return for payment.[17] On such flimsy hearsay evidence, tendered by two Germans, rests the whole of the German case against the Belgian Government. Belgian “Atrocities.” Like a defendant who has no case, the German Government attempt to plead generally in default of being able to plead specifically. They therefore put forward a sweeping generalisation to the effect that, quite apart from the question whether the Belgians did or did not comply with the formal requirements of the Hague Convention, they violated all the usages of war by “unheard of” atrocities. “Finally it is proved beyond all doubt that German wounded were robbed and killed by the Belgian population, and indeed were subjected to horrible mutilation, and that even women and young girls took part in these shameful actions. In this way the eyes of German wounded were torn out, their ears, nose, fingers and sexual organs cut off, or their body cut open.”[18] Let us consider the depositions with which this accusation is supported. (1) Hugo Lagershausen, of the 1st Ersatz Company of the Reserve, his attention having been drawn to the significance of the oath, declares: “I lost the other men of the patrol. About noon on August 6th, I came to a dressing station, which was set up on a farm near the village of Chenée. In the house I found about fifteen severely wounded German soldiers, of whom four or five had been horribly mutilated; both their eyes had been gouged out, and some had had several fingers cut off. Their wounds were relatively fresh although the blood was already somewhat coagulated. The men were still living and were groaning. It was not possible for me to help them, as I had already ascertained by questioning other wounded men lying in that house, there was no doctor in the place. I also found in the house six or seven Belgian civilians, four of whom were women; these gave drinks to the wounded; the men were entirely passive. I saw no weapons on them, and I cannot say whether they had blood on their hands, because they put them in their pockets.”[19] It is highly probably, is it not? Musketeer Lagershausen falls among ghouls who hastily put their incriminating hands in their pockets and allow him who was “entirely alone” and powerless to walk off and inform against them. Truly they must have been some of the mildest-mannered men who ever cut a throat. (2) Musketeer Paul Blankenberg, of Infantry Regiment No. 165, declares: