not reached
the ridiculous when the incendiaries of Louvain, and Malines, and
Rheims, the assassins of women and children, and of the wounded, already
find it necessary to repudiate their actions, at least in words, and to
impose upon the servility of their ninety-three Kulturtraeger such
denials as this: "It is not true that we are making war in contempt of
the law of nations, nor that our soldiers are committing acts of
cruelty, or of insubordination, or indiscipline.... We will carry this
conflict through to the end as a civilized people, and we answer for
this upon our good name and upon our honor!" Why this humble and pitiful
repudiation? Perhaps because their theory of war rested upon the
postulate of their invincibility, and that, in the first shiver of their
defeat upon the Marne, it collapsed, and now their repudiation quickly
follows--in dread of the _lex talionis_.

[Illustration: Figure 17.]

[Illustration: Figure 18. [Continuation of Figure 17.]]

I will stop here. I leave the conclusion to the allied armies, already
in sight of victory.

NOTE.--General Stenger's order of the day, mentioned on page
[Transcriber's Note: blank in original], was communicated
orally by various officers in various units of the brigade.
Consequently, the form in which we have received it may
possibly be incomplete or altered. In face of any doubt, the
French Government has ordered an inquiry to be made into the
prisoners' camps. Not one of the prisoners to whom our
magistrates presented the order of the day in the
above-mentioned form found a word to alter. They one and all
declared that this was the order of the day which had been
orally given in the ranks, repeated from man to man; many
added the names of the officers who had communicated the order
to them; some related in what a vile way it had been carried
out under their eyes. All the evidence of these German
soldiers was collected in a legal manner, under the sanction
of an oath, and it is after reading their depositions that I
wrote the order of the day.

The text of all this evidence was transmitted to all the
French Embassies and Legations in foreign countries on the
24th of October, 1914. Every neutral wishing to clear his
conscience is at liberty to obtain it from the representatives
of the French Republic, who will certainly respond willingly.