What they really do is to reveal themselves more. They were as bad before as they are now. Bombing hospitals is not much worse than the things done in Belgium in the first days of the war; but when it is our hospitals that are bombed, and our nurses and doctors and wounded men who are killed, we can all realize how bad it is.
The Belgians have realized German possibilities from the beginning. With time and stress the veneer wears thinner and cracks more widely. All of us have some bad in us, and some of us have much bad in us. But it takes time and special conditions to show just what our make-up is. Four years of war are very revealing. So that we of America know much more about German make-up now, than we did before. But, as I said, the Belgians got their understanding quickly; as also did the French. An incident will illustrate this.
It will also show something of the method in the German madness. This incident may be called the story of how Charleville was captured by one German soldier with a gun on his shoulder. That was the way Monsieur Vβ, who told it, always referred to it.
He was the only witness of this interesting military operation. I had the story from him in the captured town itself, several months after the event. But it was all very clear in his mind, and it remains very clear in mine. To both of us the story has a significance which it may not have for you, but I think it will.
The town, Charleville, which was captured by the one German soldier with a gun on his shoulder, is in German-occupied France and on the Meuse, some distance up the river from Dinant. It was also the headquarters in occupied France of the American Relief Commission.
