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“Until now we have maintained an attitude of deliberate reserve upon the innumerable stories of German atrocities which have reached us,” says the Times. “We published without comment the unanswerable list of shocking excesses committed by the German troops, which was sent to England by the Belgian authorities. When a German Zeppelin cast bombs upon ill-fated women asleep in their beds at Antwerp, we did no more than explain the bearings of international law upon conduct which has met with universal reprobation in Europe and America. But now the real object of German savagery is self-revealed, not only by the effacement of Louvain, but by the shameful admissions sent forth from the wireless station at Berlin. On Thursday night the following official notification regarding Belgium came vibrating through the air:—

“ ‘The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which by their frightfulness would be a warning to the whole country.’

“Such is the cynical nature of the German apologia for the destruction of Louvain. Such is the character of the warfare of the modern Huns. They seek to strike terror into the hearts of their foes by methods which belong to the days of the old barbaric hosts, who were thought to have vanished from the world for ever.

“There must be no mistake about the apportionment of blame for this and numberless other crimes. We have listened too long to the bleatings of professors bemused by the false glamour of a philosophy which the Germans themselves have thrust aside. The Kaiser and his people are alike responsible for the acts of their Government and their troops, and there can be no differentiation when the day of reckoning comes.

“The Kaiser could stop these things with a word. Instead, he pronounces impious benedictions upon them. Daily he appeals for the blessing of God upon the dreadful deeds which are staining the face of Western Europe—the ravaged villages, the hapless non-combatants hanged or shot, the women and children torn from their beds by cowards and made to walk before them under fire, all the infamies which have eternally disgraced German ‘valour.’ We are no longer dependent upon hearsay for these stories. Our own men are bringing them back from the front. Let there be no mistake as to where the responsibility rests.”