Part 30

1. German cavalry, occupying the village of Linsmeau, were attacked by some Belgian infantry and two gendarmes. A German officer was killed by our troops during the fight, and subsequently buried at the request of the Belgian officer in command. None of the civilian population took part in the fighting at Linsmeau. Nevertheless the village was invaded at dusk Aug. 10 by a strong force of German cavalry, artillery and machine guns. In spite of formal assurances given by the Burgomaster that none of the peasants had taken part in the previous fighting, two farms and six outlying houses were destroyed by gun fire and burned. All the male population were then compelled to come forward and hand over whatever arms they possessed. No recently discharged firearms were found. Nevertheless the invaders divided these peasants into three groups. Those in one group were bound and eleven of them placed in a ditch, where they were afterward found dead, their skulls fractured by the butts of German rifles.

2. During the night of Aug. 10 German cavalry entered Velm in great numbers; the inhabitants were asleep. The Germans without provocation fired on Mr. Deglimme-Gever's house, broke into it, destroyed furniture, looted money, burned barns, hay, corn stacks, farm implements, six oxen, and the contents of the farm-yard. They carried off Mme. Deglimme half-naked to a place two miles away. She was then let go and fired upon as she fled; without being hit. Her husband was carried away in another direction and fired upon; he is dying. The same troops sacked and burned the house of a railway watchman.

3. Farmer Jef Dierchx of Neerhespen bears witness to the following acts of cruelty committed by German cavalry at Orsmael and Neerhespen on Aug. 10, 11, and 12. An old man of the latter village had his arm sliced in three longitudinal cuts; he was then hanged head downward and burned alive. Young girls have been raped and little children outraged at Orsmael, where several inhabitants suffered mutilations too horrible to describe. A Belgian soldier belonging to a battalion of cyclist carbineers, who had been wounded and made prisoner, was bound to a telegraph pole on the St. Trond road and shot.

4. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, after an engagement at Haelen, Commandant Van Damme, so severely wounded that he was lying on his back, was finally murdered by German infantrymen firing their revolvers into his mouth.

5. On Monday, Aug. 9, at Orsmael the Germans picked up Commandant Knappen very seriously wounded, propped him against a tree and shot him. Finally they hacked his corpse with swords.

6. Numerous soldiers, disarmed and unable to defend themselves, have been ill-treated or killed by certain German soldiers. The inquiry brings forth new facts of this kind every day.

7. In different places, notably at Hellonge-sur-Geer, at Barchon, at Pontisse, at Haelen, at Zelk, German troops have fired on doctors, nurses, ambulances, and ambulance wagons.

8. At Boncelles a body of German troops went into a battle carrying a Belgian flag.

9. On Thursday, Aug. 6, before a fort at Liége, German soldiers continued to fire on a party of Belgian soldiers, who were unarmed and had been surrounded while digging a trench, after these had hoisted the white flag.

10. On Thursday, Aug. 10, at Vootem, near the Fort of Loncin, a group of German infantry hoisted the white flag. When Belgian soldiers approached to take them prisoners the Germans suddenly opened fire on them at close range.

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II.

Report on Aerschot.

Antwerp, Aug. 28, 1914.

The commission of inquiry on violation of the laws of nations and the laws and customs of warfare, after an impartial and careful investigation, can make the following report of its findings:

It appears from precise and concurring testimony that in the entire region of Aerschot the Germans have committed veritable atrocities. The majority of the population fled in terror. On their passage the German troops set fire to farms and houses and furniture, shooting inoffensive citizens whom they found along the road or who were working in the field.

At Hersselt, north of Aerschot, thirty-two houses of the village were set on fire; the miller and his son, who fled, and about twenty-one other persons were killed; and all this while no Belgian troops were visible.

The German troops penetrated into Aerschot, a town of 8,000 inhabitants, on Wednesday, Aug. 19, in the morning. No Belgian forces remained behind. No sooner did the Germans enter the town than they shot five or six inhabitants whom they caused to leave their houses. In the evening, pretending that a superior German officer had been killed on the Grand Place by the son of the Burgomaster, or, according to another version of the story, that a conspiracy had been hatched against the superior commandant by the Burgomaster and his family, the Germans took every man who was inside of Aerschot; they led them, fifty at a time, some distance from the town, grouped them in lines of four men, and, making them run ahead of them, shot them and killed them afterward with their bayonets. More than forty men were found thus massacred.

They gave up the town to be pillaged, taking from private residences all they could take, breaking furniture, and forcing safes. The following day they lined up, three by three, the villagers whom they had arrested the day before, taking one man out of each line. These they led to a distance of about 100 meters from the town, taking with them the Burgomaster of the town, Mr. Tielmans, and his son, aged 15½ years, and his brother, and shot them.

Later on they forced the remaining villagers to dig holes to bury their victims.

For three whole days they continued to pillage and set fire to everything in sight.

About 150 inhabitants of Aerschot are supposed to have been thus massacred.

The largest part of the city is totally destroyed. Five times the Germans tried to set fire to the large church, the interior of which has been sacked. The records of the town have been carried away.

The ambulance attendants, although wearing the Red Cross badge, were not respected. One of them reports that German troops fired upon him while he was collecting his wounded, and that they continued to fire even though he displayed his Red Cross armband. Moreover, during the entire day of the 19th, while he was engaged in hospital service, he was threatened and ill-used. A German officer, among others, took him by the head, thrusting against his forehead the butt of a revolver. A collector, wearing the insignia of the Red Cross, was killed in the Rue de l'Hospital on the evening of Aug. 19 by Germans.

Deny Any Civilian Attack.

From all the testimony taken it appears that the civil population of Aerschot has in no wise participated in the hostilities, that no shot was fired by them; that all the witnesses agree in pointing out the improbability of the German version, according to which the Burgomaster's son, a youth of 15½ years, and of extremely gentle disposition, is said to have fired upon a superior German officer during the night of Aug. 19. Still more improbable is the version of the conspiracy organized by the Burgomaster. It is to be remarked that if--a thing which is not known--a German officer has been hit on the Grand Place, it might have happened by a stray bullet, German soldiers being engaged in shooting in the neighboring streets in order to frighten the populace.

Moreover, the Burgomaster, a very quiet man, had repeatedly warned his fellow-citizens, by means of posters and circulars addressed to every inhabitant of the town, that in case of invasion they were to abstain from any hostility. These posters were still in evidence when the Germans entered the city, and they were shown to them.

The German troops which were traversing localities situated on this side of Aerschot indulged in the same horrors. They shot fleeing citizens and set fire to and sacked private houses, all this without provocation.

At Rotselaer, for instance, they set fire to about fifteen houses. A German officer, addressing an inhabitant whose house was afire, wanted to make him declare, at the point of a pistol, that the fire had been started by the Belgians. When this inhabitant protested, claiming that the Belgians had left the town the previous evening, this officer declared that if the Germans had set fire to the town it was due probably to the fact that the civilians had fired at them, a fact which is also denied by all the witnesses.

There, too, the German troops pillaged everything they could lay their hands on during their passage.

Up to this writing the Commission of Inquiry has been unable to obtain the testimony of inhabitants of Diest and Tirlemont, which towns were occupied by the Germans on the 18th and 19th of August, 1914, and which are cut off from communication.

However, the inhabitants of Schaffen, a town near Diest, have stated that the same abominations were committed in their locality and in the adjoining communities, Lummen and Molenstede. The whole region has been laid waste. German troops, at an hour's distance from Diest, had begun their work of destruction all along the highway from Diest to Beeringen. Turning upon Diest they set fire to everything they could lay hands on--farms, houses, furniture. Arriving at the village of Schaffen, the Germans set fire to the town, massacring the few inhabitants who remained behind, and whom they found in their houses or in the streets.

The witness gives the names and addresses of eighteen persons whom he knows to have been massacred.

Among them are:

The wife of Francois Luyck, 45 years old, and her 12-year-old daughter, who were discovered in a sewer and shot.

The daughter of Jean Ouyen, 9 years old, who was shot.

Andre Willem, 23 years old, sexton, who was tied to a tree and burned alive.

Joseph Reynders, forty years old, who was killed together with his nephew, a lad of ten years.

Gustave Lodt, forty years old, and Jean Marken, also aged forty, probably buried alive.

The witness testifies that he personally proceeded to exhume these two bodies, and that he afterward buried them in the town cemetery.

The village of Rethy, near Turnhout, was the object of devastation and shooting during the day of Aug. 22 by seventeen cavalrymen who had penetrated into the village. A young woman of fifteen years was killed by a bullet.

Still more horrible crimes, if that were possible, have been committed by the German troops on account of their defeat at the hands of the Belgian Army before Malines. The City of Louvain, with its artistic and scientific riches, has not been spared.

New reports will be submitted very shortly.

GOOREMAN, President, ERNST DE BUNSWYCK, Secretary of the Commission.

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III.

Destruction of Louvain.

Antwerp, Aug. 31, 1914

To the Minister of Justice:

Sir: The Commission of Inquiry begs to make the following report on the deeds of which the City of Louvain and the surrounding localities and the vicinity of Malines have been the theatre.

The German Army penetrated into Louvain on Wednesday, Aug. 19, after having set fire to the towns through which it had passed.

From the moment of their entrance into the City of Louvain the Germans requisitioned lodgings and victuals for their troops. They entered every private bank of the city and took over the bank balances. German soldiers broke the doors of houses abandoned by their inhabitants, pillaged them and indulged in orgies.

The German authorities took hostages--the Mayor of the city, Senator Vander Kelm, the Vice Rector of the Catholic University, the Dean of the city; magistrates and Aldermen were also detained. All arms, down to fencing foils, had been handed over to the town administration and deposited by the said authorities in the Church of St. Peter.

In a neighboring village, Corbeek-Loo, a young matron, 22 years old, whose husband was in the army, was surprised on Wednesday, Aug. 19, with several of her relatives, by a band of German soldiers. The persons who accompanied her were locked in an abandoned house, while she was taken into another house, where she was successively attacked by five soldiers.

In the same village, on Thursday, Aug. 20, German soldiers were searching a house where a young girl of 16 years lived with her parents. They carried her into an abandoned house, and while some of them kept the father and mother off, others went into the house, the cellar of which was open, and forced the young woman to drink. Afterward they carried her out on the lawn in front of the house and attacked her successively. She continued to resist, and they pierced her breast with their bayonets. Having been abandoned by the soldiers after these abominable attacks, the girl was carried off by her parents, and the following day, owing to the gravity of her condition, she was administered the last rites of the Church by the priest of the parish and carried to the hospital at Louvain. At that time her life was in danger.

On Aug. 24 and 25 Belgian troops, leaving the intrenched camp in Antwerp, attacked the German Army which was outside of Malines.

The German troops were driven back as far as Louvain and Vilvorde.

Penetrating the towns which had been occupied by the enemy, the Belgian Army found the whole country devastated. The Germans, while retiring, had ravaged and set fire to the villages, taking with them all the male inhabitants, driving them before them.

Old Woman Killed by Bayonets.

Upon entering Hofstade, on Aug. 25, the Belgian soldiers found there the corpse of an old woman who had been killed by bayonet thrusts; she still held in her hands the needle with which she was sewing when she was attacked; one mother and her son, aged about 15 or 16 years, lay there, pierced with bayonet wounds; one man was found hanging.

In Sempst, a neighboring village, were found the corpses of two men partially burned. One of them was found with his legs cut off at the knees, the other was minus his arms and legs. A workman (whose charred body several witnesses have seen) had been pierced with bayonets, and afterward, while still living, the Germans soaked him with petroleum and locked him in a house, which they set on fire. An old man and his son had been killed by bullets; a woman coming out of her house had been stricken down in the same manner.

A witness whose declaration has been received by Edward Hertslet, son of Sir Cecil Hertslet, Consul General of Great Britain in Antwerp, testifies to have seen not far from Malines on Aug. 26 (that is, during the last attack of the Belgian troops) an old man attached by the arms to a beam of a barn. The body was completely burned; the head, the arms, and the feet were intact. Further on was a body all over stabbed with bayonet thrusts. Numerous corpses of peasants were found in positions of supplication, arms lifted and hands folded in prayer. The Belgian Consul to Unganda, who had entered the Belgian Army as a volunteer, reports that everywhere the Germans had passed through the country was devastated. The few inhabitants who remained in the villages told of horrors committed by the enemy. Thus in Wacherzeel seven Germans are said to have consecutively attacked a woman, afterward killing her. In the same village they had stripped a young boy, threatening him with death by pointing a revolver at his breast, piercing him with their lances, and chasing him into the open fields and shooting after him, without, however, hitting him.

Everywhere there was ruin and devastation. At Bulcken numerous inhabitants, including the priest, a man more than 80 years old, were killed.

Between Impde and Wolverthem two wounded Belgian soldiers were lying near a house which was burning. The Germans threw these two unfortunate men into the raging fire.

The German troops repulsed by our soldiers entered Louvain in full panic. Various witnesses assure us that at that moment the German garrison occupying Louvain was advised erroneously that the enemy was entering the town. Immediately the German garrison withdrew toward the station, where it met with the German troops that had been repulsed and pursued by the Belgian troops. Everything seems to indicate that a collision took place between the two German regiments. From that moment, under pretext that the Louvain civilians had fired upon them, a fact which is contradicted by all witnesses, and which would hardly have been possible inasmuch as all the inhabitants of Louvain, for several days past, had been obliged to hand their arms over to the local authorities, the German soldiers began to bombard the city. Moreover, not one of the witnesses has seen the body of a single civilian at the place where the affray happened. The bombarding lasted until 10 o'clock at night. Afterward the Germans set fire to the city.

Burning of the Town.

The houses which had not taken fire were entered by German soldiers, who threw fire grenades, which seem to have been provided for the occasion. The largest part of the City of Louvain, especially the quarters of the Ville Haute, comprising the modern houses, the Cathedral of St. Peter, the University Halls, with the whole library of the university, its manuscripts, its collections, the largest part of the scientific institutions, and the town theatres, were at the moment being consumed by flames.

The commission deems it necessary, in the midst of these horrors, to insist on the crime of lèse humanity which the deliberate annihilation of an academic library--a library which was one of the treasures of our time--constitutes.

Numerous corpses of civilians covered the street and squares. On the route from Louvain to Tirlemont alone one witness testifies having seen more than fifty of them. On the threshholds of houses were found burned corpses of people who, surprised in their cellars by the fire, had tried to escape and fell into the heap of live embers. The suburbs of Louvain have been completely annihilated.

A group of seventy-five persons, among whom were several notables of the city, such as Father Coloboet and a Spanish priest, and also an American priest, were conducted during the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 26, to the square in front of the station. The men were brutally separated from their wives and children, and after having received the most abominable treatment, and after repeated threats of being shot, they were driven in front of the German troops as far as the village of Campenhout. They were locked in the church during the night. The following day at 4 o'clock a German officer came to inform them that they might all confess themselves, and that they would be shot half an hour later. But at 4:30 o'clock they were allowed to go, and shortly afterward they were again arrested by a German brigade, which forced them to march in front of them to Malines. Answering a question on the part of one of the prisoners, a German officer told them that they were going to taste some of the Belgian grapeshot before Antwerp. At last they were liberated on Thursday afternoon at the entrance of Malines.

Further testimony shows that several thousand male inhabitants of Louvain who had escaped the shooting and burning were sent toward Germany. We do not at this writing know for what purpose.

The fire continued for several days. An eye-witness, who on Aug. 30 left Louvain, describes the state of the city as follows:

"From Weert St. Georges," he says, "I have seen nothing except burned towns and crazed villagers lifting to each comer their arms as a mark of submission. From each house was hanging a white flag, even from those that had been set on fire, and rags of them were found hanging from the ruins.

At Weert St. Georges I inquired from the inhabitants the cause of the German reprisals. They all assured me that absolutely none of the inhabitants had fired; that all arms had been previously given up, and that the Germans had taken vengeance on the population because a Belgian soldier of the Gendarme Corps had killed a Uhlan.

The population which remained in Louvain took refuge in the suburb of Heverle, where they are all piled up, the population having been driven from the town by the troops and by the fire.

The fire in Louvain began a little above the American College, and the city is entirely destroyed, with the exception of the Town Hall (Hôtel de Ville) and the depot. Today the fire continued, and the Germans--far from trying to stop it--seem rather to maintain it by throwing straw into the fire, as I have myself seen in the streets behind the Hôtel de Ville. The cathedral and the theatres have been destroyed and have fallen in, also the library. The town resembles an old city in ruins, in the midst of which drunken soldiers are circulating, carrying bottles of wine and liquor; the officers themselves being installed in armchairs, sitting around tables and drinking like their own men.

In the streets dead horses are decaying, horses which are already inflated, and the smell of the fire and of the decaying animals is such that it has followed me for a long time."

The commission up to this writing has been unable to obtain any information regarding the fate of the Burgomaster of Louvain, nor regarding the prominent persons taken for hostages.

Conclusions of the Commission.

By facts which have thus far been brought to its attention, the commission reaches the following conclusions:

In this war, German occupation of territory is systematically followed by (and is at times preceded by and accompanied by) acts of violence against the civil population, which acts of violence are contrary to the conventional laws of war and to the most elementary principles of humanity.

The procedure of the Germans is everywhere the same. They advance along the roads, shooting inoffensive passersby, particularly cyclists and even peasants occupied in the fields which the Germans traverse.

In the towns and villages where they stop, the Germans first of all requisition victuals and drinks which they consume to the point of drunkenness; then they begin to shoot wildly, sometimes from the interior of empty houses, declaring that the inhabitants have fired the shots. It is then that the firing scenes begin, and murder and especially pillage accompanied by acts of cold cruelty set in, acts which respect neither sex nor age. Even where they claim to know the perpetrator of the deeds which they allege, they do not content themselves with executing the culprits summarily, but take advantage of the occasions to decimate the population, to pillage all the inhabitants, and to set fire to them.

After a first massacre, somewhat at random, they shut the men into the church of the town and order all women to go back to the houses and leave the doors open during the night.