"'War Office, No. 1866. The investigations made, in especial the hearing under oath of private Rössner and several officers in his regiment, have resulted in the following particulars being obtained: At the beginning of the campaign as the troops marched into a village--name unknown--they saw by the roadside two or three dead civilians. One was apparently a boy of about thirteen, while the other was an adult with a dark coat. It was not established whether this was the body of a priest. Furthermore, we have not been able to discover by whom, or for what reason, these people were shot. "'At that time the story quoted by you about a _curé_ and a boy, was told as a "rumour" to all the troops marching through. It is impossible after the lapse of time to test the truth of the narrative. "'Signed by order, "'BAUER AND WAGNER.'"[127] [Footnote 127: Ibid., pp. 54-5.] The above document may be said, without presumption, to possess historic importance. It is a frank admission by the German War Office that Belgian civilians were actually shot down without rhyme or reason. Apparently German soldiers (!) had a _carte blanche_ to shoot whom they liked, without rendering or being expected to render a report of their doings. The Rev. Duhr writes: "The incredible speed with which these lying tales of horror spread on all sides must be classed as a morbid phenomenon, a sort of blood-cult. Their consequences could only be to act upon the national soul as a stimulant, inspiring fear and brutality."[128] [Footnote 128: Ibid., p. 9.] The author of this work is prepared to go much farther than the Rev. Father, and maintain that the foul, diseased imaginations which could invent such monstrous horrors are also capable of perpetrating them. They did not spring from the imagination of an Edgar Allan Poe, but arose in the minds of Germany's brutal peasantry and bloodthirsty working classes, who together every year commit in times of peace 9,000 acts of brutal, immoral bestiality, and maliciously wound 175,000 of their fellow German citizens.[129] [Footnote 129: _Vide_ Vol. 267 _Vierteljahrshefte_, published by the Berlin Government, 1914.] To-day Germany shouts in ecstasy that she is the chosen power of God; that her _Kultur_ will regenerate the world. Let it first regenerate the "Augean Stable" known to the world as Germany. Without further comment readers are left to form their own opinion of a Press which breeds such filth, and the cultural level of a people which consumes such garbage. But the world owes a debt of gratitude to the Rev. Bernhard Duhr, S.J., and the "Pax" Society in Cologne.