Part 24

"Remember, there is not the slightest room for honest question either as to the dreadful, the unspeakably hideous, outrages committed on the Belgians, or as to the fact that these outrages were methodically committed by the express command of the German Government in order to terrorize both the Belgians and among neutrals those men who are as cold and timid and selfish as our governmental leaders have shown themselves to be. Let any man who doubts read the statement of an American eye-witness of these fearful atrocities, Mr. Arthur H. Gleason, in the 'New York Tribune' of November 25, 1915."

From the Bryce Report, English edition, Page 167.

British subject:--

"The girl was at the point of death. Mr. G---- was with me and can corroborate me as to this and also as to the other facts mentioned below. On the same day at the same place I saw one L. de M----. I took this statement from him.... He signed his statement in my pocket book, and I hold my pocket book at the disposal of the Belgian and English authorities.

"I also saw at the hospital an old woman of eighty who was run clean through by a bayonet thrust.

"I next went up to another wounded Belgian in the same ward. His name was F. M----. I wrote his statement in my pocket book and he signed it after having read it."

The full statement in the Bryce Report of the atrocities which I witnessed covers a page. The above sentences are extracts. Mr. Niemira had neglected to make a note of the exact date in his pocket book, and calls it "about the 15th of September." It was September 29.

If any one wants a history of them, and the world ought to want it, the book of their acts, is it not written in singing prose in Le Goffic's "Dixmude, un Chapitre de l'histoire des Fusiliers Marins"? Le Goffic is a Breton and his own son is with the fighting sailors. He deals with their autumn exploits in Dixmude on the Yser, that butt-end of wreck. Legends will spring out of them and the soil they have reddened. We have heard little of the French in this war--and almost nothing at all from them. And yet it is the French that have held the decisive battle line. Unprepared and peace-loving, they have stood the shock of a perfectly equipped and war-loving army.

Monsieur Le Goffic is the official historian of the Fusiliers Marins. His book has gone through forty-nine editions. He is a poet, novelist and critic. That American sympathy is appreciated is proved by this sentence from a letter of Le Goffic to an American who had expressed admiration for the Breton sailors:--"Merci, Monsieur, au nom de mon pays, merci pour nos marins, et merci pour moi meme."