The Belgian Government has made an attempt to free itself from this responsibility by attributing the blame for the events to the rage of destruction of the German troops, who are said to have taken to deeds of violence without any reason. They have appointed a Commission for investigating the outrages attributed to the German troops, and have made the findings of this Commission the subject of Diplomatic complaint. This attempt to pervert the facts into their opposite has completely failed. The German Army is accustomed to make war only against hostile armies, and not against peaceful inhabitants. The incontrovertible fact that from the beginning a defensive struggle in the interests of self-protection was forced upon the German troops in Belgium by the population of the country cannot be done away with by the inquiry of any commission. The narratives of fugitives which have been put together by the Belgian Commission, and which are characterised as the result of careful and impartial investigation, bear the stamp of untrustworthiness, if not of malicious invention. In consequence of the conditions of things, the Commission was not in a position to test the reports which were conveyed to it as to their correctness or to grasp the connection of events. Their accusations against the German Army are, therefore, nothing but low calumniations, which are simply deprived of all their weight by the documentary evidence which is before us. The struggle of the German troops with the Belgian civil population at Aerschot did not, as is suggested on the Belgian side, arise through the German officers violating the honour of the Burgomaster’s family, but because the population ventured on a well-considered attack on the Commanding Officer, and murdered him treacherously (Appendix A). At Dinant it was not harmless, peaceful citizens who fell as a sacrifice to the German arms, but murderers who treacherously attacked German soldiers, and thereby involved the troops in a struggle which destroyed the city (Appendix C). In Louvain the struggle of the civil population did not arise through fleeing German troops being by mistake involved in a hand-to-hand contest with their comrades who were entering the town, but because the population, blinded as they were and unable to understand what was going on, thought they could destroy the returning German troops without danger (Appendix D). Moreover, in Louvain, as in other towns, the conflagration was only started by the German troops when bitter necessity required it. The plan of the destruction of Louvain (Appendix D 50) shows clearly how the troops confined themselves to destroying only those parts of the city in which the inhabitants opposed them in a treacherous and murderous manner. It was indeed German troops who, so far as was possible, tried to save the artistic treasures, not only of Louvain, but also of other towns. On the German side, a Special Commission has shown to what a high degree