nt. But in seeking the real facts one
cannot work with kid gloves. Of the hundreds I have heard I have
mentioned a few of those which show the kind of thing believed to have
occurred in the ravaged country. Of all those which I heard, the last
mentioned and the one at the head of this chapter--for which there was
justification--appeared to have the greatest probability of truth.

During the first rush of war the German system of destruction, and the
doctrine of "awfulness," as I saw it applied to physical objects, was
barbaric, relentless, and totally unjustified. At Louvain, Aerschot,
and Termonde it was at its height. On the other hand, in the mind of an
impartial student of the facts there cannot be the slightest doubt that
at Louvain there was an organized attack on the invaders by snipers and
franc-tireurs armed with knives, guns, revolvers of every description.
A half-day spent en route from burning Antwerp with a Jesuit priest of
Louvain and the testimony of several villagers would have convinced me
of this, had I not already been convinced by the stories of other
survivors.

The burning of villages is one matter, the outraging and torturing of
women and children another. The truth of the former should not in any
way convict a German officer, much less Private Johann Schmidt, of
unprovoked personal cruelty.

There undoubtedly were, though I did not happen to see them, numerous
cases of unprovoked cruelty and other evidences of barbarity that are
bound to happen in any war of invasion. The fact that I, personally,
did not happen to see them, and have found scarcely a non-partisan
observer who did, is neither here nor there. I merely state the fact as
one of the many bits of evidence which should be taken into
consideration. I have no case for Prussian militarism in so far as
applied to inanimate objects. The German system of destruction in the
early part of the war was utterly without excuse or justification; the
wreck and desolation, the hunger and suffering of the larger portion of
Belgium are utterly beyond the comprehension of those who have not been
there. Certainly words cannot convey the impression. The suffering,
particularly during the weeks following the fall of Antwerp, was so
awful and on so large a scale that the senses refused to grasp it. It
has been said that in the Civil War Sheridan was commanded, in pushing
up the Shenandoah Valley, to leave the countryside in such condition
that