nations assumed the savage and ferocious character of the
one which at this moment is being waged on our soil by an implacable
adversary. Pillage, rape, arson, and murder are the common practice of
our enemies; and the facts which have been revealed to us day by day
at once constitute definite crimes against common rights, punished by
the codes of every country with the most severe and the most
dishonoring penalties, and which prove an astonishing degeneration in
German habits of thought since 1870.

Crimes against women and young girls have been of appalling frequency.
We have proved a great number of them, but they only represent an
infinitesimal proportion of those which we could have taken up. Owing
to a sense of decency, which is deserving of every respect, the
victims of these hateful acts usually refuse to disclose them.
Doubtless fewer would have been committed if the leaders of an army
whose discipline is most rigorous had taken any trouble to prevent
them; yet, strictly speaking, they can only be considered as the
individual and spontaneous acts of uncaged beasts. But with regard to
arson, theft, and murder the case is very different; the officers,
even those of the highest station, will bear before humanity the
overwhelming responsibility for these crimes.

In the greater part of the places where we carried on our inquiry we
came to the conclusion that the German Army constantly professes the
most complete contempt for human life, that its soldiers, and even its
officers, do not hesitate to finish off the wounded, that they kill
without pity the inoffensive inhabitants of the territories which they
have invaded, and they do not spare in their murderous rage women, old
men, or children. The wholesale shootings at Luneville, Gerbeviller,
Nomeny, and Senlis are terrible examples of this; and in the course of
this report you will read the story of scenes of carnage in which
officers themselves have not been ashamed to take part.

The mind refuses to believe that all these butcheries should have
taken place without justification. Still, it is so! It is true that
the Germans have always advanced the same pretext for them, alleging
that civilians had begun by firing upon them. This allegation is a
lie, and those who advance it have been unable to give it any
probability, even by firing rifle shots in the neighborhood of houses,
as they are accustomed to do in order to be able to state that they
have been attacked