"And what I say of Nancy is true of the other towns, particularly at Lunéville, where a bomb falling in the full market killed 45 persons, of whom 40 were women. "Adding childishness to violence, with a craving for the histrionic, obsessed by the desire to strike the imagination (or let us say more simply having the souls of 'cabotins'), these outlaws have conceived the bombardment of Nancy by a 380 cannon on the first of January--New Year's, the day of gifts--and on the first of July. In that New Year bombardment they so arranged it that the first shell fell on Nancy at the last stroke of midnight. I will show the little furnished house which that shell crushed, killing six persons, of whom four were women. "For a long while we were content to suffer those crimes, protesting in the name of law. We did not wish to defend ourselves. We shrink from the thought of reprisals. But public opinion ended by forcing the hand of the Government. Unanimously the nation has demanded that, each time an undefended French town is bombarded by the Germans by aeroplane, Zeppelin or cannon, a reply shall be made to that violation of the laws of war and of the rights of humanity by the bombardment of a German town. "I wish to say to you, and I beg you to make it known to your noble nation: it is not with serenity that we see our French soldiers do that work. It is with profound sadness that we resign ourselves to those reprisals. Those methods of defense are imposed upon us. Since all considerations of humanity are to-day alien to the German soul, we are reduced for the protection of our wives and our children to the policy of reprisals and to the assassination in our turn of the children and the women in Germany. The Germans have vociferously rejoiced in the crimes committed by their soldiers; they have made an illumination for the day of the _Lusitania_ crime; they have delighted in the thought that on the first of January the children of Nancy received, as New Year's presents, shells from a 380 cannon. The acts of reprisal to which we are forced do not rejoice us in the least; they sadden us. We speak of them with soberness. And we have here reason for hating Kultur all the more. We French hate the Germans less for the crimes which they have committed on us than for the acts of violence contrary to the laws of war which they have forced us to commit in our turn, and for the reprisals on their children and their women. "I thank you for having come here. You will look about you, you will ask questions, you will easily see the truth. That truth you will make known to your great and free nation. We shall await with confidence the judgment of its conscience." IX AN APPEAL TO THE SMALLER AMERICAN COMMUNITIES