So far the facts are proved by the direct evidence of the
person by whom they have been seen. Information is sought for by him as
to the circumstances under which the death or outrages took place. The
bystanders who saw the circumstances but who are not now accessible,
relate what they saw, and this is reported by the witness to the
examiner and is placed on record in the depositions. We have had no
hesitation in taking such evidence into consideration.]
It is natural to ask whether much of the evidence given, especially by
the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained
emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean
to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have
been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that
they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came
to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as
already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected,
or appended a note of distrust to, the testimony of those who failed to
impress them favorably. We have carried the sifting still further by
also omitting from the depositions those in which we found something
that seemed too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness
only, or too little supported by other evidence pointing to like facts.
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