After this first reverse, the Germans only attacked the Allies in order to throw on their shoulders the responsibility for the woes which they themselves were inflicting on their victims. When some English aeroplanes visited Brussels, on September 26th, 1915, a few people were killed and many more wounded. The German press declared immediately that this was due to the want of skill of the airmen, who dropped the bombs indiscriminately over the town. We possess now material proof that the people were killed, not by bombs dropped from the air, but by fragments of shells fired from guns. This can only be explained in one way. The German gunners must have timed their shells so that they should not burst in the air, but only when falling on the ground. This method of propaganda may cost a few lives, but it is certainly clever. It might well be calculated to stir indignation in the hearts of the people against the Allies and at the same time to serve as a warning to enemy headquarters to the effect: "Whenever you send your aeroplanes over Belgian towns, we are going to make the population pay for it." The same kind of argument is used at the present moment with regard to the wholesale deportations which are going on in Belgium. To justify his slave-raids, Governor von Bissing denounces England's blockade. It is the economic policy of England--not German requisitions--which has ruined Belgium and caused unemployment: "If there are any objections to be made about this state of affairs you must address them to England, who, through her policy of isolation, has rendered the coercive measures necessary." [1] But the argument is used more for the sake of discussion than in the real hope of convincing the public. General von Bissing can have very few illusions left as to the state of mind of the Belgian population. He knows that every Belgian worker, would answer, with the members of the Commission Syndicale: "All the Allies have agreed to let some raw material necessary to our industry enter Belgium, under the condition, naturally, that no requisitions should be made by the occupying power, and that a neutral commission should control the destination of the manufactured articles." [2] Or, more emphatically still, with Cardinal Mercier: "England generously allows some foodstuffs to enter Belgium under the control of neutral countries ... She would certainly allow raw materials to enter the country under the same control, if Germany would only pledge herself to leave them to us and not to seize the manufactured products of our industry."