not merely another "scrap of paper," the lace-makers and the chair-makers of Malines should, under its protection, be now at work, and not in forced idleness and exile.
Readers must be weary of hearing the Prussian method characterised as one of scientific blackguardism. But that is what it is. There is nothing incoherent, tumultuous, or spasmodic about it; it goes on a well-formulated principle. And it has succeeded. By producing a panic among the civil population it has created the problem of the refugees. It inflicts day by day on Belgium an economic loss, the size of which cannot even be guessed at. Can nothing be done to check its operation? Can nothing be done to guarantee Malines against the fate of Termonde? The Belgian Commission in its last report stated the case with such concentrated force that no apology is needed for recalling their words—
"The true motives behind the atrocities, of which we have collected such heart-breaking evidence, can only be, on the one hand, the desire to terrorise and demoralise the civil population, conformably to the inhuman theories of German military writers, and, on the other hand, the desire to pillage. A shot fired, no one knows where, or by whom, or at whom, by a drunken soldier, or an excitable official, serves as a pretext for the sacking of a whole city. Individual looting is followed by the levying of war contributions so
