"As a Sovereign Prince, I wish to deal in this matter with the Sovereign who, during fifteen years, called me his friend and has decorated me with the Order of the Knight of the Black Eagle. [Sidenote: Prince comments on German treatment of monuments.] "My conscience and my dignity place me above fear, as also my personal will shall elevate me above regret; but should you destroy the Château de Marchais which is one of the centers of universal science and charity, should you reserve to this archeological and historical gem the treatment you have given to the Cathedral of Rheims--when no reprehensible action has been committed there--the whole world will judge between you and myself. "I tender to Your Excellency the expression of my high regard. "ALBERT, _Sovereign Prince of Monaco_." IV. DEPORTATIONS AND FORCED LABOR. [Sidenote: Advance in humanity--until August, 1914.] Until the present war the whole civilized world has boasted of its advance in humanity. This advance had been marked in many fields, and in none had greater progress been made than in the protection to be given to the private citizen in an invaded country. As far back as 1863, in the _Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field_ the United States declared: [Sidenote: United States treatment of civilians, 1863.] "22. Nevertheless, as civilization has advanced during the last centuries, so has likewise steadily advanced, especially in war on land, the distinction between the private individual belonging to a hostile country and the hostile country itself, with its men in arms. The principle has been more and more acknowledged that the unarmed citizen is to be spared in person, property, and honor as much as the exigencies of war will admit. "23. Private citizens are no longer murdered, enslaved, or carried off to distant parts, and the inoffensive individual is as little disturbed in his private relations as the commander of the hostile troops can afford to grant in the overruling demands of a vigorous war. "24. The almost universal rule in remote times was, and continues to be with barbarous armies, that the private individual of the hostile country is destined to suffer every privation of liberty and protection, and every disruption of family ties. Protection was, and still is with uncivilized people, the exception." [Sidenote: German Government's reversion to barbarism.] These declarations were made in the midst of our Civil War--one of the world's fiercest conflicts. A half-century later, after more than 50 years of progress, the German Government has gone back to the methods used by "barbarous armies" and "uncivilized people." It has deliberately adopted the policy of deporting men and women, boys and girls, and of forcing them to work for their captors; it has even compelled them to make arms and munitions for use against their allies and their own flesh and blood.