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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. We walked for a quarter mile. At our right a barn
was burning brightly. On our left the homes of the peasants of Melle
were burning, twenty-six little yellow brick houses, each with a
separate fire. It was not a conflagration, by one house burning and
gradually lighting the next. The fires were well started and at equal
intensity in each house. The walls between the houses were still intact.
The twenty-six fires burned slowly and thoroughly through the night.
These three thousand German soldiers and their officers were neither
drunk nor riotous. The discipline was excellent. The burning was a
clean-cut, cold-blooded piece of work. It was a piece of punishment.
Belgian soldiers had resisted the German army. If Belgian soldiers
resist, peasant non-combatants must be killed. That inspires terror. That
teaches the lesson: "Do not oppose Germany. It is death to oppose
her--death to your wife and child."
We were surrounded by soldiers and four sentries put over us. Peasants
who walked too close to the camp were brought in and added to our
group of prisoners, till, all told, we numbered thirty. A peasant lying
next to me watched his own house burn to pieces.
Another of the peasants was an old man, of weak mind. He kept
babbling to himself. It would have been obvious to a child that he was
foolish. The German sentry ordered silence. The old fellow muttered on
in unconsciousness of his surroundings. The sentry drew back his
bayonet to run him through. A couple of the peasants pulled the old
man flat to the ground and stifled his talking.

At five o'clock in the morning German stretcher bearers marched
behind the burned houses. Out of the house of the peasant lying next to
me three bodies were carried. He broke into a long, slow sobbing.
At six o'clock a monoplane sailed overhead, bringing orders to our
detachment. The troops intended for Ghent were turned toward
Brussels. The field artillery, which had been rolled toward the west,
was swung about to the east. An officer headed us toward Ghent and let
us go. If the Germans had marched into Ghent we would have been of
value as a cover for the troops. But for the return to Brussels we were
only a nuisance. We hurried away toward Ghent. As we walked
through a farmyard we saw a farmer lying at full length dead in his
dooryard. We passed the convent school of Melle, where Catholic
sisters live. The front yard was strewed with furniture, with bedding,
with the contents of the rooms. The yard was about four hundred feet
long and two hundred feet deep. It was dotted with this intimate
household stuff for the full area. I made inquiry and found that no sister
had been violated or bayoneted. The soldiers had merely ransacked the
place.
One of my companions in this Melle experience was A. Radclyffe
Dugmore, formerly of the Players Club, New York, a well-known
naturalist, author of books on big game in Africa, the beaver, and the
caribou. For many years he was connected with Doubleday, Page & Co.
His present address is Crete Hill, South Nutfield, Surrey.
At other times and places, German troops have not rested content with
the mere terrorization and humiliation of religious sisters. On February
12, 1916, the German Wireless from Berlin states that Cardinal Mercier
was urged to investigate the allegation of German soldiers attacking
Belgian nuns, and that he declined. As long as the German Government
has seen fit to revive the record of their own brutality, I present what
follows.
A New York physician whom I know sends me this statement:
"I was dining in London in the middle of last April with a friend, a