One says, “It’s the infantry who are to blame”; another says, “The pioneers are the worst and those brigands of artillerymen”; a third writes, “It’s all the fault of the transport.” The cumulative effect of these recriminations is to inculpate the whole.[42] German Credibility. Quite apart from this inductive evidence there is the fact that the German Government is so tainted with the infamy of indisputable mendacity that no sober and impartial man can credit a single word of what it says. It has deliberately forged Belgian documents which have come into its possession in order to make out a case against the Belgian Government;[43] it has repeatedly broken faith with the British Government and the Vatican;[44] it has abused the Geneva Convention in order to make use of a hospital ship as an instrument of war.[45] Berlin itself is one great factory of lies, and its official Press service, to quote the words of our Ambassador, “a vast system of international blackmail.”[46] As is the Government, so are the people. Its merchants forge manifests and falsify bills of lading in order to secure the immunity of their property from capture at sea.[47] A journal under German control[48] has admitted that the stories of mutilation so industriously circulated by the German Government and its agents are entirely the product of hysterical “suggestion.” Often its pretexts are a shameless afterthought. In co-operation with the French authorities I was instrumental in tracking down a now notorious order issued by a German Brigadier-General to butcher all the wounded who fell into German hands. At first its authenticity was denied by the German Government, but, when it was established beyond doubt, they published a statement that a similar order had been issued by one of our own Generals some twelve months ago. The excuse was as belated as it was mendacious, and to this day not the slightest proof has been adduced in support of it. The German authorities seem to suffer from a malady which can only be described as moral perversion. It is a kind of moral insanity. In defending the sinking of the _Lusitania_ with its freight of innocent women and children the German Government wrote: “The case of the _Lusitania_ shows _with horrible clearness_ to what jeopardising of human lives the manner of war conducted by our adversaries leads.”[49]