We have the photographs of those chalked houses in
safe-keeping, against such time as there is a direct challenge on the
facts of German methods. But there has come no challenge of facts--we
that have seen have given names, dates and places--only a blanket denial
and counter charges of _franc-tireur_ warfare, as carried on by babies
in arms, white-haired grandmothers and sick women.
In October, 1914, two miles outside Ostend, I was arrested as a spy by
the Belgians and marched through the streets in front of a gun in the
hands of a very young and very nervous soldier. The Etat Major told me
that German officers had been using American passports to enter the
Allied lines and learn the numbers and disposition of troops. They had
to arrest Americans on sight and find out if they were masqueraders. A
little later one of our American ambassadors verified this by saying to
me that American passports had been flagrantly abused for German
purposes.
All this devious inside work, misusing the hospitality of friendly,
trustful nations, this buying up of weak individuals, this laying the
traps on neutral ground--all this treachery in peace times--deserves a
second Bryce report. The atrocities are the product of the treachery.
This patient, insidious spy system, eating away at the vitality of the
Allied powers, results in such horrors as I have witnessed.
THE ATROCITY
When the very terrible accounts of frightfulness visited on peasants by
the invading German army crossed the Channel to London, I believed that
we had one more "formula" story.
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