" which they

tions were mere "scraps of paper, felt they had the right to disregard whenever it suited their convenience to do so.

Even in questions of honor the obligations which bound other nations seemed to mean nothing whatever to the Germans. They were ready to sign any sort of agreement, reserving to themselves the right to break it whenever they saw fit. Thus they broke the treaty agreeing to protect the neutrality of Belgium, and later on, as we shall see, refused to be bound by any of the rules of international law. This fact should be carefully borne in mind, since it ultimately resulted in the United States' entering the war.

In addition to organizing and equipping her army so efficiently, Germany spent a great deal of money upon her navy. Particularly did she develop another American invention, the submersible boat, or submarine. She built larger and more powerful boats of this type than the other navies of the world possessed, and planned to use them in sinking the ships of her enemies in order to offset the fact that her navy was not as yet the most powerful in the world.

The other nations of Europe had also prepared for war, not as Germany had prepared, to conquer the world, but to defend themselves in case they were attacked. Thus France, with only about half the population of Germany, was obliged to maintain a large standing army, and England in order

to protect herself against invasion, followed a naval policy of building two battle-ships to any other nation's one. England maintained no standing army of the people. Military service was not compulsory with her. Her regular army was employed to do police work in India, Egypt, and her other overseas dominions. It was made up of splendid soldiers, among the best in the world, but there were not many of them. In addition, England had a volunteer force not unlike the National Guard of the United States. These troops were called Territorials.

We thus see that Germany, ready to break any convention or treaty she had previously signed if it suited her interests to do so, confident of the invincibility of her army, and convinced that it was her mission under God's will and command to conquer the world, stood at the beginning of August, 1914, an enemy of all mankind.

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CHAPTER IV

THE DRIVE THROUGH BELGIUM

HE invasion of Belgium by Germany has

THE

been called the greatest crime in history. The kaiser's action in attacking a neutral country was in itself sufficiently criminal, but the treatment accorded the helpless people of that country by the German armies was so cruel, so utterly beyond belief, that at first the world refused to credit it. When the terrible facts at last became fully known, a wave of sympathy and anger swept over the civilized world. Germany had outraged every law of God and man.

Some of the great leaders of military thought in Germany, notably Baron von der Goltz, had written books setting forth the theory that war, if made sufficiently terrible, would not last long. Filled with this devilish doctrine, the Germans tried it first upon the Belgians. The world knew that to treat any self-respecting nation with cruelty could result only in that nation's resisting all the more bravely; but the Germans could not see this, and hence they stopped at no crime, no matter how horrible, in order to terrify their opponents and cause them to lay down their arms. From the moment they crossed the Belgian fron

tier, they began to indulge in the most unbelievable cruelties. Peaceful villages were burned; old men, women, and children were shot or otherwise murdered by the thousands; prisoners were killed or mutilated, and many other crimes, too terrible even to mention, were committed in the name of German kultur.

The first city of any size that the Germans attacked, after they crossed the Belgian frontier at Verviers, was Liège, lying upon the river Meuse. This large town was well protected by a circle of twelve outlying forts of the Gruson type, built of concrete, with disappearing steel turrets. At first the Germans could make no headway against the determined defense of the garrison, and lost a large number of men. Within a few days, however, they brought up their new heavy howitzers, and it required only a few shells, with their tremendous charges of high explosives, to reduce the forts to heaps of ruins. The world looked on in amazement. Never in the history of siege operations had such huge guns been employed. When one of these monster projectiles descended upon a fort on the outskirts of Liège, the force of the explosion was so great that every man in the underground chambers was either killed or wounded. Military observers everywhere realized that in an hour Germany had shown there was not a fortified place in Europe which could be defended successfully against such an attack.

It took the Germans eleven days to complete the reduction of the defenses of Liège, and the delay greatly upset their plans. Soon, however, the German armies began to spread all over the eastern part of Belgium, pillaging, burning, and murdering as they went. In village after village, town after town, the horrors of war as conducted by the kaiser and his armies were repeated. When the German troops entered a place, orders were given to arrest a certain number of the prominent citizens. If thereafter any resistance was offered, if but a single shot happened to be fired by some outraged inhabitant, the citizens who had been arrested, and who were called hostages, were promptly shot, and in many cases the town or village was burned as well. The German troops, prepared for all emergencies, carried with them small tablets of compressed inflammables, which, when thrown into a house, ensured its destruction. Theft was common everywhere, and was committed by soldiers and officers alike, in spite of the fact that in civilized warfare private property is supposed to be respected. Money, household goods, the gold and silver vessels of the churches, furniture, ornaments, jewelry, everything that could be carried away, was taken and sent back to Germany. Even one of the kaiser's own sons was guilty of this common thievery, looting a handsome château of its priceless tapestries, paintings, and other objects of art and sending them home as