Many of the Germans, as has been already indicated, do not believe the reports of the atrocities committed by the Belgian civilians and refuse to accept the system of frightfulness. The _Vorwärts_, the leading socialistic paper, which has a very wide circle of readers, has opposed the policy of frightfulness. All honor to its editors who have so courageously opposed powerful military authority! Its editorial, entitled "Our Foes," published August 23, 1914, reads as follows: "We wish to show ourselves humane and friendly towards those whom the fortune of war has played into our hands as prisoners. But we wish also to be humane towards our foes on the field. We must fight them. * * * But fighting does not mean murdering. It does not mean being barbarous. * * * "What should one say when even such an organ as the _Deutsches Offizier-Blatt_ expresses its sympathy with a demand that 'the beasts' who are taken as francs-tireurs should not be killed but only wounded so that they may then be left to a fate 'which makes any help impossible?' Or what should we say when the _Deutsches Offizier-Blatt_ states that 'a punitive destruction even of whole regions' cannot 'afford full recompense for the bones of a single murdered Pomeranian grenadier' Those are the desires of blood-thirsty fanatics and we are thoroughly ashamed of ourselves because it is possible that there are people among us who urge such things. Such disclosures in themselves, even if they are not followed out, are likely to place our fighting quite in the wrong before all the world. * * * Let us show knightliness even though we are of the proletariat. Let us take such pains that when the fight has finally been fought it will also not be so difficult again to work in common as brothers with our class associates on the other side of the border." On the following day, August 24, 1914, the _Vorwärts_ returned to the attack in an editorial "Against Barbarism." [Sidenote: Some Germans demand "orgies of barbarism."] * * * "One might, in the first place, possibly believe that such a demand for a bloody vengeance [against alleged Belgian outrages] emanates from a single disease-racked brain; but it appears that whole groups among certain classes who represent German _Kultur_ want to indulge in orgies of barbarism and to devise a whole system for the purpose of organizing 'a war of revenge.'