I may add that the numerous British officers whom I interrogated in the earlier stages of the war showed a marked disinclination--innate, I think, in the British character--to believe stories reflecting upon the honour of the foe to whom they were opposed in the field. But at a later stage I found that this indulgent scepticism had wholly disappeared. Facts had been too intractable, experience too harsh, disillusion too bitter. The lesson has been dearly learnt--many a brave and chivalrous officer has owed his death to the treachery of a mean and unscrupulous foe. But it has been learnt once and for all. And, indeed, judging by the information which reaches me from various sources, the enemy affords our men no chance of forgetting it. II THE GERMAN CASE--A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK On May 10th--some five days before the publication of the Bryce Report--the German Government drew up a voluminous White Book purporting to be a Report on Offences against International Law in the conduct of the war by the Belgians. It may be described as a kind of intelligent anticipation of the case they might have to meet; the actual case, as presented in the Bryce Report, they have never attempted to meet, and to this day that report has never been answered. The German White Book--of which no translation is accessible to the public in this country--has attracted very little attention over here, and I propose to make a close and reasoned analysis of it, for no more damning and incriminating defence has ever been put forth by a nation arraigned at the bar of public opinion. In doing so I shall rely on the German Report itself and shall make no attempt to refute it by drawing upon the evidence of the English and Belgian Reports, convincing though that is, because to do so might seem to beg the question at issue, which is the relative credibility of the parties. German Invocation of The Hague Conventions. The case which the German Government had avowedly to meet was the wholesale slaughter of Belgian civilians, and the fact of such slaughter having taken place they make no attempt to deny. They enter a plea of justification and, in a word, they attempt to argue that the _levée en masse_ or “People’s War” of the Belgian nation was not conducted in accordance with the terms of the Hague regulations relating to improvised resistance in cases of this kind. I will not here go over the well-trodden ground of Belgian neutrality; it is enough that in a now notorious utterance the Imperial Chancellor has admitted that the German invasion was a breach of international law.[4]