In this matter of holding the civil population responsible with their lives for anything that may prove “inconvenient” (_gênant_), to quote a German Proclamation, to the German troops, the German commanders seem to have no sense of cause and effect. At Coulommiers, so the Mayor informed me, they threatened to shoot him because the gas supply gave out. In a town which I visited close to the German lines (and the name of which I suppress by request of the civil authorities for fear of a vindictive bombardment), the Mayor, who was under arrest in the guardroom, was threatened with death because a signal-bell rang at the railway station, and was in imminent peril until it was proved that the act was due to the clumsiness of a German soldier; and an exchange of shots between two drunken soldiers, resulting in the death of one of them, was made the ground of an accusation that the inhabitants had fired on the troops, the Mayor’s life being again in peril. Where the life of the civilian is held so cheap, it is not surprising that the German soldier, himself the subject of a fearful discipline, is under a strong temptation to escape punishment for the consequences of his own careless or riotous or drunken behaviour by attributing those consequences to the civil population, for the latter is invariably suspected. Outrages upon Women--The German Occupation of Bailleul. When life is held so cheap, it is not surprising that honour and property are not held more dear. Outrages upon the honour of women by German soldiers have been so frequent that it is impossible to escape the conviction that they have been condoned and indeed encouraged by German officers. As regards this matter I have made a most minute study of the German occupation of Bailleul. This place was occupied by a regiment of German Hussars in October for a period of eight days. During the whole of that period the town was delivered over to the excesses of a licentious soldiery and was left in a state of indescribable filth. There were at least thirty cases of outrages on girls and young married women, authenticated by sworn statements of witnesses and generally by medical certificates of injury. It is extremely probable that, owing to the natural reluctance of women to give evidence in cases of this kind, the actual number of outrages largely exceeds this. Indeed, the leading physician of the town, Dr. Bels, puts the number as high as sixty. At least five officers were guilty of such offences, and where the officers set the example the men followed. The circumstances were often of a peculiarly revolting character; daughters were outraged in the presence of their mothers, and mothers in the presence or the hearing of their little children. In one case, the facts of which are proved by evidence which would satisfy any court of law, a young girl of nineteen was violated by one officer while the other held her mother by the throat and pointed a revolver,