The most abominable thing which the Germans have conceived in this respect is that they encourage the denunciation of militia-men by their fathers, mothers, wives, or sisters. It is a principle admitted by all civilized nations--and also, no doubt, by Germany--that the Courts definitely abstain from evoking a conflict between the paternal and maternal instinct and the duty owed to justice. It is considered that it would be revoltingly inhuman to force a father or mother to bear witness against a son. Sophocles, in the _Antigone_, ranks this prejudice among "the immutable laws, unwritten, which are from all eternity." Now, in Belgium, when a young man leaves his family to rejoin the Belgian army, the German authorities enjoin upon his parents, his brother, or his sister, the duty of denouncing the absent man; in other words, his father or his mother--yes, we said his mother--must deliver up the son because he is doing his duty toward his country (notice of the 9th April, 1915). And the Germans are not content with threats. If the Germans forget their promises, at least they scrupulously carry their threats into execution. At Hasselt they imprisoned a woman whose son had rejoined the Belgian army (p. 152). At Namur they have on many occasions punished the parents of soldiers who had not committed the crime of denouncing them. And not content with inflicting these disgraceful penalties--disgraceful to those who impose them--they have forced _L'Ami de l'Ordre_ to give publicity to these sentences, to the number of ten or more. Here are the details of one sentence: According to § 3, No. 2, of the Imperial decree of the 28th December, 1893, concerning the extraordinary proceedings of the Council of War for foreigners, the Governor of the fortified position and the province of Namur has pronounced a deprivation of liberty against the following Belgian subjects: the farmer, Félix Duquet, of Jemeppe, two months; his wife, Victoire Duquet, _née_ Swain, one month. They had harboured their son, Clement Duquet, Belgian soldier, who had lost his regiment, for several months, instead of notifying him to the German authority; by so doing they acted in contravention of the proclamation of the Government of Namur, dated 19th September, 1914. (_L'Ami de l'Ordre_, 8-9th July, 1915.) Assuredly for the Germans the word "humanity" is void of meaning; they have replaced it by "Germanity." No doubt they regard maternal love among the Belgians as being of an essence so inferior that they need not take it into account. Yet in order not to wound the sensibilities of their own soldiers, nor those of their "brothers by race," the Flemings, they omitted any mention of mothers in the German and Flemish texts of their notice of the 4th April. As we have already stated, they feel that they need not observe towards the feelings of the Belgians--and above all of the Walloons--the same consideration as is shown towards those of the Germans.