"Instead of agreeing to such a proposal, we have seen the occupying authorities systematically remove the machinery, implements, machines of all kinds, the engines and raw materials, metals, leather, and wool, limit production, aggravate continually the difficulties of transactions. When communes or committees have desired to employ workmen without employment on works of public utility, obstacles have been thrown in their way and finally in many cases their undertakings have been stopped and broken. In a word, as fast as the most tireless efforts were strained to employ as many hands as possible, other men were constantly thrown out of work. [Sidenote: And proudly praise the Belgian workman.] "You state also that unemployment is caused by the laborers' hostility to work. The whole past of our working class protests against this accusation with every bit of energy that still remains in them. Where is there to be found in the whole world a working class which has made of such a small country such a great industrial and commercial power? And we, who for the last 25 years have been the enthusiastic witnesses of the magnificent efforts of our brother workmen, in the matter of their material and moral betterment, we proudly affirm that it is not among their ranks that one can find men so degraded as to prefer to receive a charitable assistance which barely furnishes them with sufficient food to an honest wage given in remuneration for free and fruitful work. "What is true, however, is that the Belgian workmen, conforming to the same article 52 of the Hague Convention which only admits requisitions of labor 'for the needs of the army of occupation and in case these requisitions do not imply an obligation to take part in the war against their country,' have refused the most tempting offers, not wishing to build trenches nor to repair forts nor to work in factories which manufacture war materials. This was their right and their duty. Their attitude deserved respect and not the most humiliating of punishments. "You refer to your decrees of August 15th, 1915, and of May 15th, 1916, in which are mentioned the possible punishment of any workmen who receive support and refuse work suited to their capacities and carrying with it a proper wage. Those who know with what care and with what minute detail the conditions, under which the unemployed have the right to receive assistance, have been established might perhaps think that these menaces were, to say the least, useless. But as you yourself say, these decrees declare in their article 2 that every motive of refusal to work will be considered valid if it is admitted by international law. [Sidenote: Laborers see through the German scheme.]