“I now took the road to Tirlemont, marching all the time among German camps. Once I was arrested. Again they wanted to shoot me, insisting that I was a student of the University of Louvain. The Germans pretend it was the students who caused the population in Louvain to shoot at them. However, my youth saved me, and I was set at liberty. NO MONEY AND NO WORK “All my money, the twenty francs which you presented me and my salary for five weeks, as well as my little savings, are lying in Brussels, and I cannot get at them. . . I cannot work, because there is no work to be got. I cannot cross over to England, as, to do this, it is necessary that there should be a whole family. In these horrible circumstances, I respectfully take the liberty of addressing you, and I hope you will aid me as best you can. I swear to you that I shall pay you back all that you give me. I have here in Antwerp no place, no family. The town will not give me any aid, because I have no papers to prove my identity. I threw all my papers away for fear of the Germans. I count then on you with a firm hope to pay you back later. “Please accept, dear sir, my respectful greetings.” ---- ----. CHAPTER XIV THE UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES OF “CIVILIZED” WARFARE DISCLOSURES MADE IN FRENCH OFFICIAL REPORTS AND NOTEBOOKS OF GERMAN SOLDIERS -- NOTHING SACRED -- HIDEOUS FACES OF THE DEAD -- WOMEN FORCED TO DIG GRAVES -- GETTING HARDENED -- WHOLESALE PILLAGE -- MUTILATIONS OF THE DEAD AND WOUNDED -- THE FRENCH REPORT. The French official report on German atrocities contained records of such horror that the whole civilized world stood aghast. Here at last was war with all its multitudinous attendant crimes, more horrible than the actual warfare itself because so causeless and so bestial. Many stories of atrocities had been told by travelers and war correspondents abroad; the official report from France verified these earlier accounts, though there was still a vestige of doubt because it was a French report of German atrocities; and then to back up this record and remove the last shadow of disbelief, came the testimony of the Germans against themselves, through the “War Diaries” of German soldiers, many of which naturally fell into the hands of the enemy. Paragraphs selected from these notebooks follow: “In this way we destroyed eight dwellings and their inhabitants. In one of the houses we bayoneted two men, with their wives and a young girl eighteen years old. The young one almost unmanned me, her look was so innocent! But we could not master the excited troop, for at such times they are no longer men--they are beasts.” NOTHING SACRED