to break the resistance, before our brave troops penetrated
the girdle of forts and took possession of the city. It is true
that a part of the forts still held out, but they no longer fired.
The Kaiser did not want to waste a drop of blood in storming the
forts, which no longer hindered the carrying out of our plans. We
were able to await the arrival of heavy artillery to level the
forts one after the other at our leisure, and without the sacrifice
of a single life--in case their garrisons should not surrender
sooner.... So far as can be judged at present the Belgians had more
men for the defense of the city than we had for storming it. Every
expert can measure from this fact the greatness of our achievement;
it is without a parallel....

(Signed) VON STEIN,

Quartermaster General.

It is not the German people alone that will have cause to remember
Liege; the whole world will do well to learn from the case of Liege that
an organized manufactory of lies is trying to deceive the public opinion
of all the nations. Glorious victories are converted into "defeats with
heavy losses," and the strong moral discipline of the German troops is
slanderously described in the reports of the imaginative, phrase-loving
French as cruelty--just as in 1870 the Prussian Uhlans were described as
thrusting through with their lances all the French babies and pinning
them fast to the walls.

How far the "grande nation" has already degenerated, and how far the
Belgian population, akin to the French both in blood and in sentiments,
imitate the French in their Balkan brutality, is illustrated by two
examples. One of these, in the form of a German official warning, says:
"The reports at hand about the fighting around Liege show that the
population of the country took part in the battle. Our troops were fired
upon from ambush. Physicians were shot at while following their
profession. Cruelties were practiced by the population on wounded
soldiers. There is also news at hand showing that German patrols in the
vicinity of Metz were fired at from ambush from the French side. It may
be that these occurrences are due to the composition of the population
in those industrial regions, but it may also be that France and Belgium
are preparing for a guerrilla warfare upon our troops. If the latter
alternative should prove true, and this proof be strengthened through
repetitions of these occu