In the face of such evidence, much of it furnished by correspondents who were eye-witnesses of what occurred, the main contention of the Belgian and Bryce Reports falls to the ground. The Belgian criticism of these statements as "taken from second-rate papers," "proving nothing," "unimportant," is obviously futile. That the German troops were confronted with a wide-spread and determined opposition on the part of armed civilians in flagrant violation of the Laws of War must be accepted as a fact established by evidence varied, cumulative and irresistible. On the other hand it is clear that no final verdict can be passed on the vexed question of the Belgian atrocities in general, until the unsworn evidence accumulated against the Kaiser's troops has been met to a much fuller extent. The White Book does not cover more than the incidents which occurred at Dinant, Aerschot, Andenne, Louvain, and the neighbourhood of Visé. While therefore it disproves, in conjunction with the Belgian evidence cited above, the propaganda plea that the story of civilian attacks was a myth, it does not of course deal with more than a portion of the ground covered by the British and Belgian Reports. Before any complete decision can be reached we should require official replies from the German Government to a variety of alleged outrages in dozens of villages like Gomery, Latour, Ethe, the horrible charge of the shooting of the Valckenaers family at Thildonck, and so on. There were certain cases, one of them known to the writer, in which mistakes and misunderstandings led to the execution of innocent civilians. Full allowance, too, must be made for the existence in all conscript armies of brutal and criminal types--not confined to the rank and file--and for the demoralising effects to which all the armies of the war were exposed whenever an abundant supply of wines and spirits was easily accessible by purchase or looting. Nevertheless the fact that the main position taken up by the Allied Reports is obviously untenable, coupled with the significant refusal to allow the official German defence access to our shores, and the deliberate and disgraceful circulation of pseudo-atrocity stories during the war, would seem to suggest that as regards some at least of the alleged incidents lying outside the White Book suspense of judgment, pending further researches, may be the wisest attitude. Some day a useful and interesting monograph may be written on the whole question of atrocities in war. Careful investigation would, I am convinced, yield psychological results of permanent value, and establish the fact that the mental attitude which originates or accepts atrocity stories is frequently based on an amazing inter-mixture of credulity, mal-observation, megalomaniac impulses and deception, conscious or unconscious.