"The principle according to which the whole community must be punished for the fault of a single individual is justified by the _theory of terrorization_. The innocent must suffer with the guilty; if the latter are unknown the innocent must even be punished in their place; and note that the punishment is applied not _because_ a misdeed has been committed, but _in order that_ no more shall be committed. To burn a neighbourhood, shoot hostages, decimate a population which has taken up arms against the army--all this is far less a reprisal than the sounding of a _note of warning_ for the territory not yet occupied. Do not doubt it: it was as a note of warning that Battice, Herve, Louvain, and Dinant were burned. The burnings and bloodshed of the opening of the war showed the great cities of Belgium how perilous it was for them to attack the small garrisons which we were able to leave there. No one will believe that Brussels, where we are to-day as though in our own home, would have allowed us to do as we liked if the inhabitants had not trembled before our vengeance, and if they did not continue to tremble. War is not a social diversion." Any commentary would weaken the force of these declarations. _Incendiary Material._ We are not in the confidence of the German Staff, and we can only form hypotheses as to its mentality. But here are two facts, easy to verify and interpret, which show that the atrocities were committed with premeditation. Firstly, the existence of various incendiary materials. When a town is condemned to be burned the execution of the command is confided to a special company of the engineers. (The _carnet_ of an officer of an "incendiary company" was picked up in a commune of Hainaut.) Generally a first squad breaks the windows and shutters; a second pours naphtha into the houses by means of special pumps, "incendiary pumps"; then comes the third squad, which throws the "incendiary bombs." These last are of many different kinds. Those most commonly employed in Brabant and Hainaut include discs of gelatinous nitro-cellulose, which jump in all directions. Thanks to the inflammable vapours which fill the houses, the latter catch fire on all their floors simultaneously. It took only half an hour to set fire to the Boulevard Audent at Charleroi. No one can suppose that so perfect an organization was improvised during the campaign. Moreover, where and how could the discs of fulminating cotton have been procured? At Termonde the Germans probably employed cylinders of naphtha. At all events one can still see, in houses which did not catch fire, holes made in the ceilings and floors, into which holes long strips of linen are introduced to serve as wicks. The Germans sprinkled them with naphtha, and it was enough to put a match to such a wick in order to set fire to the joists of the floor overhead. At Termonde 1,200 houses were burned in a single day. _The Two Great Periods of Massacre._