This privilege of working with the originals themselves was extended by the Ministry of War. The General Staff issued a _Laissez-Passer_, and gave me an introduction to the fine white-haired old Lieutenant, who is a Russian and German scholar. Together we went word by word over the booklets. I was impressed by the fair-minded attitude of my co-worker. "An honest man," he said, when we came to Harlak's record. "Un brave soldat," he declared of the old reservist, who protested against murder. He was not trying to make a case. He had no need to make a case. The pity of it is that the case has been so thoroughly made by German hands. These diaries have not been doctored in the smallest detail. There they are, as they were taken from the body of the dead man and the pocket of the prisoners. The room where we worked is stuffed with the booklets of German soldiers. Shelves are lined with the black-bound diaries and the little red books of identification carried by each soldier. They overflow upon tables. In this room and a suite adjoining sit the official translators of the French General Staff. I have purposely selected certain of my examples from the official reports of the French Government. I wanted to verify for American "neutrals" that no slightest word had been altered, that no insertions had been made. My first diary was that of a Saxon officer of the Eighth Company, of the 178th Regiment, of the XII Army Corps. He makes his entry for 26 August, 1914. "The lovely village of Gué-d'Hossus, apparently entirely innocent, has been given to the flames. A cyclist is said to have fallen from his machine, and in so doing his rifle was discharged, so they fired at him. Accordingly the male inhabitants were cast into the flames. Such atrocities are not to happen again, one hopes." The German phrases carry the writer's sense of outrage: "Das wunderschöne Dorf Gué-d'Hossus soll ganz unschuldig in Flammen gegangen sein. ... Man hat männliche Einwohner einfach in die Flammen geworfen. Solche Scheusslichkeiten Kommen hoffentlich nich wieder vor." He adds: "At Läffe, about 200 men have been shot. There it was an example for the place; it was inevitable for the innocent to suffer. Even so there ought to be a verification of mere suspicions of guilt before aiming a fusillade at everybody." In the village of Bouvignes on August 23, 1914, he and his men entered a private home.