Can These Things Be True?

Can these cold-blooded deeds of atrocity be true? Is it a fact that they have been proved to the satisfaction of the most exacting critics? Is this “welter of fire, blood, and destruction” to be written finally on the pages of history?

I can only say this:

1. These stories came to us first from responsible correspondents of all our leading newspapers, who took them down for the most part at first hand from eye-witnesses and from the poor victims themselves.

2. A committee of eminent lawyers, assisted by the Belgian Minister of Justice, made a searching inquiry, sifting vague reports from actual facts.

3. The evidence of the atrocities thus collected was formulated in an Official Report to be presented to the President of the United States by the Belgian Delegation of Ministers of State, now on their way to America.

4. The British Official Press Bureau issued, on the 25th August, a statement of the representations made to them, which I have already quoted.

5. The Report of the Belgian Government was confirmed by the French protest against German atrocities which was addressed on September 2nd to the Powers by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

6. Mr. Richard Harding Davis, an eminent American author and correspondent in Belgium of the New York Tribune, has entirely confirmed, in cables sent to this leading American journal, things he has seen with his own eyes.

7. I have narrated the information given to me verbally by M. Van der Velde himself. “I myself examined the bodies of a peasant and his son which have been cut to pieces by bayonet thrusts.”

8. While at first the reports of these atrocities were received in this country with some reserve, the accumulated and overwhelming evidence, aggravated from day to day since the very commencement of the war, has provoked the public men of England, and every responsible newspaper in the country, as well as all our leading weeklies like the Spectator, the Saturday Review, the Nation, the British Weekly, and others, into a passionate protest against the inhuman and barbarous methods of warfare that have stained the name of Germany for ever.

9. Germany herself has admitted her wanton deeds, and sought to excuse them in a way that makes her guilt all the more deplorable. We are told that these barbarian atrocities against the civil population and unoffending peasants, the sacking, looting, and burning of towns and villages, are part of the general plan of attack, and that they are accomplished in cold blood for purely strategical considerations. Unfortunately they are not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of marauding and buccaneering soldiers.

“The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which by their frightfulness would be a warning to the whole country.” To prevent “surprise attacks” tortures were inflicted on helpless old men, women, and children, peaceful villagers were hanged, innocent children were savagely sabred by German officers, wounded soldiers and officers shot and mutilated. There was the burning of VisÉ and the terrible massacre at Seraing, the sacking and plundering of many another harmless village, the bombardment of Malines, and the crowning sacrilege of all, the burning and sacking of Louvain, the torture and massacre of its defenceless people. Abler pens than mine have told the story of these blood-guilty ruffians, and abler historians will yet chronicle for future generations the record of the modern Huns of Attila. “For every vile deed wrought under the impious benedictions of the monarch who is ravaging Europe ample reparation will be exacted.... The memory of them will burn in the heart and mind of every Englishman.” So said the Times. I affirm this is the feeling of every true Britisher.