e field artillery, which had been rolled toward the west, was swung
about to the east. An officer headed us toward Ghent and let us go. If
the Germans had marched into Ghent we would have been of value as a
cover for the troops. But for the return to Brussels we were only a
nuisance. We hurried away toward Ghent. As we walked through a farmyard
we saw a farmer lying at full length dead in his dooryard. We passed the
convent school of Melle, where Catholic sisters live. The front yard was
strewed with furniture, with bedding, with the contents of the rooms.
The yard was about four hundred feet long and two hundred feet deep. It
was dotted with this intimate household stuff for the full area. I made
inquiry and found that no sister had been violated or bayoneted. The
soldiers had merely ransacked the place.

One of my companions in this Melle experience was A. Radclyffe Dugmore,
formerly of the Players Club, New York, a well-known naturalist, author
of books on big game in Africa, the beaver, and the caribou. For many
years he was connected with Doubleday, Page & Co. His present address is
Crete Hill, South Nutfield, Surrey.

At other times and places, German troops have not rested content with
the mere terrorization and humiliation of religious sisters. On February
12, 1916, the German Wireless from Berlin states that Cardinal Mercier
was urged to investigate the allegation of German soldiers attacking
Belgian nuns, and that he declined. As long as the German Government has
seen fit to revive the record of their own brutality, I present what
follows.

A New York physician whom I know sends me this statement:

"I was dining in London in the middle of last April with a friend, a
medical man, and I expressed doubt as to the truth of the stories of
atrocity. I said I had combatted such stories often in America. In
reply, he asked me to visit a house which had been made over into an
obstetrical hospital for Belgian nuns. I went with him to the hospital.
Here over a hundred nuns had been and were being cared for."

On a later Sunday in September I visited the Municipal Hospital of
Ghent. In Salle (Hall) 17, I met and talked with Martha Tas, a peasant
girl of St. Gilles (near Termonde). As she was escaping by train from
the district, and when she was between Alost and Audeghem, she told me
that German soldiers aimed rifle fire at the train of peasants. She was
wounded by a bullet in the thigh. My companion on this visit was