Readers who are acquainted with the official record of brutal crimes committed year by year in Germany and the haughty contempt for civilian rights which the whole German army has consistently shown in the Fatherland, during the orderly times of peace, will require little imagination to conceive that this same army would show still less consideration for civilians in a country which they were wrongfully invading. The German Press during the last thirty years, as well as many books published in the Fatherland, contains ample proof of German brutality at home, and above all, of the legal brutality of German non-commissioned and commissioned officers. How can Germany expect the world to believe, that these same men, were transformed into decent human beings by the mere act of stepping over the Belgian frontier? Granted that vulgar elements of the Belgian population did transgress, there still remains incontrovertible evidence that almost unheard-of kindness was shown to the invading army, and that Germans had displayed brutal insolence to Belgians before a state of war had been declared. Nearly every single letter from soldiers, published in German papers, records the fact that in the villages through which they passed they were given water, wine and food, while payment was in many cases refused. It is part of Germany's policy to blacken Belgium's character in order to justify her own ruthlessness--naturally Wolff's Agency was one of the principal tools to that end. "Much as we condemn the excesses of the Belgians, still we must not wreak vengeance on the whole nation as a section of our Press demands. Have not harmless and defenceless foreigners been terribly ill-treated in Germany without distinction of sex? Have not shops and restaurants been demolished in hundreds, wherever a French word was to be met? And the rage of the German masses has found an outlet not only against foreigners, but against good German patriots and even German officers."[99] [Footnote 99: _Leipziger Volkszeitung_, August 12th. This journal as well as the _Fränkische Tagespost_ names Wolff's Agency as their authority in more than one issue.] The same journal on the preceding day deplored that "we ourselves are not free from guilt." It recounts how German reservists, when leaving Antwerp and Brussels, had sung their national songs in a loud, provocative manner, and taunted the bystanders with such remarks as: "In three days we shall be here again!" According to the same authority German residents had insulted the populace by displaying their national flag; and German employers had been among the first to discharge employees of their own nationality, without salary in lieu of notice, thus increasing the difficulties of German residents in Belgium.