I have, moreover, sought for documents not only incontestably genuine but of unquestioned authority. Accusation is easy, while proof is difficult. No belligerent has ever been troubled to find mountains of testimony, true or false, against his enemy; but were this evidence gathered by the most exalted magistrates, under the most solemn judicial sanction, it must unfortunately long remain useless; until the accused has full opportunity to controvert it, every one is free to treat it as false or, at the best, as controvertible. For this reason I shall avoid resting the case upon Belgian or French statements, though I know them to be true. My purpose has been to bring forward such testimony that no man living, be he even a German, should be privileged to cast a doubt upon it. German crimes will be established by German documents. These will be taken mainly from the "War Diaries," which Article 75 of the German Army Regulations for Field Service enjoins upon soldiers to keep during their marches, and which were seized by the French upon the persons of their prisoners, as military papers, as authorized by Article 4 of The Hague Convention of 1907. The number of these is daily increasing, and I trust that some day, for the edification of all, the complete collection may be lodged in the Germanic section of manuscripts in the National Library. Meantime, the Marquis de Dampierre, paleographer and archivist, graduate of the Ecole des Chartes, is preparing, and will shortly publish, a volume in which the greater part of these notebooks will be minutely described, transcribed, and clarified. Personally, I have only examined about forty of them, but they will answer my purpose, by presenting relevant extracts, furnishing the name, rank, and regiment of the author, with indications of time and place. Classification is difficult, mainly because ten lines of a single text not infrequently furnish evidence of a variety of offenses. I must take them almost at random, grouping them under such analogies or association of ideas or images as they may offer. I. The first notebook at hand is that of a soldier of the Prussian Guard, the Gefreiter Paul Spielmann, (of Company I, First Brigade of the Infantry Guard.) He tells the story of an unexpected night alarm on the 1st of September in a village near Blamont. The bugle sounds, and the Guard, startled from sleep, begins the massacre, (Figs. 1 and 2:) [Illustration: Figure 1.]