waged on our soil by an implacable adversary. Pillage, rape,
arson, and murder are the common practice of our enemies;
and the facts which have been revealed to us day by day
at once constitute definite crimes against common rights,
punished by the codes of every country with the most se-
vere and the most dishonoring penalties, and which prove
an astonishing degeneration in German habits of thought
since 1870.

Crimes against women and young girls have been of ap-
palling frequency. We have proved a great number of them,
but they only represent an infinitesimal proportion of those
which we could have taken up. Owing to a sense of decency,
which is deserving of every respect, the victims of these
hateful acts usually refuse to disclose them. Doubtless
fewer would have been committed if the leaders of an army
whose discipline is most rigorous had taken any trouble to
prevent them; yet, strictly speaking, they can only be con-
sidered as the individual and spontaneous acts of uncaged
beasts. But with regard to arson, theft, and murder the
case is very different; the officers, even those of the high-
est station, will bear before humanity the overwhelming re-
sponsibility for these crimes.

In the greater part of the places where we carried on
our inquiry we came to the conclusion that the German
Army constantly professes the most complete contempt for
human life, that its soldiers, and even its officers, do not
hesitate to finish off the wounded, that they kill without
pity the inoffensive inhabitants of the territories which
they have invaded, and they do not spare in their murder-
ous rage women, old men, or children. The wholesale shoot-
ings at Lunéville, Gerbéviller, Nomeny, and Senlis are ter-
rible examples of this; and in the course of this report you
will read the story of scenes of carnage in which officers
themselves have not been ashamed to take part.

On the 6th of September at Champguyon, Mme. Louvet
was present at the martyrdom of her husband. She saw
him in the hands of ten or fifteen soldiers, who were beating
him to death before his own house, and ran up and kissed
him through the bars of the gate. She was brutally pushed

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