Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/235

Rh consideration at all, for there were then many aeroplanes in Germany, and who could have said, if they really were "sighted," that those in the Eifel were French and not German, or perhaps Belgian or Dutch that had lost their way?

But the case at Wesel?

The Chancellor reported on August 2nd:

""A French military flying officer was shot down from the air near Wesel.""

The official military report of noon on August 3rd only said vaguely:

""An enemy machine shot down near Wesel.""

Nothing about the occupant, or whether he was a civilian or an officer. But in the declaration of war it was asserted that a military airman had attempted to destroy the railway at Wesel.

Of this there is not a word in the report of the Lines of Communication Commandant at Wesel. We have just seen what weight is to be attached to the aeroplanes sighted in the Eifel and to the attempt on Wesel. As to the South German military aviators, to whose misdeeds reference was made in the declaration of war, they have long since been branded as empty fictions.

As early as April, 1916, the municipal authorities of Nürnberg made a statement:

"Nothing is known to the Deputy Corps Headquarters of the IIIrd Bavaria Army Corps here of the story that the stretches of railway, Nürnberg-Kissingen and Niirnberg- Ansbach, were each