The reader will find in the pages which we herewith offer him a detailed¹ picture of the cruelties committed by Germany in the war which involves half the nations of Europe.

In this war, which she let loose upon the world, Germany is not attacking merely armies and fortresses². She takes her victims even from the civil population, and systematically³ harries⁴ even the property of private individuals. She revives under our eyes the times of Attila: to every soldier whom she dispatches against her enemies she recalls the saying of the Scourge⁵ of God that “wherever he rode there the grass must cease to grow.” She devotes herself to pillage⁶ and destruction; aye, and to pollution and desecration⁷. From her captains, her leaders, her diplomats⁸ down to her plain citizens and private soldiers she has disclosed her barbarous spirit, her base instincts; under the blazing light of the devouring⁹ flames which she has kindled¹⁰ she lays broad the infamous¹¹ groundwork and shameful¹² foundations of what she dares to call her civilisation¹³, and which, on the plea of its superiority, she claims to impose upon the whole universe.

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