Part 3

About four o’clock the next morning a German officer told them they had better go to confession, as they would be shot half an hour later. About half-past four they were liberated. Shortly afterwards they were again arrested by a German brigade, which forced them to march before them in the direction of Malines. In reply to a question of one of the prisoners, a German officer said they were going to give them a taste of the Belgian quickfirers before Antwerp. They were at last released on the Thursday afternoon at the gates of Malines.

It appears from other witnesses that several thousand male inhabitants of Louvain, who had escaped the shooting and the fire, were sent to Germany for a purpose which is still unknown to us.

Eye-Witness’s Account.

The fire at Louvain burnt for several days. An eye-witness who left Louvain on August 30th gave the following description of the town at that time:--“Leaving Weert St. George’s, I only saw burnt-down villages and half-crazy peasants, who on meeting anyone held up their hands as a sign of submission. Before every house, even those burnt down, hung a white flag, and the burnt rags of them could be seen among the ruins.

“At Weert St. George’s I questioned the inhabitants on the causes of the German reprisals, and they affirmed most positively that no inhabitant had fired a shot, that in any case the arms had been previously collected, but that the Germans had taken vengeance on the population because a Belgian soldier belonging to the gendarmerie had killed an Uhlan.

“The population still remaining in Louvain have taken refuge in the suburb of Héverlé, where they are extremely crowded. They have been cleared out of the town by the troops and the fire.

“The fire started a little beyond the American College, and the town is _entirely_ destroyed, except for the town hall and the station. Furthermore, the fire was still burning to-day, and the Germans, far from taking any steps to stop it, seemed to feed it with straw, an instance of which I observed in the street adjoining the town hall.

“The cathedral and the theatre are destroyed and have fallen in, as also the library; in short, the town has the appearance of an ancient ruined city, in the midst of which only a few drunken soldiers move about, carrying bottles of wine and liqueurs, while the officers themselves, seated in arm-chairs round the tables, drink like their men.”

The Commission has not yet been able to obtain information about the fate of the Mayor of Louvain and of the other notables who were taken as hostages.

The Commission is able to draw the following conclusions from the facts which have so far been brought to its notice:--

In this war, the occupation of any place is systematically accompanied and followed, sometimes even preceded, by acts of violence towards the civil population, which acts are contrary both to the usages of war and to the most elementary principles of humanity.

Brutality Everywhere.

The German procedure is everywhere the same. They advance along a road, shooting inoffensive passers-by--particularly bicyclists--as well as peasants working in the fields.

In the towns or villages where they stop they begin by requisitioning food and drink, which they consume till intoxicated.

Sometimes from the interior of deserted houses they let off their rifles at random and declare that it was the inhabitants who fired. Then the scenes of fire, murder, and especially pillage begin, accompanied by acts of deliberate cruelty, without respect to sex or age. Even where they pretend to know the actual person guilty of the acts they allege, they do not content themselves with executing him summarily, but they seize the opportunity to decimate the population, pillage the houses, and then set them on fire.

After a preliminary attack and massacre they shut up the men in the church, and then order the women to return to their houses and to leave their doors open all night.

From several places the male population has been sent to Germany, there to be forced, it appears, to work at the harvest, as in the old days of slavery. There are many cases of the inhabitants being forced to act as guides and to dig trenches and entrenchments for the Germans. Numerous witnesses assert that during their marches, and even when attacking, the Germans place civilians, men and women, in their front ranks, in order to prevent our soldiers firing.

The evidence of Belgian officers and soldiers shows that German detachments do not hesitate to display either the white flag or the Red Cross flag in order to approach our troops with impunity. On the other hand, they fire on our ambulances and maltreat the ambulance men. They maltreat and even kill the wounded. The clergy seem to be particularly chosen as subjects for their brutality.

Finally, we have in our possession expanding bullets which had been abandoned by the enemy at Werchter, and we possess doctors’ certificates showing that wounds must have been inflicted by bullets of this kind.

The documents and evidence on which these conclusions rest will be published in due course.

(Signed)

The President, COOREMAN.

Members of the Commission, COUNT GOBLET D’ALVIELLA, RYCKMANS, STRAUSS, VAN CUTSEM.

Secretaries, CHEV. ERNST DE BUNSWYCK, ORTS.

“=The report of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry into the German atrocities in Belgium is perhaps the most appalling document that has ever been submitted to civilised man. It reveals a cruelty more perverse than that of the Boxer or Bashi-Bazuk, and it covers the reputation of the German soldiery with eternal shame.... They themselves have transgressed every law of God and man.=”

--From the _Daily Mail_.

V.

Can These Things Be True?

Can these cold-blooded deeds of atrocity be true? Is it a fact that they have been proved to the satisfaction of the most exacting critics? Is this “welter of fire, blood, and destruction” to be written finally on the pages of history?

I can only say this:

1. These stories came to us first from responsible correspondents of all our leading newspapers, who took them down for the most part at first hand from eye-witnesses and from the poor victims themselves.

2. A committee of eminent lawyers, assisted by the Belgian Minister of Justice, made a searching inquiry, sifting vague reports from actual facts.

3. The evidence of the atrocities thus collected was formulated in an Official Report to be presented to the President of the United States by the Belgian Delegation of Ministers of State, now on their way to America.

4. The British Official Press Bureau issued, on the 25th August, a statement of the representations made to them, which I have already quoted.

5. The Report of the Belgian Government was confirmed by the French protest against German atrocities which was addressed on September 2nd to the Powers by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

6. Mr. Richard Harding Davis, an eminent American author and correspondent in Belgium of the _New York Tribune_, has entirely confirmed, in cables sent to this leading American journal, things he has seen with his own eyes.

7. I have narrated the information given to me verbally by M. Van der Velde himself. “I myself examined the bodies of a peasant and his son which have been cut to pieces by bayonet thrusts.”

8. While at first the reports of these atrocities were received in this country with some reserve, the accumulated and overwhelming evidence, aggravated from day to day since the very commencement of the war, has provoked the public men of England, and every responsible newspaper in the country, as well as all our leading weeklies like the _Spectator_, the _Saturday Review_, the _Nation_, the _British Weekly_, and others, into a passionate protest against the inhuman and barbarous methods of warfare that have stained the name of Germany for ever.

9. Germany herself has admitted her wanton deeds, and sought to excuse them in a way that makes her guilt all the more deplorable. We are told that these barbarian atrocities against the civil population and unoffending peasants, the sacking, looting, and burning of towns and villages, are part of the general plan of attack, and that they are accomplished in cold blood for purely strategical considerations. Unfortunately they are not merely the riotous and isolated outbursts of marauding and buccaneering soldiers.

“The only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which by their frightfulness would be a warning to the whole country.” To prevent “surprise attacks” tortures were inflicted on helpless old men, women, and children, peaceful villagers were hanged, innocent children were savagely sabred by German officers, wounded soldiers and officers shot and mutilated. There was the burning of Visé and the terrible massacre at Seraing, the sacking and plundering of many another harmless village, the bombardment of Malines, and the crowning sacrilege of all, the burning and sacking of Louvain, the torture and massacre of its defenceless people. Abler pens than mine have told the story of these blood-guilty ruffians, and abler historians will yet chronicle for future generations the record of the modern Huns of Attila. “For every vile deed wrought under the impious benedictions of the monarch who is ravaging Europe ample reparation will be exacted.... The memory of them will burn in the heart and mind of every Englishman.” So said the _Times_. I affirm this is the feeling of every true Britisher.

VI.

=It is specially forbidden “To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion. To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag, or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy.”--Hague Convention, Article XXIII.=

Wanton Brutality.

I have made it plain from the official documents I have quoted that the German troops violated every item of this article. But in addition to cases of brutality already cited in the official document, the Belgian Mission, while in London, gave me the following:--

On August 19th Aerschot, in North Brabant, with about five thousand inhabitants, was, as already reported, destroyed. It appears that during the three days the German soldiery massacred and pillaged the town, which had not resisted, although there was no military force there whatever.

In the neighbouring village of Diest many of the inhabitants were put to the sword. The wife of Francis Luyckx, aged forty-five, and her daughter, twelve years of age, had, in their terror, taken refuge in a sewer. They were discovered, dragged out, and shot.

The little daughter of Jean Oyyen, a pretty child of nine, was shot, and a man named Andre Willem, aged twenty-three, the village sexton, was bound to a tree and burned alive.

In the village of Schaffen, near Diest, two men, named Lodts and Marken, both aged forty, were captured and entombed. When exhumed, it was found that they had been buried alive, head downwards. These occurrences--which are only a few of a very long list--had been fully inquired into, and confirmed by the committee of investigation, which was composed of the highest magistrates of Belgium and the chief professors of the Universities.

Statements were made that aged villagers in many places on the Franco-German frontier were hanged to trees; others, after being killed, had their eyes gouged out. In one place fifteen bodies were found mutilated in a heap, and along the whole frontier from Luxemburg to Basle outrages were committed on women, girls, and children.

Mlle. Marie Malet, the daughter of a judicial official in Brussels, who had been sent to London with a party of Belgian girls for safety, stated that she had seen a little girl, a friend of hers, aged ten, savagely sabred by a German officer, merely because she made a remark that the Germans were bullies. The child died an hour afterwards. Mlle. Malet stated that she had been sent from near Brussels with her sister, owing to the insults to which Belgian girls were subjected by German soldiers. Her mother had been wounded and her home looted of food and valuables.

The record of German atrocities in Belgium, indeed, rivals that of Alva in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The worst Balkan methods were being pursued by the army of the pious Kaiser. At Pontillac, between Liége and Namur, the Burgomaster officially reported that the men of the 17th Hussars from Mecklenburg entered the place, met with no resistance, and demanded food, which the inhabitants at once gave them. After eating and drinking to their full, to the surprise of everyone they rode wildly through the streets emptying their carbines at the windows of the houses. Two Belgian soldiers who were secreted in the village returned their fire. A hot fusillade ensued, and then the Germans deliberately shot down all the villagers they could find. They also seized a M. Lahaye, a member of the Communal Council, and dragged him through the streets with a rope round his neck.

Drunken German Soldiers.

Further details regarding the wild savagery at Aerschot reached the Belgian Government after the issuing of the official report printed in the foregoing pages. It seems that the population of the Belgian provinces overrun by the Germans suffered, not only from the outrages of the troops acting under the orders of their officers, but also from atrocities due to drunken soldiers.

In one town some of them fired their rifles openly into the air and afterwards declared that the inhabitants had fired on them. On this pretext the people were dragged from their houses, which were then set on fire, and in many cases women and girls were outraged and the men shot. At Aerschot the troops--upon whom the Kaiser and the Austrian Emperor were beseeching God’s blessing--stabled their horses in the church, one of the most beautiful in Belgium, while the troops were set to work to destroy the pictures and fittings in the noble edifice. The Germans accused the son of the Burgomaster of killing the son of a German colonel. This was denied by the Burgomaster’s son, who only fired to defend his mother and sister from gross insults by the soldiery.

“=For every evil and unwarrantable act committed in the Western theatre, ample vengeance will be exacted at the other end.=”--_Times._

The Germans, however, surrounded the town. The inhabitants were then dragged from their homes and the women separated from the men. The latter were divided into batches and forced to run towards the river, the troops laughing at them and firing at them as they ran. One man who escaped by feigning death afterwards returned and counted forty-one bodies of his friends. Many of them had been stabbed by bayonets after being wounded. About one hundred and fifty of the male inhabitants of this place were compelled to watch the German troops shoot the Burgomaster, his son, and the Burgomaster’s brother.

Women Mutilated.

Mr. Adolph Coussmaekrs, a well-known resident of Antwerp, wrote giving nine cases of atrocities committed by the Germans in the districts of Orsmael and Barchon.

I do not reproduce here the nine cases instanced by this gentleman. The wanton mutilation on women and children is revolting and seems incredible.

In addition, there were criminal assaults on women which I cannot dwell upon in these pages; they have been narrated by unimpeachable persons. Mothers had their daughters dragged away from them by shameless officers to a fate that must have driven them to despair. Women and young children were injured by bayonet-thrusts and revolver-shots, and were still suffering from their wounds.

“=In no war of modern times has an enemy so distinguished himself by war on civilians as in this. The brutality of the methods employed by the Prussian apostles of ‘culture’ is only equalled by its futility.=”--_Daily Telegraph._

VII.

300 Men Shot in Cold Blood.

A terrible story of the holocaust at Liége was told to the correspondent of the _Daily Mail_ by a wealthy Dutch cigarette manufacturer who had lived for a long time in Belgium, and was married to a Belgium woman. He stated that on the day of their entry the Germans posted an order on the streets that all arms in possession of private persons must be immediately delivered, under the threat of being shot. The inhabitants complied with the order. Among others, collections of old arms were brought, valued sometimes at hundreds of pounds. The new vandals destroyed all these pitilessly.

“During the first days the Germans paid for everything they took. But later on soldiers produced valueless pieces of paper, on which something had been scribbled which could hardly be read. On Sunday, August 23rd, at midnight, the inhabitants were suddenly awakened by soldiers knocking at the doors. ‘We need immediately two hundred and fifty mattresses, two hundred pounds of coffee, two hundred and fifty loaves of bread, and five hundred eggs,’ they said. ‘If these are not delivered in an hour’s time your hostages will be shot.’ Everybody rushed to the market-place, many people in their night clothes. There stood the mayor, half-dressed.

“After the inhabitants had brought in everything which was demanded they were informed that the whole was a mistake and that they could go to bed. The old mayor, however, was detained the whole night in the street.

“One day when the soldiers sat down to dinner, an alarm was suddenly beaten in the streets. Soldiers from all the houses were summoned to their regiments. Immediately after, the bombardment of the houses began. The informant took refuge with his wife and children in a cellar, which was constantly filled with smoke from the neighbouring houses, which had caught fire. On Wednesday morning the bombardment ceased and they ventured to the station.

“Here, notwithstanding his protests, and proposals to produce papers, showing that he was a Dutch subject, the cigarette manufacturer was separated from his family, of whom he has since lost sight. He was surrounded by soldiers, who bound his hands behind his back, and with other refugees he was kept at the station many hours. During this time he saw a party of three hundred Belgian civilians, among whom were old men and lads of fourteen or fifteen, driven at the point of the bayonet to a remote spot near the station, where they were all shot before his eyes.

“After a terrible night, he and his group of seventy-six men were set free. They had had nothing to eat or drink for thirty-six hours. All streets and roads in and round Liége were strewn, according to the witness, with bodies of men, women, and children. Among those shot were the mayor, two aldermen, the rector of the University, two deans, and many police inspectors.”

VIII.

“=Our German people will be the grand block on which the good God may complete His work of civilizing the world.=”

From a speech of _The Kaiser’s_.

The Inferno at Visé.

A correspondent of the _Handelsblad_ was an eye-witness of the scenes in Visé, near Liége, when it was burned, and told a tale of German barbarity, and of the murder and torture of its helpless inhabitants, of a nature to make one’s blood run cold. As summarized in the _Daily News_ the story is as follows:--

“It was an awful sight. Every house was a mass of flames, through which the streets were hardly visible.

“At the entrance of the Grand Hotel were three disarmed soldiers bound hand and foot. Entering the hotel, I found the floor covered with dead bodies. In that hall of the dead several soldiers stood guard. From this awful, nauseating scene I hurried back to the blinding glare and suffocating heat of the burning villages.

“The correspondent describes how a colleague supported an aged lady found lying near her blazing house. She pleaded, ‘Let me die.’ Poor, unhappy creature, bereft of home and even of adequate clothing, the aged

and defenceless victim of the Kaiser’s gallant army! He adds: ‘We fled from the scene that must for ever blur the scutcheon of the Kaiser, and I pray as long as I live it will never be my task to see such an inferno again.’

“Absolutely incredible was the picture of incidents connected with the burning of Visé by the Germans and the shooting given in private letters which arrived from Eysden, on the Dutch frontier, and seen by the _Telegraaf_. According to these letters, the Germans alleged that the citizens had fired on the troops. All the inhabitants were then hunted out of their houses to spend the night in the square watching the burning. Men were taken prisoners, and possibly shot, and the rest were driven out of the town, which was given to the flames. Eysden is filled with refugees--one hundred and fifty in one canteen and two hundred and fifty in the Protestant Church, while four hundred have been sent to Maastricht.

“Two trainloads of refugees came into Brussels from the Tirlemont district. The scenes I have witnessed,” telegraphs a Press Association correspondent, “and the stories told by these poor people would melt a heart of stone. Removal from the face of the earth--a phrase of the German papers themselves--continues to be the invader’s idea of how best to deal with unarmed, unoffending villages, the only crime of whose people is that they have fallen in his path.

“The Germans entered Tirlemont, in the vicinity of which they have been for some days. They were in strong force, mostly cavalry and artillery. The big guns shelled the place, and the cavalry played at war by attacking the flying and panic-stricken populace, shooting and stabbing them at random.

“Never have I seen such a picture of woe as a peasant woman and five children who stood bewildered in the Place de la Gare here, all crying as if their hearts would break. It was a terrible story the woman had to tell. ‘They shot my husband before my eyes,’ she said, ‘and trampled two of my children to death.’

“A German knocked at the door of the house of the Burgomaster at Venne, near the Dutch frontier, and when the Burgomaster’s wife opened the door she was knocked down and killed with the butt end of a rifle.

“A solicitor, who was a member of the Belgian Chamber, and who was staying in the house, rushed to the front door, and he also was instantly knocked down and killed with a bayonet thrust. On hearing of these atrocities the population fled in terror.”

Lancer’s Fiendish Act.

M. Isadore Felix Cruls, a Belgian refugee who arrived in London, had a tragic story to tell. He carried on a prosperous printing business at Saint Jossé, a suburb of Brussels. When hostilities broke out he was called up for service in the Civil Guard, and stationed on the Chaussée de Louvain, the road between Louvain and Brussels. As reported in the _Daily Telegraph_, he stated:--

“At midnight on August 19th-20th I was on duty on the Chaussée de Louvain watching the refugees come in from the various towns and villages. The road was blocked when I got near. I saw that a party of German Lancers were at the rear of the procession of refugees. I saw one of the Lancers prodding a woman, who had four or five children walking by her side.