"What of law and custom! Such thoughts do not stir a 'great nation'. Thus in a leading article of the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_, the demand is made that all the authorities in Brussels--one, the second Burgomaster, is generously excepted--should be immediately seized and subjected to trial in order to expiate the wrongs which, according to fragmentary and highly uncertain reports, were said to have been committed by the people. They demand that the captured city should immediately pay a fine of 500,000,000 marks; that all stores of the conquered territory be requisitioned without paying the inhabitants a single penny for them." Three years later, August 26, 1917, the _Vorwärts_ quoted the following passage from the _Deutsche Tagezeitung_: [Sidenote: Still hold same opinions.] "We have a ring of politicians who hold that might makes right (_Machtpolitiker_) who despise the forces of the inner life and believe that they must eliminate all ethical points of view * * * from foreign and social politics. For them, Germany of the present and of the future is the country of the Krupps and Borsigs, of the Zeppelins and the U-boats. Any idea of a connection between politics and morals is rejected and any reference to the right of a moral method of consideration is ridiculed as delusion and sentimentality." [Sidenote: Belgian warning of danger.] Naturally the reports of the atrocities committed by the Germans and the Emperor's declaration that the war would henceforth assume a terrible character (_grausamen Charakter_) caused grave anxiety among the Belgians. In order to avoid the danger of reprisals, the Belgian Government, at the beginning of the invasion, had every Belgian newspaper publish each day the following notice on its first page, in large print: "TO CIVILIANS. "The Minister of the Interior advises civilians in case the enemy should show himself in their district: "Not to fight; "To utter no insulting or threatening words; "To remain within their houses and close the windows; so that it will be impossible to allege that there was any provocation; "To evacuate any houses or isolated hamlet which the soldiers may occupy in order to defend themselves, so that it cannot be alleged that civilians have fired; "An act of violence committed by a single civilian would be a crime for which the law provides arrest and punishment. It is all the more reprehensible in that it might serve as a pretext for measures of oppression, resulting in bloodshed or pillage, or the massacre of the innocent population with the women and children."