The German armies are capable of "_no undisciplined cruelty_," said the
93 Professors, without seeing how damning was the phrase. No!--theirs
was a cruelty by order, meditated, organised, and deliberate. The
stories of Senlis, of Vareddes, of Gerbéviller which I have specially
chosen, as free from that element of sexual horror which repels many
sensitive people from even trying to realise what has happened in this
war, are evidences--one must insist again--of a national mind and
quality, with which civilised Europe and civilised America can make no
truce. And what folly lies behind the wickedness! Let me recall to
American readers some of the phrases in the report of your former
Minister in Belgium--Mr. Brand Whitlock--on the Belgian deportations,
the "slave hunts" that Germany has carried out in Belgium and "which
have torn from nearly every humble home in the land, a husband, father,
son, or brother."

These proceedings [says Mr. Whitlock] place in relief the German
capacity for blundering almost as sharply as the German capacity for
cruelty. They have destroyed for generations any hope whatever of
friendly relations between themselves and the Belgian people. For these
things were done not, as with the early atrocities, in the heat of
passion and the first lust of war, but by one of those deeds that make
one despair of the future of the human race--a deed coldly planned,
studiously matured, and deliberately and systematically executed, a deed
so cruel that German soldiers are said to have wept in its execution,
and so monstrous that even German officers are now said to be ashamed.

But the average German neither weeps nor blames. He is generally amazed,
when he is not amused, by the state of feeling which such proceedings
excite. And if he is an "intellectual," a professor, he will exhaust