When foreigners of neutral countries-American s Hollanders, Swiss, Spanish-ask us the way in which the German war has been carried on, and wish us to narrate certain scenes whose horror, in spite of ourselves, we have verified, we soften the impression, feeling how far the naked truth passes the limits of probability.

Nevertheless, when you have been placed in the presence of the entire reality, when you have been able to analyze the causes, some distant, others immediate, of what one of your Generals-before the ruins of the little village of Schallenlez-Diest-called the "tragic error"; when you hear the influences which your soldiers underwent at the moment of their entry into Belgium, and in the intoxication of their first successes, the unlikelihood of the truth will appear to you, as to us, less disconcerting.

Most of all, Eminences and venerated colleagues, let not yourselves be held back by the vain pretext than an investigation would be now premature.

We might say so, indeed, because at the present hour the investigation would have to be made in circumstances unfavourable to ourselves. Our populations, in fact, have been so profoundly terrorized, and the prospects of reprisals is still so sombre for them, that the witnesses we may call before a tribunal which would be German in part would scarcely dare to tell the truth to the end.

But decisive reasons are opposed to all dilatory procedure.

The first, that which will go straight to your hearts, is that we are the weak and you are the powerful. You would not wish to abuse your strength against

us.

Public opinion usually goes to him who first possesses himself of it.

Now, whereas you have all liberty to flood neutral countries with your publications, we are imprisoned and reduced to silence. Hardly are we permitted to lift up our voices inside our churches; the preaching in them is checked off, that is, parodied by paid spies; protestations of conscience are qualified revolts against public authorities; what we write is stopped at the frontier as contraband. So you alone enjoy freedom of speech, and of the pen, and if you will, in a spirit of charity and equity, procure a particle of it for Belgians who are accused and give them a chance to defend themselves, it is for you to come to their protection as soon as possible. The old law adage

-"Audiatur et altera pars" (Let the other side be heard") is posted up, they tell us, at the doors of many German courts of law. In any case, for you as for us, it is law for the official judgments of Bishops, and doubtless, too, with you as with us, it circulates in the people's speech under this figure-"Who hears but one bell hears but one sound.

You will say, perhaps: "That is the past, forget it. Instead of casting oil on the fire, try rather to pardon and join your efforts with those of the power occupying your territory-for it only asks to heal the wounds of the unhappy Belgian people."

Oh, Eminences and dear colleagues, add not irony to injustice!

Have we not suffered enough? Have we not been -are we not still-tortured cruelly enough?

It is the past; resign yourselves-forget. The past! But all the wounds are still bleeding! There is not an honest heart that is not swollen with

indignation. While we hear our own Government saying to the face of the world, "That one is twice guilty who, after violating another's rights, tries still, audaciously and cynically, to justify himself by imputing to his victim faults which he had never committed," our own people can only by doing violence to themselves stifle words of malediction. But yesterday a countryman in the suburb of Malines learned that his son had fallen on the field of battle. A priest consoled him. And the brave man answered: "Oh, for my son, I give him to our country! But they took my eldest son, the cowards, and shot him down in a ditch!"

How do you wish us to obtain from such unfortunates, who have been made to know every torture, a sincere word of resignation and forgiveness, so long as those who have made them suffer refuse them one word of acknowledgment or repentance or promise of reparation?

Germany will not give us back the blood she has made to flow and the innocent lives her armies have mowed down; but it is in her power to make restitution to the Belgian people of their honour, which she has violated or let be violated.

This restitution we demand from you; from you who are the first and chief representatives of Christian morals in the Church of Germany.

There is something more profoundly sad than political divisions and material disaster-it is the hatred which injustice, real or presumed, heaps up in so many hearts made to love each other. As pastors of our peoples, does it not belong to us, is there not incumbent on us, the mission to make easy the dying away of evil feeling and to re-establish on the

foundation so shaken now of justice a union in charity of all children of the great Catholic family?

(The letter closes with specific citations of international laws which the German Empire is stated to have violated in Belgium, and is signed:)

D. J. CARDINAL MERCIER,

Archbishop of Malines.

ANTHONY,

Bishop of Ghent.

GUSTAVE, J.,

Bishop of Bruges.

THOMAS LOUIS,

Bishop of Namur.

MARTIN HUBERT,

Bishop of Liége.

AMEDEE CROOY,

Appointed Bishop of Tournai.

APPENDIX III

AMERICA AND THE ALLIES

[Speech of Viscount Bryce, made at the luncheon given in London by the Pilgrims' Society of that city in honour of the author on July 5, 1916.]

VISCOUNT BRYCE said: My Lords and Gentlemen, I now rise to ask you to drink the health of Mr. Beck. We have not had a luncheon of the Pilgrims since July, 1914, immediately before the outbreak of war, and we then little knew how much we were going to owe to Mr. Beck's countrymen, for the sympathy, the great majority of them have shown in all our efforts and struggles of the past, and for the moral support they have given to the cause which they believe to be a righteous cause. Mr. Beck comes to us not unknown. I hardly feel like introducing him to you because I am sure there cannot be one of you who does not know what admirable work he has done for the Allied cause in his own country. Unsolicited by any one on the part of the Allies, moved only by his strong sense of enthusiasm for what he believed to be right and just, Mr. Beck, shortly after the beginning of the war, set himself to study its causes, and the responsibility for its outbreak, and produced a book on that subject which for the clearness of its

378