Before four o'clock all Belgian and French soldiers must be turned over to us as prisoners of war. Citizens who fail to do this will be sentenced to hard labor for life in Germany. At four o'clock all the houses in the city will be searched. Every soldier found will be shot. Ten hostages will be taken for each street and held by German guards. If there is any trouble in any street, the hostages for that street will be shot. Any crime against the German army may bring about the destruction of the entire city and every one in it. Frightfulness was taught not only to officers and soldiers but to all the German people, and especially to the children in the schools. One of the selections read and recited, even in the primary schools of Germany before the war, was "The Hymn of Hate" by a German poet, which in English prose is in substance as follows: Hate! Germany! hate! Cut the throats of your hordes of enemies. Put on your armor and with your bayonets pierce the heart of every one of them. Take no prisoners. Strike them dead. Change their fertile lands into deserts. Hate! Germany! hate! Victory will come from your rage and hate. Break the skulls of your enemies with blows from your axes and the butts of your guns. They are timid, cowardly beasts. They are not men. Let your mailed fist execute the judgment of God. A German general told Edith Cavell, when she was pleading in behalf of some homeless Belgian women and children, "Pity is a waste of feeling--a moral parasite injurious to the health." The whole idea of the German War Book is given in the statement made by a great German: "True strategy means to hit your enemy and to hit him hard, to inflict on the inhabitants of invaded towns the greatest possible amount of suffering, so that they shall become tired of the struggle and cry for peace. You must leave the people of the country through which you march only their eyes to weep with." And these rules and teachings came at a time when nations were seeking to do away with war forever and were agreeing upon rules that, if war should come, would make it less horrible and that would in particular spare non-combatants. A German soldier wrote to the American minister, Mr. Gerard, early in the war while Mr. Gerard was still in Berlin: To the American Government, Washington, U.S.A.: Englishmen who have surrendered are shot down in small groups. With the French one is more considerate. I ask whether men let themselves be taken prisoner in order to be disarmed and shot down afterwards? Is that chivalry in battle?