William
R. Renton, at one time a resident of Andover, Massachusetts. His present
address is the Coventry Ordnance Works, Coventry.

A friend of mine has been lieutenant in a battery of 75's stationed near
Pervyse. His summer home is a little distance out from Liege. His wife,
sister-in-law, and his three children were in the house when the Germans
came. Peasants, driven from their village, hid in the cellar. His sister
took one child and hid in a closet. His wife took the two-year-old baby
and the older child and hid in another closet. The troops entered the
house, looted it and set it on fire. As they left they fired into the
cellar. The mother rushed from her hiding place, went to her desk and
found that her money and the family jewels, one a gift from the
husband's family and handed down generation by generation, had been
stolen. With the sister, the baby in arms, the two other children and
the peasants, she ran out of the garden. They were fired on. They hid in
a wood. Then, for two days, they walked. The raw potatoes which they
gathered by the way were unfit for the little one. Without money, and
ill and weakened, they reached Holland. This lady is in a safe place
now, and her testimony in person is available.

[Illustration: THE GREEN PASS, USED ONLY BY SOLDIERS AND OFFICERS OF THE
BELGIAN ARMY.

It gives passage to the trenches at any hour. The writer, by holding
this, and working under the Prime Minister's son, became
stretcher-bearer in the Belgian Army.]

The apologists of the widespread reign of frightfulness say that war is
always "like that," that individual drunken soldiers have always broken
loose and committed terrible acts. This defense does not meet the
facts. It meets neither the official orders, nor the cold method, nor
the immense number of proved murders. The German policy was ordered from
the top. It was carried out by officers and men systematically, under
discipline. The German War Book, issued by the General Staff, and used
by officers, cleverly justifies these acts. They are recorded by the
German soldiers themselves in their diaries, of which photographic
reproductions are obtainable in any large library. The diaries were
found on the persons of dead and wounded Germans. The name of the man
and his company are given.

On Sunday, September 27, I was present at the battle of Alost, where
peasants came running into our lines from the German side of the canal.
In spite of shell, shrapnel,