1. Aggravations--Treatment inflicted upon Belgian Ladies--Filthy Amusements--2. Physical Tortures--The Fate of the Valkenaers Family--3. Moral Tortures--Moral Torture before Execution. =Index= 361 INTRODUCTION Bismarck was given to quoting, with approval, a saying which has often been attributed to him, but which was, in reality, first made in his presence by a hero of the American Civil War--General Sheridan. It was, that the people of a country occupied by a conquering army should be left nothing--save eyes to weep with! And we Belgians, truly, are weeping: weeping for our native country, invaded, in contempt of the most solemn conventions, by one of the signatories of those treaties; weeping for our villages, which are levelled to the ground, and our cities, which are burned; our monuments, which are broken by shell-fire, and our treasures of art and science, which are for ever destroyed. We mourn to think of those hundreds of thousands of our countrymen who have wandered without shelter along the highways of Europe; of Belgium, lately so proud of her prosperity, but now taxed and crushed and exhausted by war requisitions and contributions, and reduced to holding out her hand for public charity. Who could help but weep when, in Flanders, our soldiers are defending the very last corner of our territory; when, in our villages, men, old folks, women, and children have been, and are yet, shot down without pity in reprisal for imaginary crimes; when thousands of civilians are imprisoned in Germany as hostages; when the burgomaster of the capital, for daring to defend the rights of his constituents, is confined in a Silesian prison;[1] when our rural clergy is decimated, to such a point that divine service has necessarily been suspended in entire cantons; when a scholar like Van Gehuchten dies in exile, after seeing his manuscripts and his drawings, the fruit of ten years' labours, disappear in the flames of Louvain? * * * * * Our sobs are mingled with tears of gratitude for the compassionate intervention of Holland, America, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, and Italy ... not forgetting our Allies. It is this generosity that has prevented us from dying of hunger and want; a million of our refugees have found in Holland a fraternal succour which has never for a moment been relaxed; the United States, thanks to the influence and the incomparable activity of their Minister in Brussels, Mr. Brand Whitlock, supply us with our daily bread. Belgium will never forget the exactions of those who have reduced to famine one of the richest and most fertile countries in the world, nor the unequalled charity of the nations which have enabled us to live to this day, and have saved us from death by starvation. * * * * *