But these soldiers, even the more gentle, would regard it as a sacred duty to avenge crimes committed against innocent persons. Let them be led to believe that the Belgians have tortured peaceable tradesmen, or have mutilated wounded soldiers incapable of defending themselves, or that they employ dum-dum bullets, producing frightful wounds from which recovery is almost impossible ... and immediately these soldiers will have only one thought: to make the first Belgian encountered expiate the crime of which his fellow-countrymen have been guilty. Before their thirst for vengeance all distinctions disappear: children, old people, men and women, all equally deserve to be punished. From that moment it will be needless to order reprisals, for the army will be only too ready to show itself pitiless, and to call for an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, in order to make all the Belgians indifferently pay for the offences committed upon inoffensive Germans. _Some Accusations._ It is precisely this psychology which the rulers of Germany have exploited. Immediately after the opening of the campaign their newspapers began to publish articles describing the horrors committed by the Belgians; articles which make one's flesh creep. Belgian women pour petrol over the wounded and set fire to it; they throw out of the windows the wounded confided to their care in the hospitals; they pour boiling oil over the troops, and thereby put two thousand out of action; they handle the rifle and revolver as well as the men; they cut the throats of soldiers and stone them; they cut off their ears and gouge out their eyes; they offer them cigarettes containing powder, whose explosion blinds them. Even the little girls ten years of age indulge in these horrors. The men are no better; to begin with, they are all "francs-tireurs," even when they assume the appearance of respectable schoolmasters; besides which they crawl under motor-cars to kill the chauffeurs; they kill peaceable drinkers with a stab in the belly; they foully shoot an officer who is reading them a proclamation; they saw off the legs of soldiers; they finish off the wounded on the field of battle; they cut off their fingers to steal their rings; they fill letters with narcotics in order to poison those who open them; they set traps for soldiers in order to torture them at leisure; even the humanitarian symbol of the Red Cross does not stay their homicidal hands; they fire on doctors, on ambulance men, on motor-cars removing the wounded.