o a state of tyranny for which it
would be difficult to find a parallel, unless we turned to the history
of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century and recalled its occupation
by the Duke of Alva. It must be said in candor that the Prussian
occupation of Belgium has not yet caused as many victims as the "Bloody
Council" of the Duke of Alva, for the estimated number of
non-combatants, who have been shot in Belgium during the last fourteen
months, is only 6,000 as against the 18,000 whom it is estimated the
Duke of Alva mercilessly put to death.

It may also be the fact that the present oppression of Belgium is marked
by some approach to the forms of law; but it may be doubted whether the
difference is not more in appearance than in reality, for the
administration of law in Belgium has been a mockery. Of this there can
be no more striking or detailed proof than the protest which was
presented to the German authorities on February 17th, 1915, by M. Leon
Theodor, the head of the Brussels bar. The truth of this formal
accusation may be fairly measured by the strong probability that the
brave leader of the Brussels bar would never have ventured to have made
the statements hereinafter referred to to the German Military Governor
unless he was reasonably sure of his facts. What he said on behalf of
the bar of Brussels was said in the shadow of possible death, and if he
had consciously or deliberately maligned the Prussian administration of
justice in this open and specific manner, he assuredly took his life
into his hands. This brave and noble document will forever remain one of
the gravest indictments of German misrule, and as it states, on the
authority of one who was in a position to know, the details of the
savage tyranny which masqueraded under the forms of law, it is appended,
with some condensation, to this article.

After stating the fact "that everything about the German judicial
organisation in Belgium is contrary to the principles of law," and after
showing that Belgian civilians were punished for the violations of law
which had never been proclaimed and of which, therefore, they knew
nothing, the distinguished President of the Order of Advocates says:

"_This absence of certainty is not only the negation of all the
principles of law; it weighs on the mind and on the conscience; it
bewilders one, it seems to be a permanent menace for all, and the
danger is all the more real, because these courts