cepted these stories. The highest powers in the state
welcomed them without hesitation and indorsed them with their authority.
Even the Emperor echoed them, and, taking them for a text, advanced, in
the famous telegram of September 8, 1914, addressed to the President of
the United States, the most terrible accusations against the Belgian
people and clergy.

At the time of the invasion of Belgium, it was the German army which, as
we have seen, constituted the chief breeding ground for legendary
stories. These were disseminated with great rapidity among the troops;
the _liaison_ officers, the dispatch riders, the food convoys, the
victualling posts assured the diffusion of them.

These stories were not delayed in reaching Germany. As in most wars, it
was the returning soldiery who were responsible for the transmission of
them.

From the first day of hostilities in enemy territory the fighting troops
were in constant touch with those behind them. Through the frontier
towns there was a continual passage of convoys, returning empty or
loaded with prisoners and wounded. These last, together with the
escorting soldiers, were immediately surrounded and pressed for news by
an eager crowd. It is they who brought the first stories.

As a silent listener, seated on the boulevards, I have noticed
how curious people, men and women, question the wounded who are
resting there, suggesting to them answers to inquiries on the
subject of the battles, the losses, and the atrocities of war;
how they interpret silence as an affirmative answer and how
they wish to have confirmed things always more terrible. I am
convinced that shortly afterward they will repeat the
conversation, adding that they have heard it as the personal
experience of somebody present at the affair.

In their oral form stories of this kind are not definite, their
substance is malleable; they can be modified according to the taste of
the narrator; they transform themselves; they evolve. To sum up, not
only do the soldiers, returned from the field of battle, insure the
transmission of the stories, they also elaborate them.

The military post links the campaigning army directly with Germany. The
soldiers write home, and in their letters they tell of their adventures,
which people are eager to hear, and naturally they include the rumors
current among the troops. Thus a soldier of the Landsturm writes to his
wife that he has s