The inhabitants fled through the village. It was horrible. The walls of houses are bespattered with blood and the faces of the dead are hideous to look upon. They were buried at once, some sixty of them. Among them many old women, old men, and one woman pregnant--the whole a dreadful sight. Three children huddled together--all dead. Altar and arches of the church shattered. Telephone communication with the enemy was found there. This morning, Sept. 2, all the survivors were driven out; I saw four little boys carrying on two poles a cradle with a child some five or six months old. The whole makes a fearful sight. Blow upon blow! Thunderbolt on thunderbolt! Everything given over to plunder. I saw a mother with her two little ones--one of them had a great wound in the head and an eye put out. Deserved repression, remarks this soldier: "They had telephone communication with the enemy." And yet, we may recall that by Article 30 of The Hague Convention of 1907, signed on behalf of H.M. the Emperor of Germany, "no collective penalty, pecuniary or other, shall be proclaimed against a population, by reason of individual acts for which the population is not responsible _in solido_." What tribunal during that dreadful night took the pains to establish this joint participation? [Illustration: Figure 2.] II. The unsigned notebook of a soldier of the Thirty-second Reserve Infantry (Fourth Reserve Corps) has this entry: Creil, Sept. 3.--The iron bridge was blown up. For this we set the streets on fire, and shot the civilians. Yet it must be obvious that only the regular troops of the French Engineer Corps could have blown up the iron bridge at Creil; the civilians had no hand in it. As an excuse for these massacres, when any excuse is offered, the notebooks usually note that "civilians" or "francs-tireurs" had fired on the troops. But the "scrap of paper" which Germany subscribed--the Convention of 1907--provides in its first article "the laws, the rights, and the duties are not applicable solely to the army, but also to militia and bodies of volunteers" under certain conditions, of which the main one is that they shall "openly bear arms;" while Article 2 stipulates that "the population of an unoccupied territory, which on the approach of the enemy spontaneously takes up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to organize as provided in Article I, shall be considered as a belligerent, if they bear arms openly and observe the laws and customs of war." [Illustration: Figure 3.] In the light of this text, the bearing of the barbarous recitals which follow may be properly estimated: (a) Notebook of Private Hassemer, (Eighth Corps, Sept. 3, 1914, at Sommepy, Marne.)--Dreadful butchery. Village burned to the ground; the French thrown into the burning houses, civilians and all burned together.