to hew down whoever stood in their way. “Better an end to horror, than a horror without end,” says the German proverb, and in this spirit they went to war. But even Germans can be tricked too often. I do not think we need take much thought about how to punish the Kaiser and the other criminals responsible for this war. We need only hand them over to their nation, confident that the people whom they have so long befooled and fed with lies will know how to deal with them. Nothing is less likely than that the German people will forgive those who, _avec un cœur léger_, plunged them into the frightful catastrophe that befell them. I must apologize for insisting at such length upon the insincerities and crooked ways of the German Government, but I do insist, because at the present time it is necessary to understand quite clearly the kind of people with whom we have to deal. And while explaining how the German people were misled, I am offering no excuse for the spirit in which they conducted the war, once it began. The Government may have ordered the atrocities in the first place, but the nation has always set the seal of its approval on the actions of the Government after the deed, and so the nation has made itself jointly responsible. CHAPTER II LIES AND SPIES War having finally broken out, the Government, of course, did not relax its hold on the Press. The early days brought a fine crop of fantastic inventions. The utmost was done to heighten the people’s illusions. The semi-official telegrams declared that England would remain true to its time-honoured principle of making money out of other people’s difficulties and abstain from taking part. This was at a time when Germany had already sown mines in English waters, arrested every English sailor in Germany, and cut the Jamaica cable. Japan was said to be about to conclude an alliance with Germany. A Frenchman was alleged to have poisoned wells in Alsace-Lorraine. While the Government invented the absurd story of a French aeroplane having been seen over Nuremberg before the war broke out, they quite concealed the fact that in the early days of the war French aeroplanes really did visit Coblenz. My authority is a priest who nearly lost his life from the shrapnel of the German air defences. The Government did not even spare its own citizens. A circumstantial report appeared in all the newspapers to the effect that the innkeeper Nicolai, of Cochem, and his son had been put to death for trying to blow up a railway tunnel on the Moselle. The affair created a sensation, because Nicolai was known far and wide for the excellence of his wines. The report was allowed to run for some time, and then the public were told that there had indeed been some charge of the sort against Nicolai, but upon investigation it had been withdrawn. And if you ask why a simple private citizen should be libelled in this way, the answer is easy--it was to heighten