[Footnote 111: "Mit den Königin-Fusilieren durch Belgien" ("With the Queen Fusiliers through Belgium"), by H. Knutz, p. 13.] That is the utmost sympathy which any German has expressed for Belgium. The German public is fully informed of all that has been done, and considers that _they_ have been brutally, wrongfully treated. Lord Bryce's report as well as the French and Belgian official reports have been dealt with at considerable length in the German Press, but receive no credence whatever; they are lies, all lies invented to blacken the character of poor, noble, generous Germany! Germans are well aware of the awful number of brutal crimes which their men-folk commit year by year at home. Yet they are absolutely convinced that these same men are immediately transformed into chivalrous knights so soon as they don the Kaiser's uniform. They seem incapable of conceiving that a race which debauches its own women, can hardly be expected to show the crudest forms of respect to the women of an enemy people. Herr Knutz--an elementary school-teacher in civilian attire, and a non-commissioned officer when in the German army--seems to possess some rays of human feeling. "Just as I was leaving the fort I saw seven or eight Belgian civilians guarded by our men with fixed bayonets. They were charged with firing on German soldiers. I must say that the lamentations of these men--aged from 20 to 50--made a deep impression on me. They had thrown themselves upon their knees, and with raised hands were weeping and beseeching that their lives might be spared. "The villagers are exceedingly ignorant, and when their land is in danger, believe themselves justified in seizing any old shot-gun or revolver which lies at hand. Probably some of the more prudent are aware that it is a mad enterprise, but the instinct of self-defence is so innate in the simple country people that advice does not help in the least." (Von Bethmann-Hollweg and von Tirpitz justify the use of gas, the sinking of merchant vessels containing women and children, the dropping of bombs on open towns, etc., etc., by the plea of self-defence.--Author.) "But it is otherwise with regard to the atrocities on our wounded; these are a stain on Belgium's national honour which will not easily be wiped out. A German would never perpetrate such monstrous crimes,[112] and that we can say without any overweening opinion of ourselves."[113] [Footnote 112: This is hypocrisy or ignorance.--Author.] [Footnote 113: Ibid., pp. 18-19.] Herr Knutz offers no proof of the alleged atrocities; he has heard of them, believes and repeats the story. I have some fifty German books describing the war in Belgium, and in all of them similar legends are mentioned, but in no single instance is a case proved and nailed down. No victim is named, and the scene of the alleged atrocity is never given, hence it seems to be the usual German artifice to make _Stimmung_, _i.e._, to raise feeling.