CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS AFLAME

Imagination is not Germany's gift.... She cannot by any chance conceive how other races look upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary expressed it: "Let the neutrals cease chattering about cathedrals. Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and churches in the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military ends."—Pp. 48, 50.

N. B.—The cathedral of Rheims was never used by the French soldiers for any military purpose whatsoever.

GERMAN MILITARY TACTICS

The official Handbook for instruction and guidance says: "By steeping himself in military history, an officer will be able to guard himself against excessive humanitarian notions."—These four citizens were murdered because they would not betray the guardianship of their bank.—Page 23.

A GUILTY HOME GUARD

This man defended his home and the honour of his young wife against two German officers. They literally carved his limbs into bits, and mutilated his body in ways that men only speak of, and then in whispers. When the German marauder breaks into the French or Belgian home, its owner of course loses his rights: All belong to the brave conquerors.

A PRINCELY WEAPON

The German firebrand is a perforated iron bulb, filled with asbestos cloth absorbing about a teacupful of petrol. Mounted on a wooden handle it is fired, and hurled into a building for conflagration. With this Prince Eitel Frederick, after looting, personally burned the Chateau of Avricourt, where he had quartered for months.—Page 45.

DIARY OF EITEL ANDERS

"We arrived at the town of Wandre. The inhabitants without exception were brought out and shot. They all knelt down and prayed, but that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the green grass and slept forever. It is real sport."—Page 34.

RUINS OF GERBÉVILLER

This once lovely village of GerbÉviller, is now called GerbÉviller the Martyred. In a rage of fury because of his enforced retreat before a French army, of two-thirds in number of his own troops, General Clauss looted this little city and massacred about one hundred of its people. Among the slain were fifteen very aged men, including the Mayor and his secretary, there being no young or middle-aged men left in the town who could be killed. Out of 475 houses, twenty at most were left habitable.—Page 37.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WRECKINGS

Two examples of wanton, unmilitary destruction. Above, a scene in Nomeny (Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle), and below, the splendid great Cloth Hall of Ypres. The former was simply the hell-blast of German passage; the latter, a distinct intention to destroy by fire a famous and beautiful edifice, made a target for the heaviest guns, with no remotest military reason—except "frightfulness."

MUTE WITNESSES

The full extent of the German atrocities committed on a battle line six hundred miles in length, and extending from the English Channel to the Swiss frontier, can never be known. More than one hundred thousand people are simply reported as "missing," other multitudes were burned or thrown into pits. Only in towns from which the German armies hurriedly retreated were inquests possible, and in those towns affidavits were prepared and photographs of the mutilated bodies taken. After the German troops had passed out of the village or city, it became possible for the village school-teacher, priest or banker, the aged women and the children to creep out of pits, the caves in the fields, or the edge of the woods, where they had been hiding, and return to survey the scene of desolation behind them. The opposite page shows victims in the little town of Andenne, where more than 300 civilians were massacred.

CATHEDRAL OF ST. MARTIN

The city of Ypres, in the intensest zone of conflict, has suffered much. The ancient Cathedral, of the XIII Century, on the site of an edifice of the XI, stately and impressive with its magnificent rose window in the choir, is now unroofed and its fine interior a heap of stones mournfully guarded by the remaining pillars and broken walls. The great altarpiece of St. Martin on his white steed still presides over the ruins of the high altar. It is a ghastly scene.