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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