This affectation of horror at the consequences of its own crimes and the imputation of the guilt of them to others is surely one of the most remarkable revelations of the moral obliquity of the German mind. Yet it by no means stands alone. The Proclamations, issued in Belgium, threaten the inhabitants with fire and sword, the scaffold and the firing-party, for the least infraction of the most trivial regulations, and then conclude with the aspersion that by such infraction they will commit “the horrible crime” of compromising the existence of a whole community and placing it “outside the pale of international law.”[50] The man who omits to put his hands up with acrobatic promptitude will “make himself guilty” of the penalty of death. All through the German utterances there runs an infatuated obsession that the Germans enjoy a kind of moral prerogative in virtue of which they are entitled to violate all the laws which they rigidly prescribe for others.[51] We have lately had an example of this which is of supreme horror. The Power which has broken all laws, human and divine, sought to dignify its condemnation of Edith Cavell with all the pomp and circumstance of a tribunal of justice. While thousands of ravishers and spoilers go free, one woman, who had spent her life in ministries to such as were sick and afflicted, was handed over to the executioner. Truly, there has been no such trial in history since Barabbas was released and Christ led forth to the hill of Calvary. The Guilt of the German People.