The whole web of lies and the conditions underlying the scheme are conclusively exposed in “The Tragedy of Belgium,” by Richard Grasshof, (New York: C. E. Dillingham Co.)
The Belgian atrocities were purposely conceived and exaggerated for two reasons:
1. To camouflage the fact that against all rules of civilized warfare, the Belgians of Louvain and several other towns, claiming protection as civilians, awaited an opportune time to institute a massacre of German soldiers who had entered and been stationed there approximately a week in apparently good relations with the population.
2. It was expected that Germany and Austria would be surely invaded under the joint impact of the forces of Russia, France, Belgium, Servia, Montenegro, England and Japan. In that event the world would hear no end of Cossack, Servian and Montenegran atrocities committed on German women and children, as in the Balkan campaign. England had called into the field the Indians, Maoris, Zulus and other savage blacks and yellow skins; France had called the Moroccan natives and the Senegalese tribesmen, blacks who hang around their necks strings adorned with the ears and noses of their fallen foes.
Forseeing that the ravages of these uncivilized warriors would excite the anger of the world against the Allies, if they ever crossed into German territory, that their deeds would bring the curses of the universe upon England’s head, it was resolved to anticipate all possible criticism and reproach by being the first to charge atrocities against their enemies and thus to negative all counter charges, or to say that they were merely retaliatory measures adopted in reprisal for barbarous acts committed against their own men. The Allies never crossed the German lines, save in East Prussia, nor the Austrian-Hungarian border save in Galicia, and here the Cossack reign, short as it was, proved the shrewd wisdom of English and French foresight; 700,000 homes were wantonly destroyed in Galicia alone. Its lawlessness beggars description; but humanity was not staggered because the mind of the world had been drugged by fatal infusions of falsehood about Belgian babies and women maimed and brutalized by “German barbarians.”