supreme appeal.

"Germany, as you know, attacked and terrorised Belgium
in 1914 for having defended her right to neutrality and
her faith and honour.

"Germany has been martyrizing Belgium. She has from that
moment onwards turned the land into a prison: the
frontiers are armed against Belgians like a battle
front.. All our constitutional liberties have been
abolished. There is no longer safety anywhere; the
life of our citizens is at the mercy of the
policeman,--arbitrary, limitless, pitiless ... Belgian
industrial idleness has been the creation of the
Germans, maintained by them for their own profit.[32]
To these 500,000 unemployed they have for the last month
been saying: 'Either you will sign a contract to work
for Germany, or you will be reduced to slavery.' In
either case, it means exile, deportation, forced labour
in the interests of the enemy, and against the interests
of our country: formidable punishments, the cruellest
ever invented by tyranny for the punishment of
crimes--and what _are_ the crimes alleged?... On the
western front, Belgian workmen--your brothers and
ours--are being forced to dig trenches, to build
aviation camps, to fortify the German lines, and when
the victims, in spite of everything, are firm in their
refusal to take part in work forbidden by International
Law, they are starved and beaten into illness, wounded,
and sometimes even _killed_.