particular life."

At the moment when these lines were written--for the book was published
early in the war--the orgy of murder and lust and hideous brutality
which had swept through Belgium in the first three weeks of the war was
beginning to be known in England; the traces of it were still fresh in
town after town and village after village of that tortured land; while
the testimony of its victims was just beginning to be sifted by the
experts of the Bryce Commission.

The hostages of Vareddes, the helpless victims of Nomény, of
Gerbéviller, of Sermaize, of Sommeilles, and a score of other places in
France were scarcely cold in their graves. But the old white-haired
professor stands there, unashamed, unctuously offering the kultur of his
criminal nation to an expectant world! "And when the victory is won," he
says complacently--"the whole world will stand open to us, our war
expenses will be paid by the vanquished, the black-white-and-red flag
will wave over all seas; our countrymen will hold highly respected posts
in all parts of the world, and we shall maintain and extend our
colonies."

_God, forbid!_ So says the whole English-speaking race, you on your side
of the sea, and we on ours.

But the feeling of abhorrence which is not, at such a moment as this,
sternly and incessantly translated into deeds is of no account! So let
me return to a last survey of the War. On my home journey from Nancy, I
passed through Paris, and was again welcomed at G.H.Q. on my way to
Boulogne. In Paris, the breathless news of the Germans' quickening
retreat on the Somme and the Aisne was varied one morning by the welcome