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of King and soldiers parading on horses.] Photo by Trans-Atlantic News Service KING ALBERT AT THE HEAD OF THE HEROIC SOLDIERS OF BELGIUM It is universally agreed that the Belgian monarch was no figurehead general but a real leader of his troops. It was these men, facing annihilation, who astonished the world by opposing the German military machine successfully enough to allow France to get her armies into shape and prevent the immediate taking of Paris that was planned by Germany. [Illustration: Painting of soldiers dragging large guns through mud; shells are exploding in the background; in the foreground a dead soldier lies face down in the mud.] THE TERRIBLE FLANDERS MUD A German battery endeavoring to escape from a British advance sinks in the mud. The gunners are endeavoring to pull the gun out with ropes. "The Belgian troops inflicted serious losses on the Germans in the South of the Province of Limbourg, and the towns of Lummen, Bilsen, and Lanaeken are partially destroyed. Antwerp held out for two months, and all about its outer line of fortifications there was blood and fire, numerous villages were sacked and burned and the whole town of Termonde was destroyed. During the battles of September the village of Boortmeerbeek near Malines, occupied by the Germans, was retaken by the Belgians, and when the Germans entered it again they burned forty houses. Three times occupied by the Belgians and retaken by the Germans Boortmeerbeek was three times punished in the same way. That is to say, everywhere the German army met with a defeat it took it out, as we say in America, on the civil population. And that is the explanation of the German atrocities in Belgium." A committee of the highest honor and responsibility was appointed by the British Government to investigate the whole subject of atrocities in Belgium and Northern France. Its chairman was the Rt. Hon. Viscount James Bryce, formerly British Ambassador to the United States. Its other members were the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Clark, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield, Mr. Harold Cox and Sir Kenelm E. Digby. The report of the commission bears upon its face the stamp of painstaking search for truth, substantiates every statement made by Minister Whitlock and makes known many horrible instances of cruelty and barbarity. It makes the following deducti
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