a guerre," and some among them, when their ugly business
is done, turn to their book of canticles and sing psalms, such as the
Saxon Lieut. Reislang, who relates how one day he left his drinking bout
to _assist at the "Gottesdienst"_, but having eaten too much and drunken
too much, had to quit the holy place in haste; and the Private Moritz
Grosse of the 177th Infantry, who, after depicting the sacking of
Saint-Vieth, (Aug. 22,) the sacking of Dinant, (Aug. 23,) writes this
phrase:

Throwing of incendiary grenades into the houses, and in the
evening a military chorus--"Now let all give thanks to God."
(Fig. 12.)

They're all of a like tenor. Now, if we consider that I could exchange
the preceding texts with others quite similar, quite as cynical, and
taken at random, for instance--from the notebook of the Reservist
Lautenschlager of the First Battalion, Sixty-sixth Regiment of Infantry,
or the notebook of the Private Eduard Holl of the Eighth Corps, or the
notebook of the sub-officer Reinhold Koehn of the Second Battalion of
Pomeranian Pioneers, or that of the sub-officer Otto Brandt of the
Second Section of Reserve Ambulances, or of the Reservist Martin Mueller
of the 100th Saxon Reserve, or of Lieut. Karl Zimmer of the Fifty-fifth
Infantry, or that of the Private Erich Pressler of the 100th Grenadiers,
First Saxon Corps, &c., and if we will note that, among the exactions
reported above, there are very few that are the work of isolated brutes,
(such as, unfortunately, may be found even in the most noble armies,)
but that, on the contrary, the crimes represented here are collective
actions in obedience to service orders, and such as rest upon and
dishonor not only the individual but the entire troop, the officers, and
the nation; and if we will further note that these thirty notebooks
taken at random--Bavarian, Saxon, Pomeranian, Brandeburger, or from the
provinces of Baden and the Rhine--must of necessity represent hundreds
and thousands of others quite similar, as we may judge from the
frightful monotony of their recitals; if we consider all this, we must,
I think, be forced to admit that these atrocities are nothing less than
the practical application of a methodically organized system.

[Illustration: Figure 12.]

VII.

H.M. the Emperor of Germany, by ratifying The Hague Convention of 1907,
covenanted (Article 24) that "it is forbidden (c) to kill or wound an
enemy who, having laid down his ar