I was fortified against unproved
allegations by thirteen years of newspaper and magazine investigation
and by professional experience in social work. A few months previously I
had investigated the "poison needle" stories of how a girl, rendered
insensible by a drug, was borne away in a taxicab to a house of ill
fame. The cases proved to be victims of hysteria. At another time, I had
looked up certain incidents of "white slavery," where young and innocent
victims were suddenly and dramatically ruined. I had found the cases to
be more complex than the picturesque statements of fiction writers
implied. Again, by the courtesy of the United States Government,
Department of Justice, I had studied investigations into the relation
of a low wage to the life of immorality. These had shown me that many
factors in the home, in the training, in the mental condition, often
contributed to the result. I had grown sceptical of the "plain"
statement of a complex matter, and peculiarly hesitant in accepting
accounts of outrage and cruelty. It was in this spirit that I crossed to
Belgium. To this extent, I had a pro-German leaning.
On September 7, 1914, with two companions, I was present at the skirmish
between Germans and Belgians at Melle, a couple of miles east of Ghent.
We walked to the German line, where a blue-eyed young Hussar officer,
Rhinebeck, of Stramm, Holstein, led us into a trap by permitting us to
walk along after him and his men as they rode back to camp beyond Melle.
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