But in the spring of 1916 we know him to be a man portraying the truth, giving us the doings of the German Emperor and his satellites in colored pictures, and a very mild interpretation of them at that. For it is a fact that no man could bear to look at or consider the real truth of what William of Germany has done through the hands of others, of the horrors that he has committed against women who cannot here accuse him, against children of whose very names he knows nothing. But their accusations are heard and their names remembered by those whose eternal business it is to hear and record, and the silence of those civilized nations who have said nothing before the doings of the infamous One has spoken where silence is heard as well as speech. Just as St. Paul stood by in silence at the martyrdom of St. Stephen, so have they stood at the martyrdom of these Innocents, and just as he uttered that lamentable cry in the Temple of Jerusalem, so will they cry in his very words, but without his justification of holiness: “I stood by and consented.” H. DE VERE STACPOOLE. [Illustration] _The Exhumation of the Martyrs of Aerschot_ Read here a few sentences from the sworn and sifted testimony of witnesses who saw what happened at Aerschot in August, 1914. “When the war broke out a German whom I knew well by sight had been living at Aerschot some three years. He had no apparent occupation, but lived on his means in a small house. Occasionally he was away for some time. On the outbreak of war he was expelled from Belgium. He came back with the German troops and pointed out to them all houses and other property belonging to the burgomaster, and the Germans destroyed it all. Many civilians in Aerschot were killed by the Germans. I myself saw some forty dead bodies, including three women. They had been shot.... In one house the wife of a man whom I know well was burned alive. Her husband broke both legs while attempting to rescue her.... The Germans with their rifles prevented anyone going to help this man, and he had to drag himself along the street, with his legs broken, as best he could....” “I saw some German infantry soldiers kill with bayonets two women who were standing on their doorsteps....” “There we saw a whole street burning.... We heard children and beasts crying in the flames.” “The Germans deliberately fired beyond us at four women, a child of 11 or 12 years of age, an infant of six months (about) and four other children who were clinging to their mothers’ skirts. The infant was in its mother’s arms, and was riddled with shot, which passed through it into the mother’s body. While she was trying to crawl into safety on her knees the Germans still fired at her until she died.” “I saw the body of a little boy about 6½ or 7 years of age, with four bayonet wounds in it. It was stiff and propped against a wall.”