most precious relics of the Passion and the saints from the church or the tomb. Robber though he was, he worshipped in awe-struck delight the masterpieces which he tore from the nations; and his triumphant fellow-countrymen, during the brief period of his supremacy, worshipped with him.

“Not less than ourselves must the students, the gallery directors, the art historians of Germany suffer, compelled as they are to look on helpless at this incredible act of sacrilege. It is they, indeed, who have most contributed to place before the world in their right perspective, to estimate at their true value the greatest examples of Netherlandish art in its early prime. It is their galleries which contain the most complete collections of these early Netherlandish masters. We challenge them to defy in this, if in this only, the ‘mailed fist’—to come forward and register their solemn protest against the greatest outrage upon civilisation, upon humanity, that the modern world has been called upon to witness.”

HSeveral German medical men of eminence, among them Dr. Moll, were alleged to have offered this suggestion. On the other hand, Dr. Kaufman, of Aix-la-Chapelle, in a letter to the KÖlnische Volkszeitung, says that tales of German soldiers mutilated by Belgians—tales the circulation of which was officially countenanced—spread like wildfire among the soldiers, and a single case of a man being mutilated by a shell was magnified into an outrage, and this was only one of a hundred similar instances. The soldiers, by auto-suggestion, got to believe their own wild fancies, and by propagating their stories caused a most dangerous state of anger and exasperation in the German Army. At Huy, a German non-commissioned officer and a private had been wounded by shots. On the assertion that the shots had been fired by inhabitants the German commander, Major von Baschuitch, ordered a number of houses to be burned. The burgomaster, however, persuaded him to hold an inquiry. This proved that the shots had been fired by German soldiers in a drunken panic.

IShortly before this atrocity, a proclamation had been issued at LiÉge ordering the citizens to raise their hats to German officers in the street, and to salute men of the rank and file. It was notified that if this command was not obeyed, the German soldiery were authorised to enforce “due respect.”