We are weeping! But we do not surrender ourselves to despair, for we have kept intact our faith in the future, and the firm resolve to leave no stone unturned that we may for ever be spared such another trial. Above all, we refuse to bow our heads beneath the yoke. In vain have the Germans afflicted us with increasingly unjust and unjustifiable and vexatious demands; they will never daunt us. Let them proscribe the Belgian flag as a seditious emblem; we have no need to unfurl it to remain faithful to it; they are welcome to forbid the _Te Deum_ on the day of the King's patron saint; since the King and the Queen are valiantly sharing, on the Yser, in the efforts and the sufferings of our brothers and our sons, royalty has no firmer supporters among us than the leaders of Socialism. No, we assuredly are not ready to abandon ourselves to despair. And nothing can sustain us more than the international sympathies by which we feel ourselves surrounded in this our unmerited misfortune. * * * * * The time has not yet come to judge the events which have delivered Europe to fire and blood. Yet we hold that it is the duty of all those who believe themselves in a position usefully to intervene to make themselves heard. For Germany possesses so perfect an organization for the diffusion of her propaganda in foreign countries, that the public opinion of neutral States, hearing but one side of the question, would finally come to believe our enemies. It would be useless and ineffectual to accumulate, as did the ninety-three German "intellectuals," among others, a number of denials and affirmations, without supporting them by a single definite fact. We do not wish to put forward anything which we cannot immediately support by easily verified proofs. This rule which we have compelled ourselves to observe, has forced us narrowly to limit our field of investigation. We shall speak only of actions and intellectual manifestations which are immediately connected with the present war; and as the field would be too vast even when so circumscribed, we shall say nothing of military operations properly so-called, nor of all that has happened beyond the Belgian frontiers. We do not propose to write a history. We leave to those more competent the task of extricating the truth as to present events; we shall content ourselves with taking indisputable documents, which are nearly always cuttings from German books, or German newspapers, or German posters, and with analysing their mental significance; and, further, with showing how the Belgians react against the actions recorded.