“‘But how about the woman whose body I saw with the hands and feet cut off? How about the white-haired man and his son whom I helped to bury outside of Sempst, and who had been killed merely because the retreating Belgians had shot a German soldier outside their house? There were 22 bayonet wounds in the old man’s face. I counted them. How about the little girl, two years old, shot while in her mother’s arms by a Uhlan, and whose funeral I attended at Heyst-op-den-Berg? How about the old man that was hung from the rafters of his house by the hands and roasted to death by a bonfire being built under him?’ “The General seemed somewhat taken aback by the amount and exactness of my data. ‘Such things are horrible if they are true,’ he said. ‘Of course, our soldiers, like soldiers in all armies, sometimes get out of hand, and do things which we would never tolerate if we knew it. At Louvain, for example, I sentenced two soldiers to 12 years’ penal servitude apiece for assaulting a woman.’ “‘Apropos of Louvain,’ I remarked, ‘why did you destroy the library? It was one of the literary store-houses of the world.’ “‘We regretted that as much as anyone else,’ answered the General. ‘It caught fire from the burning houses, and we could not save it.’ “‘But why did you burn Louvain at all?’ I asked. “‘Because the townspeople fired on our troops. We actually found machine-guns in some of the houses; and,’ smashing his fist down upon the table, ‘whenever civilians fire upon our troops we will teach them a lasting lesson. If the women and children insist on getting in the way of bullets, so much the worse for women and children.’ “‘How do you explain the bombardment of Antwerp by Zeppelins?’ I queried. “‘The Zeppelins have orders to drop their bombs only on fortifications and soldiers,’ he answered. “‘As a matter of fact,’ I remarked, ‘they destroyed only private houses and innocent civilians, several of them women. If one of those bombs had dropped 200 yards nearer my hotel I wouldn’t be smoking one of your excellent cigars to-day.’ “‘That is a calamity which, thank God, didn’t happen,’ he replied. “‘If you feel for my safety as deeply as that, General,’ I said earnestly, ‘you can make quite sure of my coming to no harm by sending no more Zeppelins.’ “‘Well, Herr Powell,’ said he, laughing, ‘we will think about it, and,’ he continued gravely, ‘I trust that you will tell the American people through your great paper what I have told you to-day. Let them hear our side of this atrocity business. It is only justice that they should be made familiar with both sides of the question.’ “I have quoted my conversation with General von Boehn as nearly verbatim as I can remember it. I have no comments to make. “I will leave it to the readers of the _World_ to decide for themselves just how convincing are the answers of the German General to the Belgian accusations.”