mies of the republic, we have the honor to lay before you the first
results of our mission.

We have already a full harvest of information to submit. It includes,
however, a very limited part of the findings at which we should have
been able to arrive if we had not submitted all the evidence which was
laid before us to severe criticism and rigorous examination. We have
indeed believed it to be our duty only to place on record those facts
which, being established beyond dispute, constitute with absolute
certainty what may be clearly termed crimes, omitting those the proofs
of which were, in our view, insufficient, or which, however
destructive or cruel they were, might have been the result of acts of
war properly so-called, rather than of willful excesses, attributable
to the enemy.

Thus we are convinced that none of the incidents which we have
investigated could be disputed in good faith. In addition the proof of
each of them does not depend only on our personal observations; it is
founded chiefly on photographs and on a mass of evidence received in
judicial form, with the sanction of an oath.

The lamentable sights which we have had before our eyes have made the
task to which we all four addressed ourselves, with a close
association of ideas and feelings, a very grievous one. It would
indeed have been too painful, if we had not found a powerful support
in the sight of the wonderful troops whom we met at the front, in the
welcome of the military leaders whose kind assistance has never failed
us, and in the sight of the population who bear unprecedented
calamities with the most dignified resignation. In the districts which
we crossed, and particularly in that country of Lorraine which was so
frequently the victim of the scourge of war, not one entreaty for
help, not one moan, reached our ears; and yet the terrible misery of
which we have been witness surpasses in extent and horror anything
which the imagination can conceive. On every side our eyes rested on
ruin. Whole villages have been destroyed by bombardment or fire; towns
formerly full of life are now nothing but deserts full of ruins; and,
in visiting the scenes of desolation where the invader's torch has
done its work, one feels continually as though one were walking among
the remains of one of those cities of antiquity which have been
annihilated by the great cataclysms of nature.

In truth it can be stated that never has a war carried on between
civilized