The picture projected by the Great German Literary Staff is too imaginative. Think of that Army of the Invasion with its army corps riding down through village streets--the Uhlan cavalry, the innumerable artillery, the dense endless infantry, the deadly power and swing of it all--and then see the girl-child of Alost, and the white-haired woman, eighty years old--aiming their rifles at that cavalcade. It is a literary creation, not a statement of fact. I have been in villages when German troops were entering, had entered, and were about to enter. I saw helpless, terror-stricken women huddled against the wall, children hiding in their skirts, old men dazed and vague. Then, as the blue-gray uniforms appeared at the head of the street, with sunlight on the pikes and helmets, came the cry--half a sob, "Les Allemands." The German fabrications are unworthy. Let the little slain children, and the violated women, sleep in honor. Your race was stern enough in doing them to death. Let them alone, now that you have cleared them from your path to Paris. Doctor George Sarton, of the University of Ghent writes me: "During the last months, the Germans have launched new slanders against Belgium. Their present tactics are more discreet and seem to be successful. Many 'neutral' travelers--especially Americans and Swiss--have been to Belgium to see the battlefields or, perhaps, to get an idea of what such an occupation by foreign soldiers exactly amounts to. Of course, these men can see nothing without the assistance of the German authorities, and they can but see what is shown to them. The greater their curiosity, the more courtesy extended to them, the more also they feel indebted to their German hosts. These are well aware of it: the sightseers are taken in their net, and with a very few exceptions, their critical sense is quickly obliterated. We have recently been shown one of the finest specimens of these American tourists: Mr. George B. McCellan, professor of History at Princeton, who made himself ridiculous by writing a most superficial and inaccurate article for the "Sunday Times Magazine". "When the good folks of Belgium recollect the spying business that was carried on at their expense by their German 'friends,' they are not likely to trust much their German enemies. They know that the Germans are quite incapable of keeping to themselves any fact that they may learn--in whatever confidential and intimate circumstances--if this fact is of the smallest use to their own country. As it is perfectly impossible to trust them, the best is to avoid them, and that is what most Belgians are doing.