BOOKS

...How flimsy the evidence on which the Bryce report was based is made clear by Captain Bennett in his Foreword to this book...

...The comment of an English officer who has made the translation of the German defence for the present American edition will seem to the average fair-minded American, sufficient justification of these vital documents at this time: "We have seen the evidence adduced to prove Germany's misdeeds in Belgium...

...Why have we been prevented from seeing Germany's defence against these charges...

...Well, there is proof in plenty in this report of such attacks and such outrages and of an incontestable quality: namely, testimony from Belgian newspapers, covering the entire period of the invasion...

...As a corrective to a tremendous and organized prejudice, set in motion by a report which had behind it the weight of a powerful name, as well as for its sheer historical importance, the publication at this time of the German White Book of 1915 ought to be welcomed by those who still believe that an indictment does not constitute a trial...

...What is the use of 'defying Germany' to prove a single case of franc-tireur action and at the same time depriving the public of all access to the German White Book with its long list of specific outrages supported by sworn evidence...

...namely, in regard to the question of civilian attacks made by Belgians on German troops...

...While this report was given the widest circulation, the German White Book of 1915, the German official reply to the Bryce charges, was denied publication in England by the Censor...

...In any civilised society, even the vilest criminal is allowed to defend himself...

...In the face of such evidence," says Captain Bennett, "much of it furnished by correspondents who were eye-witnesses of what occurred, the main contention of the Belgian and Bryce reports falls to the ground * * * That the German troops were confronted with a widespread and determined opposition on the part of armed civilians in flagrant violation of the Laws of War must be accepted as a fact established by evidence varied, cumulative and irresistible...

...The whole question of outrages in war-time is still a subject for impartial investigation, as Cap-tan Bennett suggests...

...We shall have, in the light of this report, if for no other reason, to disabuse our minds of this notion...

...Of one thing we may be certain: that the liability for it is rarely confined to any one side in war-time...

...Perhaps no single instrument of Allied propaganda published during the war served so well the purpose of arousing emnity against Germany as the Bryce report on Belgian atrocities...

...Finally, none of the evidence was taken on oath...

...It is obvious also that some of these refugees were not eye-witnesses of the outrages they described, "for they had fled from their homes and merely recorded their own inferences as to the events which had occurred during their absence...

...The numerous statements which it embodied were "mainly derived from Belgian refugees" who had reached England, men who were "naturally in a state of nervous excitement and full of bitter indignation against the invaders of their soil...

...3.50...

...On one point— and that a vital one—the evidence in both the Bryce and Belgian reports is shown to be fabricated...

...It is mainly as a result of the Bryce report that there permeated among Allies and neutrals a conception of a special Teutonic psychology, which rendered Germans capable of acts that other nations would have found it impossible to commit...

...Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, formerly Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, New York: B. W. Huebsch Inc...

...Another serious weakness in the Report arises from the fact that the various barristers and others who were sent round to interview these refugees were with very few exceptions quite unable to converse fluently in French and wholly ignorant of Flemish...

...In contrast with the Bryce report, the evidence in the German White Book is made up entirely of duly sworn statements...

...On this "ill-digested mass of unsworn statements," then, "some merely at second-hand, made by excited and angry Belgians" is based the report which in the minds of hundreds of thousands of citizens in neutral and allied countries, served as sufficient, grounds for resting an indictment against a whole people...

...No proof has ever been given," says the Bryce report, "in which civilians fired on German troops * * * or of shocking outrages perpetrated by Belgian men and women on German soldiers...