Secondly, the devastations of the invaded countries (incendiarism, murder, pillage, and atrocities) appear to be systematically pursued by order of the leaders, and are not due to acts of indiscipline. It is necessary to emphasise this two-fold characteristic of the German proceedings. They constitute a negation of every human and international law, and bring back modern warfare, after centuries of civilisation, to the methods of barbarian invasions. We are confident that such facts will arouse the indignation of neutral States, and will help to make clear the meaning of the struggle which we are carrying on for the respect of law and the independence of nations. To the communiqué were attached ten separate memoranda, setting forth various specific charges against the Germans. The first memorandum dealt with the dispatch of wounded prisoners and similar atrocities. A report from the Commander-in-Chief of the eastern armies, dated August 10th, stated that a considerable number of wounded had been finished off by shots fired point-blank into their faces, while others had been deliberately stamped and tramped upon. The Bavarian infantry systematically burned villages through which they had passed, although there had been no artillery fire which could provoke such measures. The second memorandum detailed the circumstances of the bombardment of Pont-à-Mousson, an unfortified place, in violation of The Hague Convention, and the use of dum-dum bullets by the Germans was dealt with in the third memorandum. On August 10th, after an engagement, a French surgeon found a clip containing five cartridges with cylindro-conical bullets, the noses of which had been filed. Similar bullets were found in the bodies of French soldiers, and were forwarded to the Ministry of War. In the fifth memorandum the German allegation that the civilian population had taken part in the war was strongly denied, and was declared to be nothing but a pretext put forward to justify the atrocities committed by the German troops and give them the appearance of reprisals. From the beginning of the war the Germans had made a practice of burning undefended villages and of assassinating the inhabitants, and evidence of this was to be found in letters and notebooks taken from Germans, dead or prisoners. A notebook found on a corpse of a German lieutenant contained the following remark: "We have fired the church of Villerupt and shot the inhabitants. We pretended that scouts had taken refuge in the tower of the church and had fired on us from there. The fact was, it was not the inhabitants of Villerupt, but Customs officers and forest guards who fired on us."