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I believe the atrocity charges to be substantially true in a vast
majority of cases. Moreover, I do not believe that half the truth of
them has been told or ever will be. My reasons for this belief in the
atrocity charge are the following: First, undisputed crimes, such as
the Lusitania and Cavell cases. A government that would sanction these
murders would sanction all other atrocities. Second, the witness of
persons in whose credibility I have confidence, such as French officers
and civilians, nurses and doctors, whose occupations have thrown
first-hand evidence in their way, who have personal knowledge of
specific outrages. Third, from what I myself gathered while I was in
France from the lips of abused persons. Although I did not look for
atrocities, I could not avoid getting reports from such people as I
met in the devastated territory of the Marne, weighing their stories,
and estimating the validity of them.

I believe in the truthfulness of that abbe of Esternay, who was one
of the unfortunates that the Germans used as a screen before the
operations of a body of troops. I believe in the truthfulness of the
keen old peasant woman at Chatillon, whose home had been riddled by
German bullets and who had been fired at when she took refuge in the
cellar of her house, and of many others with whom I talked of their
experiences during the early days of September, 1914. Unfortunately,
there was no photographer at work those days along the Marne valley,
though no doubt the German denying office would instantly impugn the
evidence of a photograph of the act. Each one of us, however, has his
own inner instinctive tests of truth to which he puts the credibility
of a story, and I believe the abbe, the old woman, and many others