"IV. The German military authorities and Military Courts will enforce the proper execution of this decree. "The Quartermaster General, SAUBERZWEIG. "GREAT HEADQUARTERS, _3d October, 1916_." [Sidenote: Hindenburg's responsibility for deportations.] The responsibility for this atrocious program rests upon the military rulers of Germany, who had labored so zealously to infect the army and the people with the principles of ruthlessness. It is significant that the decree of October 3, 1916, followed hard upon the elevation of Hindenburg to the supreme command with Ludendorf as his chief of staff. In his long report of January 16, 1917, Minister Whitlock says: REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (continued) [Sidenote: Was Bissing against deportations?] "_Then, in August, von Hindenburg was appointed to the supreme command. He is said to have criticized von Bissing's policy as too mild; there was a quarrel; von Bissing went to Berlin to protest, threatened to resign, but did not. He returned, and a German official here said that Belgium would now be subjected to a more terrible régime--would learn what war was. The prophecy has been vindicated. Recently I was told that the drastic measures are really of Ludendorf's inspiration; I do not know. Many German officers say so._" (Continued on p. 54.) If von Bissing had opposed the policy of deportation when his own judgment was overruled, he consented to become the "devil's advocate" and defended the system in public. Especially instructive is the following conversation reported by Mr. F.C. Walcott: VON BISSING'S CONVERSATION WITH MR. WALCOTT. "I went to Belgium to investigate conditions, and while there I had opportunity * * * to talk one day with Governor General von Bissing, who died three or four weeks ago, a man 72 or 73 years old, a man steeped in the 'system,' born and bred to the hardening of the heart which that philosophy develops. There ought to be some new word coined for the process that a man's heart undergoes when it becomes steeped in that system. "I said to him, 'Governor, what are you going to do if England and France stop giving these people money to purchase food?' "He said, 'We have got that all worked out and have had it worked out for weeks, because we have expected this system to break down at any time.' [Sidenote: Bissing says deportation plans were carefully prepared.] "He went on to say, 'Starvation will grip these people in 30 to 60 days. Starvation is a compelling force, and we would use that force to compel the Belgian workingmen, many of them very skilled, to go into Germany to replace the Germans, so that they could go to the front and fight against the English and the French.'