But a thing that does surprise us is that the virus of cruelty should already have contaminated civilians--I mean the Catholic members of the Reichstag. Herr Erzberger, the same who asserted, and who perhaps is asserting still, that the Belgians invaded Germany on the 2nd August, wrote what are perhaps the most coldly ferocious words imaginable: "_Above all, no sentimentality!_" (_N.R.C._, 6th February, 1916, evening edition). Such advice bore fruit, as we shall discover when we come to examine, in succession, the physical and moral tortures in which our executioners delight. But first let us cite a few examples of _aggravations_. By that we mean acts of malice which do not endanger the life or reason of the victims, but which reveal, perhaps the more clearly for that, the desire to torment. 1. AGGRAVATIONS. A general remark occurs to us at once: it is that the Germans have failed in their object. For instead of exasperating us to the point of forcing us to commit some imprudence, which they would have been obliged to repress, they simply made sure of our profound contempt. To tell the truth, each fresh persecution makes us furious for a day; but the sense of irony soon regains the upper hand, and then we have only one anxiety: to make their latest form of vexation ridiculous by all the means in our power. Nothing better shows the contrast between the German mentality and the Belgian than the manner in which we have obeyed the decree concerning the German time. After only a week's occupation the inhabitants of Andenne were obliged to set their clocks to the German time. At Namur, too, this was required from the 31st August. Elsewhere the German time was enforced only at a much later date, and only in respect of the clocks in cafés. Many cabaret-keepers merely stopped their clocks; others had fitted a second small hand, an hour in retard of the first; others wrote beneath the clock "German Time," or even "This clock is an hour fast." In the window of a Brussels watchmaker, in the midst of many clocks which indicated more or less precisely the German time, was one which was specially labelled "Correct Time"--and that one told, of course, the Belgian time. In short, every one did what he could to avoid letting his customers regard the German time as the true time. And really, if one has adopted, as is the case in Germany and in Belgium, the system of hourly segments, it is obvious that Belgium ought to form part of the segment of Western Europe, not part of that of Eastern Europe. It is, therefore, solely in a spirit of aggravation that Germany forces her time upon us; and she is fully aware of this, as her public notices are always careful to speak of "German time," not of "Central European time." _Treatment inflicted upon Belgian Ladies._