No other act of the German Government has aroused such horror and detestation throughout the civilized world. Thousands of helpless men and women, boys and girls, have been enslaved. Families have been broken up. Girls have been carried off to work--or worse--in a strange land, and their relatives have not known where they have been taken, or what their fate has been. This system of forced labor and deportation embraced the whole of Belgium, Poland, and the occupied lands of France. The plan for setting forth the essential facts of the deportations and forced labor is as follows: the documents, that is to say, a small fraction of those which could be cited, will be allowed to tell the story, and only such comments will be added as are needed to enable the reader easily to grasp the connection of events. BELGIUM. "The deportations * * * were the most vivid, shocking, convincing, single happening in all our enforced observation and experience of German disregard of human suffering and human rights in Belgium." Vernon Kellogg, in _Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1917. A summary of the whole situation, down to January, 1917, can be obtained by reading continuously the report of Minister Whitlock, taken from the files of the State Department, which is given in italics on pages 48-49, 53, 54-55, 67-68, 74-75, 78. The insertion of his report at appropriate points has made it possible to avoid all but a minimum of repetition. "_Legation of the United States of America_, "_Brussels, January 16th, 1917_. "_The Honorable the Secretary of State_, "_Washington_. [Sidenote: Horrifying behavior of the Germans in Belgium.] "_Sir: I have had it in mind, and I might say, on my conscience, since the Germans began to deport Belgian workmen early in November, to prepare for the Department a detailed report on this latest instance of brutality, but there have been so many obstacles in the way of obtaining evidence on which a calm and judicious opinion could be based, and one is so overwhelmed with the horror of the thing itself, that it has been, and even now is, difficult to write calmly and justly about it. I have had to content myself with the fragmentary despatches I have from time to time sent to the Department and with doing what I could, little as that can be, to alleviate the distress that this gratuitous cruelty has caused the population of this unhappy land._ [Sidenote: Belgian Government wished to support unemployed Belgians.]