Nothing would be easier than to show that our enemies have not respected a single one of the articles of the Hague Convention. But it is not our intention to draw up this inventory. We prefer to confine ourselves to a few facts which no one can dream of contesting, so patent are they and so well known to every one in Belgium. And we shall refer only to those which will enable us to compare the two mentalities: that of the German, crafty and tyrannical, and that of the Belgian population, refusing to bow the head to military despotism. We exclude from our list those data which have already been recorded in other publications: Belgian _Grey Books_, _Reports of the Commission of Inquiry_, _La Belgique et L'Allemagne_, etc. Lastly, we shall deal only with what has happened in Belgium itself, so that we shall speak neither of prisoners of war nor of the wounded. These eliminations lead us to omit the whole of Section I: _The Belligerents_. The three first articles apply to "francs-tireurs," Articles 4 to 21 relate to prisoners, the wounded, etc. ARTICLE 22. _Belligerents have not an unlimited choice of means of injuring the enemy._ ARTICLE 23. _Besides the prohibitions established by special conventions, it is notably forbidden_:-- (_a_) _To employ poison or poisoned weapons;_ (_b_) _To kill or wound by treachery individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;_ (_c_) _To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or no longer having means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;_ (_d_) _To declare that no quarter will be given;_ (_e_) _To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;_ (_f_) _To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag, or of the military insignia or uniform of the enemy, as well as of the distinctive signs of the Geneva Convention;_ (_g_) _To destroy or seize enemy property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;_ (_h_) _To declare abolished, suspended, or inadmissible the right of the subjects of the hostile party to institute legal proceedings._ _A belligerent is likewise forbidden to compel the subjects of the hostile party to take part in the operations of war directed against their own country, even if they were in the service of the belligerent before the commencement of the war._ The violations of this Article are numerous. The Germans themselves cannot deny that the employment of toxic gases, such as those which were used in the attack upon Ypres on the 22nd April, falls under the condemnation of paragraph (_a_). We shall recur to this matter further on. Let us remark for the moment that we are not speaking of gas released by the bursting of shells, but of clouds of gas intentionally produced.