Chapter 3: of The Hague Convention of Oct. 18, 1907, for the peaceful (8)

Two cautions are here given to the stranger trying to form an estimate of the Englishman: The creature must not be judged from his press, which, manned (with certain exceptions) by those who are not typically English, is too highly colored altogether to illustrate the true English spirit; nor can he be judged by such of his literature as is best known on the Continent. The Englishman proper is inexpressive, unexpressed. Further, he must be judged by the evidences of his wealth. England may be the richest country in the world per head of population, but not 5 per cent. of that population have any wealth to speak of, certainly not enough to have affected their hardihood, and, with inconsiderable exceptions, those who have enough are brought up to worship hardihood. For the vast proportion of young Englishmen active military service is merely a change from work as hard, and more monotonous.

From these main premises, then, we come to what the Englishman really is.

When, after months of travel, one returns to England one can taste, smell, feel the difference in the atmosphere, physical and moral--the curious, damp, blunt, good-humored, happy-go-lucky, old-established, slow-seeming formlessness of everything. You hail a porter, you tell him you have plenty of time; he muddles your things amiably, with an air of "It'll be all right," till you have only just time. But suppose you tell him you have no time; he will set himself to catch that train for you, and he will catch it faster than a porter of any other country. Let no stranger, however, experiment to prove the truth of this, for that porter--and a porter is very like any other Englishman--is incapable of taking the foreigner seriously and, quite friendly but a little pitying, will lose him the train, assuring the unfortunate gentleman that he really doesn't know what train he wants to catch--how should he?

The Englishman must have a thing brought under his nose before he will act; bring it there and he will go on acting after everybody else has stopped. He lives very much in the moment, because he is essentially a man of facts and not a man of imagination. Want of imagination makes him, philosophically speaking, rather ludicrous; in practical affairs it handicaps him at the start, but once he has "got going," as we say, it is of incalculable assistance to his stamina. The Englishman, partly through this lack of imagination and nervous sensibility, partly through his inbred dislike of extremes and habit of minimizing the expression of everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition--not to say pugnacity--so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism--and you get some notion of the pudding of English character. Its main feature is a kind of terrible coolness, a rather awful level-headedness. The Englishman makes constant small blunders; but few, almost no, deep mistakes. He is a slow starter, but there is no stronger finisher because he has by temperament and training the faculty of getting through any job that he gives his mind to with a minimum expenditure of vital energy; nothing is wasted in expression, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as near to the practical heart of the matter as possible. He is--to the eye of an artist--distressingly matter-of-fact, a tempting mark for satire. And yet he is in truth an idealist, though it is his nature to snub, disguise, and mock his own inherent optimism. To admit enthusiasms is "bad form" if he is a "gentleman"; "swank" or mere waste of good heat if he is not a "gentleman." England produces more than its proper percentage of cranks and poets; it may be taken that this is Nature's way of redressing the balance in a country where feelings are not shown, sentiments not expressed, and extremes laughed at. Not that the Englishman lacks heart; he is not cold, as is generally supposed--on the contrary he is warm-hearted and feels very strongly; but just as peasants, for lack of words to express their feelings, become stolid, so it is with the Englishman from sheer lack of the habit of self-expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive natures wherewith to confess exactly how he stands. It is the habit of men of all nations to want to have things both ways; the Englishman is unfortunately so unable to express himself, _even to himself_, that he has never realized this truth, much less confessed it--hence his appearance of hypocrisy.

He is quite wrongly credited with being attached to money. His island position, his early discoveries of coal, iron, and processes of manufacture have made him, of course, into a confirmed industrialist and trader; but he is more of an adventurer in wealth than a heaper-up of it. He is far from sitting on his money-bags--has absolutely no vein of proper avarice, and for national ends will spill out his money like water, when he is convinced of the necessity.

In everything it comes to that with the Englishman--he must be convinced, and he takes a lot of convincing. He absorbs ideas slowly, reluctantly; he would rather not imagine anything unless he is obliged, but in proportion to the slowness with which he can be moved is the slowness with which he can be removed! Hence the symbol of the bulldog. When he does see and seize a thing he seizes it with the whole of his weight, and wastes no breath in telling you that he has got hold. That is why his press is so untypical; it gives the impression that he does waste breath. And, while he has hold, he gets in more mischief in a shorter time than any other dog because of his capacity for concentrating on the present, without speculating on the past or future.

For the particular situation which the Englishman has now to face he is terribly well adapted. Because he has so little imagination, so little power of expression, he is saving nerve all the time. Because he never goes to extremes, he is saving energy of body and spirit. That the men of all nations are about equally endowed with courage and self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are than any others; you will gain, too, a profound, a deadly conviction that behind them is a fibre like rubber, that may be frayed, and bent a little this way and that, but can neither be permeated nor broken.

When this war began the Englishman rubbed his eyes steeped in peace; he is still rubbing them just a little, but less and less every day. A profound lover of peace by habit and tradition, he has actually realized by now that he is in for it up to the neck. To any one who really knows him--_c'est quelque chose_!

It shall be freely confessed that, from an aesthetic point of view, the Englishman, devoid of high lights and shadows, coated with drab, and super-humanly steady on his feet, is not too attractive. But for the wearing, tearing, slow, and dreadful business of this war, the Englishman--fighting of his own free will, unimaginative, humorous, competitive, practical, never in extremes, a dumb, inveterate optimist, and terribly tenacious--is undoubtedly equipped with Victory.

Bernard Shaw's Terms of Peace

_A letter written by G. Bernard Shaw to a friend in Vienna is published in the Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten and in the Frankfurter Zeitung of April 21, 1915. Mr. Shaw says:_

We are already on the way out of the first and worst phase. When reason began to bestir itself, I appeared each week in great open meetings in London; and when the newspapers discovered that I was not only not being torn to pieces, but that I was growing better and better liked, then the feeling that patriotism consists of insane lies began to give place to the discovery that the presentation of the truth is not so dangerous as every one had believed.

At that time scarcely one of the leading newspapers took heed of my insistence that this war was an imperialistic war and popular only in so far as all wars are for a time popular. But I need hardly assure you that if Grey had announced: "We have concluded a treaty of alliance with Germany and Austria and must wage war upon France and Russia," he would have evoked precisely the same patriotic fervor and exactly the same democratic anti-Prussianism, (with the omission of the P.) Then the German Kaiser would have been cheered as the cousin of our King and our old and faithful friend.

As concerns myself, I am not unqualifiedly what is called a pan-German; the Germans, besides, would not have a spark of respect left for me if now, when all questions of civilization are buried, I did not hold to my people. But neither am I an anti-German.

Militarism has just compelled me to pay about L1,000 as war tax, in order to help some "brave little Serbian" or other to cut your throat, or some Russian mujik to blow out your brains, although I would rather pay twice as much to save your life or to buy in Vienna some good picture for our National Gallery, and although I should mourn far less about the death of a hundred Serbs or mujiks than for your death.

I am, even aside from myself, sorry for your sake that my plays are no longer produced. Why does not the Burgtheater play the "Schlachtenlenker"? Napoleon's speech about English "Realpolitik" would prove an unprecedented success. If the English win, I shall call upon Sir Edward Grey to add to the treaty of peace a clause in which Berlin and Vienna shall be obliged each year to produce at least 100 performances of my plays for the next twenty-five years.

In London during August the usual cheap evening orchestra concerts, so-called promenade concerts, were announced in a patriotic manner, with the comment that no German musician would be represented on the program. Everybody applauded this announcement, but nobody attended the concerts. A week later a program of Beethoven, Wagner, and Richard Strauss was announced. Everybody was indignant, and everybody went to hear it. It was a complete and decisive German victory, without a single man being killed.

A Policy of Murder

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This article is taken from Conan Doyle's book "The German
War," and is reproduced by permission of the author.

When one writes with a hot heart upon events which are still recent one is apt to lose one's sense of proportion. At every step one should check one's self by the reflection as to how this may appear ten years hence, and how far events which seem shocking and abnormal may prove themselves to be a necessary accompaniment of every condition of war. But a time has now come when in cold blood, with every possible restraint, one is justified in saying that since the most barbarous campaigns of Alva in the Lowlands, or the excesses of the Thirty Years' War, there has been no such deliberate policy of murder as has been adopted in this struggle by the German forces. This is the more terrible since these forces are not, like those of Alva, Parma, or Tilly, bands of turbulent and mercenary soldiers, but they are the nation itself, and their deeds are condoned or even applauded by the entire national press. It is not on the chiefs of the army that the whole guilt of this terrible crime must rest, but it is upon the whole German Nation, which for generations to come must stand condemned before the civilized world for this reversion to those barbarous practices from which Christianity, civilization, and chivalry had gradually rescued the human race. They may, and do, plead the excuse that they are "earnest" in war, but all nations are earnest in war, which is the most desperately earnest thing of which we have any knowledge. How earnest we are will be shown when the question of endurance begins to tell. But no earnestness can condone the crime of the nation which deliberately breaks those laws which have been indorsed by the common consent of humanity.

War may have a beautiful as well as a terrible side, and be full of touches of human sympathy and restraint which mitigate its unavoidable horror. Such have been the characteristics always of the secular wars between the British and the French. From the old glittering days of knighthood, with their high and gallant courtesy, through the eighteenth century campaigns where the debonair guards of France and England exchanged salutations before their volleys, down to the last great Napoleonic struggle, the tradition of chivalry has always survived. We read how in the Peninsula the pickets of the two armies, each of them as earnest as any Germans, would exchange courtesies, how they would shout warnings to each other to fall back when an advance in force was taking place, and how to prevent the destruction of an ancient bridge, the British promised not to use it on condition that the French would forgo its destruction--an agreement faithfully kept upon either side. Could one imagine Germans making war in such a spirit as this? Think of that old French bridge, and then think of the University of Louvain and the Cathedral of Rheims. What a gap between them--the gap that separates civilization from the savage!

Let us take a few of the points which, when focused together, show how the Germans have degraded warfare--a degradation which affects not only the Allies at present, but the whole future of the world, since if such examples were followed the entire human race would, each in turn, become the sufferers. Take the very first incident of the war, the mine laying by the Koenigin Luise. Here was a vessel, which was obviously made ready with freshly charged mines some time before there was any question of a general European war, which was sent forth in time of peace, and which, on receipt of a wireless message, began to spawn its hellish cargo across the North Sea at points fifty miles from land in the track of all neutral merchant shipping. There was the keynote of German tactics struck at the first possible instant. So promiscuous was the effect that it was a mere chance which prevented the vessel which bore the German Ambassador from being destroyed by a German mine. From first to last some hundreds of people have lost their lives on this tract of sea, some of them harmless British trawlers, but the greater number sailors of Danish and Dutch vessels pursuing their commerce as they had every right to do. It was the first move in a consistent policy of murder.

Leaving the sea, let us turn to the air. Can any possible term save a policy of murder be applied to the use of aircraft by the Germans? It has always been a principle of warfare that unfortified towns should not be bombarded. So closely has it been followed by the British that one of our aviators, flying over Cologne in search of a Zeppelin shed, refrained from dropping a bomb in an uncertain light, even though Cologne is a fortress, lest the innocent should suffer. What is to be said, then, for the continual use of bombs by the Germans which have usually been wasted in the destruction of cats or dogs, but which have occasionally torn to pieces some woman or child? If bombs were dropped on the forts of Paris as part of a scheme for reducing the place, then nothing could be said in objection, but how are we to describe the action of men who fly over a crowded city dropping bombs promiscuously which can have no military effect whatever, and are entirely aimed at the destruction of innocent civilians? These men have been obliging enough to drop their cards as well as their bombs on several occasions. I see no reason why these should not be used in evidence against them, or why they should not be hanged as murderers when they fall into the hands of the Allies. The policy is idiotic from a military point of view; one could conceive nothing which would stimulate and harden national resistance more surely than such petty irritations. But it is a murderous innovation in the laws of war, and unless it is sternly repressed it will establish a most sinister precedent for the future.

As to the treatment of Belgium, what has it been but murder, murder all the way? From the first days of Vise, when it was officially stated that an example of "frightfulness" was desired, until the present moment, when the terrified population has rushed from the country and thrown itself upon the charity and protection of its neighbors, there has been no break in the record. Compare the story with that of the occupation of the South of France by Wellington in 1813, when no one was injured, nothing was taken without full payment, and the villagers fraternized with the troops. What a relapse of civilization is here! From Vise to Louvain, Louvain to Aerschot, Aerschot to Malines and Termonde, the policy of murder never fails.

It is said that more civilians than soldiers have fallen in Belgium. Peruse the horrible accounts taken by the Belgian Commission, who took evidence in the most careful and conscientious fashion. Study the accounts of that dreadful night in Louvain which can only be equaled by the Spanish Fury of Antwerp. Read the account of the wife of the Burgomaster of Aerschot, with its heartrending description of how her lame son, aged sixteen, was kicked along to his death by an aide de camp. It is all so vile, so brutally murderous that one can hardly realize that one is reading the incidents of a modern campaign conducted by one of the leading nations in Europe.

Do you imagine that the thing has been exaggerated? Far from it--the volume of crime has not yet been appreciated. Have not many Germans unwittingly testified to what they have seen and done? Only last week we had the journal of one of them, an officer whose service had been almost entirely in France and removed from the crime centres of Belgium. Yet were ever such entries in the diary of a civilized soldier? "Our men behaved like regular Vandals." "We shot the whole lot," (these were villagers.) "They were drawn up in three ranks. The same shot did for three at a time." "In the evening we set fire to the village. The priest and some of the inhabitants were shot." "The villages all around were burning." "The villages were burned and the inhabitants shot." "At Leppe apparently two hundred men were shot. There must have been some innocent men among them." "In future we shall have to hold an inquiry into their guilt instead of merely shooting them." "The Vandals themselves could not have done more damage. The place is a disgrace to our army." So the journal runs on with its tale of infamy. It is an infamy so shameless that even in the German record the story is perpetuated of how a French lad was murdered because he refused to answer certain questions. To such a depth of degradation has Prussia brought the standard of warfare.

And now, as the appetite for blood grows ever stronger--and nothing waxes more fast--we have stories of the treatment of prisoners. Here is a point where our attention should be most concentrated and our action most prompt. It is the just duty which we owe to our own brave soldiers. At present the instances are isolated, and we will hope that they do not represent any general condition. But the stories come from sure sources. There is the account of the brutality which culminated in the death of the gallant motor cyclist Pearson, the son of Lord Cowdray. There is the horrible story in a responsible Dutch paper, told by an eyewitness, of the torture of three British wounded prisoners in Landen Station on Oct. 9.

The story carries conviction by its detail. Finally, there are the disquieting remarks of German soldiers, repeated by this same witness, as to the British prisoners whom they had shot. The whole lesson of history is that when troops are allowed to start murder one can never say how or when it will stop. It may no longer be part of a deliberate, calculated policy of murder by the German Government. But it has undoubtedly been so in the past, and we cannot say when it will end. Such incidents will, I fear, make peace an impossibility in our generation, for whatever statesmen may write upon paper can never affect the deep and bitter resentment which a war so conducted must leave behind it.

Other German characteristics we can ignore. The consistent, systematic lying of the German press, or the grotesque blasphemies of the Kaiser, can be met by us with contemptuous tolerance. After all, what is is, and neither falsehood nor bombast will alter it. But this policy of murder deeply affects not only ourselves but the whole framework of civilization, so slowly and painfully built upward by the human race.

The Soldier's Epitaph

"HE DIED FOR ENGLAND."

[Inscription on the tombstone of a private soldier, recently killed in action.]

These four short words his epitaph,
Sublimely simple, nobly plain;
Who adds to them but addeth chaff,
Obscures with husks the golden grain.
Not all the bards of other days,
Not Homer in his loftiest vein,
Not Milton's most majestic strain,
Not the whole wealth of Pindar's lays,
Could bring to that one simple phrase
What were not rather loss than gain;
That elegy so briefly fine,
That epic writ in half a line,
That little which so much conveys,
Whose silence is a hymn of praise
And throbs with harmonies divine.

The Will to Power

By Eden Phillpotts

A distinction between power as physical force and as expressed
in terms of spiritual value is drawn by Mr. Phillpotts in his
article, appearing in The Westminster Gazette of March 27,
1915, which is here reproduced.

It has not often happened in the world's history that any generation can speak with such assured confidence of future events as at present. When the living tongue is concerned with destiny it seldom does more than indicate the trend of things to come, examine tendencies and movements and predict, without any sure foreknowledge or conviction, what generations unborn may expect to find and the conditions they will create. Destiny for us, who speak of it, is an unknown sea whose waves, indeed, drive steadily onward before strong winds, but whose shore is still far distant. We know that we men of the hour can never see these billows break upon the sands of future time.

But today we may look forward to stupendous events; today there are mighty epiphanies quickening earth, not to be assigned to periods of future time, but at hand, so near that our living selves shall see their birth, and participate in their consequences. Nor can we stand as spectators of this worldwide hope; we must not only hear the evangel whose first mighty murmur is drifting to our ears from the future, we must take it up with heart and voice and help to sound and resound it. There is tremendous work lying ahead, not only for our children, but for us. Weighty deeds will presently have to be performed by all adult manhood and womanhood--deeds, perhaps, greater than any living man has been called to do--deeds that exalt the doer and make sacred for all history the hour in which they shall be done.

On Time's high canopy the years are as stars great and small, some of lesser magnitude, some forever bright with the splendor of supreme human achievements; and now there flashes out a year concerning which, indeed, no man can say as yet how great it will be; but all men know that it must be great. It is destined to drown all lesser years, even as sunrise dims the morning stars with day; it is a year bright with promise and bodeful with ill-tidings also; for in the world at this moment there exist stupendous differences that this year will go far to set at rest. This year must solve profound problems, determine the trend of human affairs for centuries, and influence the whole future history of civilization. This year may actually see the issue; at least it will serve to light the near future when that issue shall be accomplished.

There has risen, then, a year that is great with no less a thing than the future welfare of the whole earth. It must embrace the victory of one ideal over another, and include a decision which shall determine whether the sublime human hope of freedom and security for all mankind is to guide human progress henceforth, or the spirit of domination and slavery to win a new lease of life. On the one hand, this year of the first magnitude will shine with the glory of such a victory for democratic ideas as we have not seen, or expected to see, in our generation; on the other, its bale-fire will blaze upon the overthrow of all great ideals, the destruction of a weak nation by a powerful one, and the triumph of that policy of "blood and iron" from which every enlightened man of this age shrinks with horror. The situation cannot be stated in simpler terms; no words can make it less than tremendous; and it is demanded from us to make it personal--as personal to ourselves as it is to the King of England, the Emperor of Germany, or the Czar of all the Russias.

They live who, when this far-flung agony of war is ended, when the last hero has fallen and lies in his grave, when the final cannon has sounded its knell, must be called upon to make the great peace. They live who will weave a shroud of death for the exhausted world, or plant the tree of life upon her bosom; and since we, inspired by the splendor of our cause, are assured that the day-spring will be ours, we already feel and know that we shall see that tree of life planted. But do we also feel and know that we must help to plant it, that the labor and toil of each of us is vital, that none is so weak but that there is a part of that planting for which he was born, a part consecrated to his individual effort, a part that will go undone if he does not do it?

Look to yourself, man, woman, child, that with heart and soul and strength you perform your part in the great world work lying ahead; remember that not princes and rulers, not regiments of your kinsmen, not the armed might of nations can do your appointed task for you. Fail of it, and by so much will the life tree lack in her planting; succeed, and by so much will she be the more splendid and secure. Her name is Freedom and her fruits are for the weak and humble as well as the strong and great, for the foolish as well as the wise, for all subjects as well as for all States. Put out your power, then, for that most sacred tree; deny yourself no pang that she may flourish; labor according to your strength that her blossom shall win the worship of humanity and her fruit be worthy of the blood of heroes that has poured for her planting.

Much we hear of the Will to Power, and because that great impulse has lifted our enemies on the full flood tide of their might and manhood in one overwhelming torrent, Germany has been condemned. But not for her united effort and whole-hearted sacrifice should we condemn her--not for her patriotism and response to the call. Her reply is wholly magnificent, and it only stands condemned for the evil ends and ignoble ambitions toward which it is directed. The spectacle of a great nation at one, inspired by a single ideal and pouring its life, its wealth, its energy, with a single impulse in the name of the Fatherland can only be called sublime. The tragedy lies in the fact that this stupendous effort is not worthy of the cause; that for false hopes, false ambitions and mistaken sense of right and justice Germany has wasted her life and given her soul.

Who blames the Will to Power? Power is the mightiest weapon fate can forge for a nation--a treasure beyond the strength of commerce, or armies, or navies, or intellect of man to produce. But it is necessary that we define power in terms of spiritual value; and then, surely, it appears that Power and Force can never be the same. A Frederick I., or a Napoleon, may pretend to confound power with force, and believe that their might must be right. They possessed a giant's strength and used it like giants. But true Power is ever the attribute of Right and they who strive for it must cleanse their souls, see that their ambition is worthy of such a possession, and, before all else, strive to realize the awful responsibility that goes with Power.

Never was a moment more golden than the present for this nation to Will to Power. For once our hearts are single, our resolutions pure, our patriotism, as well as the objects that we seek to attain, sure set upon the line of human progress. In the sane and sacred name of Freedom, therefore, and at her ancient inspiration it becomes us now to strive by all that is highest and best in us to fulfill our noblest possibilities and give soul and strength that the united Will to Power of our nation may surmount that of her enemies, even as our goal and purpose surmount theirs.

It is for the victory that must crown this victory we should labor, and cease not while hand can toil, mind achieve, and heart sacrifice to make the vital issue assured.

Alleged German Atrocities

Report of the Committee Appointed by the British Government

and Presided Over by

The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce

_Formerly British Ambassador at Washington_

Proofs of alleged atrocities committed by the German armies in
Belgium--proofs collected by men trained in the law and
presented with unemotional directness after a careful
inquiry--are presented in the report of the "Committee on
Alleged German Atrocities" headed by Viscount Bryce, the
English historian and formerly British Ambassador at
Washington. The document was made public simultaneously in
London and the United States on May 12, 1915, four days after
the sinking of the Lusitania. It was pointed out at the time
that this was a coincidence, as the report had been prepared
several weeks before and forwarded by mail from England for
publication on May 12.

WARRANT OF APPOINTMENT.

I hereby appoint--

The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M.;

The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, Bt., K.C.;

The Right Hon. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C.;

Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C.;

Mr. H.A.L. Fisher, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield; and

Mr. Harold Cox;

to be a committee to consider and advise on the evidence collected on behalf of his Majesty's Government as to outrages alleged to have been committed by German troops during the present war, cases of alleged maltreatment of civilians in the invaded territories, and breaches of the laws and established usages of war; and to prepare a report for his Majesty's Government showing the conclusion at which they arrive on the evidence now available.

And I appoint Viscount Bryce to be Chairman, and Mr. E. Grimwood Mears and Mr. W.J.H. Brodrick, barristers at law, to be Joint Secretaries to the committee.

(Signed) H.H. ASQUITH. 15th December, 1914.

Sir Kenelm E. Digby, K.C., G.C.B., was appointed an additional member of the committee on 22d January, 1915.

To the Right Hon. H.H. Asquith, &c., &c., First Lord of H.M. Treasury.

The committee have the honor to present and transmit to you a report upon the evidence which has been submitted to them regarding outrages alleged to have been committed by the German troops in the present war.

By the terms of their appointment the committee were directed

"to consider and advise on the evidence collected on behalf of
his Majesty's Government as to outrages alleged to have been
committed by German troops during the present war, cases of
alleged maltreatment of civilians in the invaded territories,
and breaches of the laws and established usages of war; and to
prepare a report for his Majesty's Government showing the
conclusion at which they arrive on the evidence now
available."

It may be convenient that before proceeding to state how we have dealt with the materials, and what are the conclusions we have reached, we should set out the manner in which the evidence came into being, and its nature.

In the month of September, 1914, a minute was, at the instance of the Prime Minister, drawn up and signed by the Home Secretary and the Attorney General. It stated the need that had arisen for investigating the accusations of inhumanity and outrage that had been brought against the German soldiers, and indicated the precautions to be taken in collecting evidence that would be needed to insure its accuracy. Pursuant to this minute steps were taken under the direction of the Home Office to collect evidence, and a great many persons who could give it were seen and examined.

For some three or four months before the appointment of the committee, the Home Office had been collecting a large body of evidence.[A] More than 1,200 depositions made by these witnesses have been submitted to and considered by the committee. Nearly all of these were obtained under the supervision of Sir Charles Mathews, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and of Mr. E. Grimwood Mears, barrister of the Inner Temple, while in addition Professor J.H. Morgan has collected a number of statements mainly from British soldiers, which have also been submitted to the committee.

[Footnote A: Taken from Belgian witnesses, some soldiers, but most of them civilians from those towns and villages through which the German Army passed, and from British officers and soldiers.]

The labor involved in securing, in a comparatively short time, so large a number of statements from witnesses scattered all over the United Kingdom, made it necessary to employ a good many examiners. The depositions were in all cases taken down in this country by gentlemen of legal knowledge and experience, though, of course, they had no authority to administer an oath. They were instructed not to "lead" the witnesses or make any suggestions to them, and also to impress upon them the necessity for care and precision in giving their evidence.

They were also directed to treat the evidence critically, and as far as possible satisfy themselves, by putting questions which arose out of the evidence, that the witnesses were speaking the truth. They were, in fact, to cross-examine them, so far as the testimony given provided materials for cross-examination.

We have seen and conversed with many of these gentlemen, and have been greatly impressed by their ability and by what we have gathered as to the fairness of spirit which they brought to their task. We feel certain that the instructions given have been scrupulously observed.

In many cases those who took the evidence have added their comments upon the intelligence and demeanor of the witnesses stating the impression which each witness made, and indicating any cases in which the story told appeared to them open to doubt or suspicion. In coming to a conclusion upon the evidence the committee have been greatly assisted by these expressions of opinion, and have uniformly rejected every deposition on which an opinion adverse to the witness has been recorded.

This seems to be a fitting place at which to put on record the invaluable help which we have received from our secretaries, Mr. E. Grimwood Mears and Mr. W.J.H. Brodrick, whose careful diligence and minute knowledge of the evidence have been of the utmost service. Without their skill, judgment, and untiring industry the labor of examining and appraising each part of so large a mass of testimony would have occupied us for six months instead of three.

The marginal references in this report indicate the particular deposition or depositions on which the statements made in the text are based.[A]

[Footnote A: Marginal references are omitted in this reproduction.--EDITOR.]

The depositions printed in the appendix themselves show that the stories were tested in detail, and in none of these have we been able to detect the trace of any desire to "make a case" against the German Army. Care was taken to impress upon the witness that the giving of evidence was a grave and serious matter, and every deposition submitted to us was signed by the witness in the presence of the examiner.

A noteworthy feature of many of the depositions is that, though taken at different places and on different dates, and by different lawyers from different witnesses, they often corroborate each other in a striking manner.

The evidence is all couched in the very words which the witnesses used, and where they spoke, as the Belgian witnesses did, in Flemish or French, pains were taken to have competent translators, and to make certain that the translation was exact.

Seldom did these Belgian witnesses show a desire to describe what they had seen or suffered. The lawyers who took the depositions were surprised to find how little vindictiveness, or indeed passion they showed, and how generally free from emotional excitement their narratives were. Many hesitated to speak lest what they said, if it should ever be published, might involve their friends or relatives at home in danger, and it was found necessary to give an absolute promise that names should not be disclosed.

For this reason names have been omitted.

A large number of depositions, and extracts from depositions, will be found in Appendix A, and to these your attention is directed.

In all cases these are given as nearly as possible (for abbreviation was sometimes inevitable) in the exact words of the witness, and wherever a statement has been made by a witness tending to exculpate the German troops, it has been given in full. Excisions have been made only where it has been felt necessary to conceal the identity of the deponent or to omit what are merely hearsay statements, or are palpably irrelevant. In every case the name and description of the witnesses are given in the original depositions and in copies which have been furnished to us by H.M. Government. The originals remain in the custody of the Home Department, where they will be available, in case of need, for reference after the conclusion of the war.

The committee have also had before them a number of diaries taken from the German dead.

It appears to be the custom in the German Army for soldiers to be encouraged to keep diaries and to record in them the chief events of each day. A good many of these diaries were collected on the field when British troops were advancing over ground which had been held by the enemy, were sent to headquarters in France, and dispatched thence to the War Office in England. They passed into the possession of the Prisoners of War Information Bureau, and were handed by it to our secretaries. They have been translated with great care. We have inspected them and are absolutely satisfied of their authenticity. They have thrown important light upon the methods followed in the conduct of the war. In one respect, indeed, they are the most weighty part of the evidence, because they proceed from a hostile source and are not open to any such criticism on the ground of bias as might be applied to Belgian testimony. From time to time references to these diaries will be found in the text of the report. In Appendix B they are set out at greater length both in the German original and in an English translation, together with a few photographs of the more important entries.

In Appendix C are set out a number of German proclamations. Most of these are included in the Belgian Report No. VI., which has been furnished to us. Actual specimens of original proclamations issued by or at the bidding of the German military authorities, and posted in the Belgian and French towns mentioned, have been produced to us, and copies thereof are to be found in this appendix.

Appendix D contains the rules of The Hague Convention dealing with the conduct of war on land as adopted in 1907, Germany being one of the signatory powers.

In Appendix E will be found a selection of statements collected in France by Professor Morgan.

These five appendices are contained in a separate volume.

In dealing with the evidence we have recognized the importance of testing it severely, and so far as the conditions permit we have followed the principles which are recognized in the courts of England, the British overseas dominions, and the United States. We have also (as already noted) set aside the testimony of any witnesses who did not favorably impress the lawyers who took their depositions, and have rejected hearsay evidence except in cases where hearsay furnished an undersigned confirmation of facts with regard to which we already possessed direct testimony from some other source, or explained in a natural way facts imperfectly narrated or otherwise perplexing.[A]

[Footnote A: For instance, the dead body of a man is found lying on the doorstep, or a woman is seen who has the appearance of having been outraged. So far the facts are proved by the direct evidence of the person by whom they have been seen. Information is sought for by him as to the circumstances under which the death or outrages took place. The bystanders who saw the circumstances but who are not now accessible, relate what they saw, and this is reported by the witness to the examiner and is placed on record in the depositions. We have had no hesitation in taking such evidence into consideration.]

It is natural to ask whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected, or appended a note of distrust to, the testimony of those who failed to impress them favorably. We have carried the sifting still further by also omitting from the depositions those in which we found something that seemed too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness only, or too little supported by other evidence pointing to like facts. Many depositions have thus been omitted on which, though they are probably true, we think it safer not to place reliance.

Notwithstanding these precautions, we began the inquiry with doubts whether a positive result would be attained. But the further we went and the more evidence we examined so much the more was our skepticism reduced. There might be some exaggeration in one witness, possible delusion in another, inaccuracies in a third. When, however, we found that things which had at first seemed improbable were testified to by many witnesses coming from different places, having had no communication with one another, and knowing nothing of one another's statements, the points in which they all agreed became more and more evidently true. And when this concurrence of testimony, this convergence upon what were substantially the same broad facts, showed itself in hundreds of depositions, the truth of those broad facts stood out beyond question. The force of the evidence is cumulative. Its worth can be estimated only by perusing the testimony as a whole. If any further confirmation had been needed, we found it in the diaries in which German officers and private soldiers have recorded incidents just such as those to which the Belgian witnesses depose.

The experienced lawyers who took the depositions tell us that they passed from the same stage of doubt into the same stage of conviction. They also began their work in a skeptical spirit, expecting to find much of the evidence colored by passion, or prompted by an excited fancy. But they were impressed by the general moderation and matter-of-fact level-headedness of the witnesses. We have interrogated them, particularly regarding some of the most startling and shocking incidents which appear in the evidence laid before us, and where they expressed a doubt we have excluded the evidence, admitting it as regards the cases in which they stated that the witnesses seemed to them to be speaking the truth, and that they themselves believed the incidents referred to have happened. It is for this reason that we have inserted among the depositions printed in the appendix several cases which we might otherwise have deemed scarcely credible.

The committee has conducted its investigations and come to its conclusions independently of the reports issued by the French and Belgian commissions, but it has no reason to doubt that those conclusions are in substantial accord with the conclusions that have been reached by these two commissions.

ARRANGEMENT OF THE REPORT.

As respects the framework and arrangement of the report, it has been deemed desirable to present first of all what may be called a general historical account of the events which happened, and the conditions which prevailed in the parts of Belgium which lay along the line of the German march, and thereafter to set forth the evidence which bears upon particular classes of offenses against the usages of civilized warfare, evidence which shows to what extent the provisions of The Hague Convention have been disregarded.

This method, no doubt, involves a certain amount of overlapping, for some of the offenses belonging to the latter part of the report will have been already referred to in the earlier part which deals with the invasion of Belgium. But the importance of presenting a connected narrative of events seems to outweigh the disadvantage of occasional repetition. The report will therefore be found to consist of two parts, viz.:

(1) An analysis and summary of the evidence regarding the
conduct of the German troops in Belgium toward the civilian
population of that country during the first few weeks of the
invasion.

(2) An examination of the evidence relating to breaches of the
rules and usages of war and acts of inhumanity, committed by
German soldiers or groups of soldiers, during the first four
months of the war, whether in Belgium or in France.

This second part has again been subdivided into two sections:

a. Offenses committed against noncombatant civilians during
the conduct of the war generally.

b. Offenses committed against combatants, whether in Belgium
or in France.