Chapter 3

THE CONDUCT OF THE GERMAN TROOPS IN BELGIUM.

Although the neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by a treaty signed in 1839 to which France, Prussia, and Great Britain were parties, and although, apart altogether from any duties imposed by treaty, no belligerent nation has any right to claim a passage for its army across the territory of a neutral State, the position which Belgium held between the German Empire and France had obliged her to consider the possibility that in the event of a war between these two powers her neutrality might not be respected. In 1911 the Belgian Minister at Berlin had requested an assurance from Germany that she would observe the Treaty of 1839; and the Chancellor of the empire had declared that Germany had no intention of violating Belgian neutrality. Again in 1913 the German Secretary of State at a meeting of a Budget Committee of the Reichstag had declared that "Belgian neutrality is provided for by international conventions and Germany is determined to respect those conventions." Finally, on July 31, 1914, when the danger of war between Germany and France seemed imminent, Herr von Below, the German Minister in Brussels, being interrogated by the Belgian Foreign Department, replied that he knew of the assurances given by the German Chancellor in 1911, and that he "was certain that the sentiments expressed at that time had not changed." Nevertheless on Aug. 2 the same Minister presented a note to the Belgian Government demanding a passage through Belgium for the German Army on pain of an instant declaration of war. Startled as they were by the suddenness with which this terrific war cloud had risen on the eastern horizon, the leaders of the nation rallied around the King in his resolution to refuse the demand and to prepare for resistance. They were aware of the danger which would confront the civilian population of the country if it were tempted to take part in the work of national defense. Orders were accordingly issued by the Civil Governors of provinces, and by the Burgomasters of towns, that the civilian inhabitants were to take no part in hostilities and to offer no provocation to the invaders. That no excuse might be furnished for severities, the populations of many important towns were instructed to surrender all firearms into the hands of the local officials.[1]

[Footnote 1: Copies of typical proclamations have been printed in _L'Allemagne et la Belgique_, Documents Annexés, xxxvi.]

This happened on Aug. 2. On the evening of Aug. 3 the German troops crossed the frontier. The storm burst so suddenly that neither party had time to adjust its mind to the situation. The Germans seem to have expected an easy passage. The Belgian population, never dreaming of an attack, were startled and stupefied.

LIÈGE AND DISTRICT.

On Aug. 4 the roads converging upon Liège from northeast, east, and south were covered with German Death's Head Hussars and Uhlans pressing forward to seize the passage over the Meuse. From the very beginning of the operations the civilian population of the villages lying upon the line of the German advance were made to experience the extreme horrors of war. "On the 4th of August," says one witness, "at Herve," (a village not far from the frontier,) "I saw at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans; these were the first German troops I had seen. They were followed by a German officer and some soldiers in a motor car. The men in the car called out to a couple of young fellows who were standing about thirty yards away. The young men, being afraid, ran off and then the Germans fired and killed one of them named D." The murder of this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighborhood, to the indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the organized military execution of batches of selected males. Thus at Herve some fifty men escaping from the burning houses were seized, taken outside the town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet west of Herve, forty men were shot. In one household alone the father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness, "near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as they tried to escape."

The burning of the villages in this neighborhood and the wholesale slaughter of civilians, such as occurred at Herve, Micheroux, and Soumagne, appear to be connected with the exasperation caused by the resistance of Fort Fléron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la Chapelle to Liège. Enraged by the losses which they had sustained, suspicious of the temper of the civilian population, and probably thinking that by exceptional severities at the outset they could cow the spirit of the Belgian Nation, the German officers and men speedily accustomed themselves to the slaughter of civilians. How rapidly the process was effected is illustrated by an entry in the diary of Kurt Hoffman, a one-year's man in the First Jägers, who on Aug. 5 was in front of Fort Fléron. He illustrates his story by a sketch map. "The position," he says, "was dangerous. As suspicious civilians were hanging about--houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, were cleared, the owners arrested, (and shot the following day.) Suddenly village A was fired at. Out of it bursts our baggage train, and the Fourth Company of the Twenty-seventh Regiment who had lost their way and been shelled by our own artillery. From the point D.P., (shown in diary,) I shoot a civilian with rifle at 400 meters slap through the head, as we afterward ascertained." Within a few hours, Hoffman, while in house 3, was himself under fire from his own comrades and narrowly escaped being killed. A German, ignorant that house 8 had been occupied, reported, as was the fact, that he had been fired upon from that house. He had been challenged by the field patrol, and failed to give the countersign. Hoffman continues:

"Ten minutes later, people approach who are talking excitedly--apparently Germans. I call out 'Halt, who's there?' Suddenly rapid fire is opened upon us, which I can only escape by quickly jumping on one side--with bullets and fragments of wall and pieces of glass flying around me. I call out 'Halt, here Field Patrol.' Then it stops, and there appears Lieutenant Römer with three platoons. A man has reported that he had been shot at out of our house; no wonder, if he does not give the countersign."

The entry, though dated Aug. 5, was evidently written on the 6th or later, because the writer refers to the suspicious civilians as having been shot on that day. Hoffman does not indicate of what offense these civilians were guilty, and there is no positive evidence to connect their slaughter with the report made by the German who had been fired on by his comrades. They were "suspicious" and that was enough.

The systematic execution of civilians, which in some cases, as the diary just cited shows, was founded on a genuine mistake, was given a wide extension through the Province of Liège. In Soumagne and Micheroux very many civilians were summarily shot. In a field belonging to a man named E. fifty-six or fifty-seven were put to death. A German officer said: "You have shot at us." One of the villagers asked to be allowed to speak, and said: "If you think these people fired kill me, but let them go." The answer was three volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. Their corpses were seen in the field that night by another witness. One at least had been mutilated. These were not the only victims in Soumagne. The eyewitness of the massacre saw, on his way home, twenty bodies, one that of a young girl of thirteen. Another witness saw nineteen corpses in a meadow.

At Blegny Trembleur, on the 6th, some civilians were captured by German soldiers, who took steps to put them to death forthwith, but were restrained by the arrival of an officer. The prisoners subsequently were taken off to Battice and five were shot in a field. No reason was assigned for their murder.

In the meantime house burners were at work. On the 6th, Battice was destroyed in part. From the 8th to the 10th over 300 houses were burned at Herve, while mounted men shot into doors and windows to prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

At Heure le Romain on or about the 15th of August all the male inhabitants, including some bedridden old men, were imprisoned in the church. The Burgomaster's brother and the priest were bayoneted.

On or about the 14th and 15th the village of Visé was completely destroyed. Officers directed the incendiaries, who worked methodically with benzine. Antiques and china were removed from the houses, before their destruction, by officers who guarded the plunder, revolver in hand. The house of a witness, which contained valuables of this kind, was protected for a time by a notice posted on the door by officers. This notice has been produced to the committee. After the removal of the valuables this house also was burned.

German soldiers had arrived on the 15th at Blegny Trembleur and seized a quantity of wine. On the 16th prisoners were taken; four, including the priest and the Burgomaster, were shot. On the same day 200 (so-called) hostages were seized at Flémalle and marched off. There they were told that unless Fort Flémalle surrendered by noon they would be shot. It did surrender and they were released.

Entries in a German diary show that on the 19th the German soldiers gave themselves up to debauchery in the streets of Liège, and on the night of the 20th (Thursday) a massacre took place in the streets, beginning near the Café Carpentier, at which there is said to have been a dinner attended by Russian and other students. A proclamation issued by General Kolewe on the following day gave the German version of the affair, which was that his troops had been fired on by Russian students. The diary states that in the night the inhabitants of Liège became mutinous and that fifty persons were shot. The Belgian witnesses vehemently deny that there had been any provocation given, some stating that many German soldiers were drunk, others giving evidence which indicates that the affair was planned beforehand. It is stated that at 5 o'clock in the evening, long before the shooting, a citizen was warned by a friendly German soldier not to go out that night.

Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known with certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de l'Université and the Quai des Pêcheurs were systematically fired with benzine, and many inhabitants were burned alive in their houses, their efforts to escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were shot, while trying to escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses. The Liège Fire Brigade turned out but was not allowed to extinguish the fire. Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of civilian corpses to the Town Hall. The fire burned on through the night and the murders continued on the following day, the 21st. Thirty-two civilians were killed on that day in the Place de l'Université alone, and a witness states that this was followed by the rape in open day of fifteen or twenty women on tables in the square itself.

No depositions are before us which deal with events in the City of Liège after this date. Outrages, however, continued in various places in the province.

For example, on or about the 21st of August, at Pepinster two witnesses were seized as hostages and were threatened, together with five others, that, unless they could discover a civilian who was alleged to have shot a soldier in the leg, they would be shot themselves. They escaped their fate because one of the hostages convinced the officer that the alleged shooting, if it took place at all, took place in the Commune of Cornesse and not that of Pepinster, whereupon the Burgomaster of Cornesse, who was old and very deaf, was shot forthwith.

The outrages on the civilian population were not confined to the villages mentioned above, but appear to have been general throughout this district from the very outbreak of the war.

An entry in one of the diaries says:

"We crossed the Belgian frontier on 15th August, 1914, at 11:50 in the forenoon, and then we went steadily along the main road till we got into Belgium. Hardly were we there when we had a horrible sight. Houses were burned down, the inhabitants chased away and some of them shot. Not one of the hundreds of houses were spared. Everything was plundered and burned. Hardly had we passed through this large village before the next village was burned, and so it went on continuously. On the 16th August, 1914, the large village of Barchon was burned down. On the same day we crossed the bridge over the Meuse at 11:50 in the morning. We then arrived at the town of Wandre. Here the houses were spared, but everything was examined. At last we were out of the town and everything went in ruins. In one house a whole collection of weapons was found. The inhabitants without exception were shot. This shooting was heart-breaking, as they all knelt down and prayed, but that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the green grass and slept for ever." ["Die Einwohner wurden samt und sonders herausgeholt und erschossen: aber dieses Erschiessen war direkt herzzerreisend wie sie alle knieben und beteten, aber dies half kein Erbarmen. Ein paar Schüsse krackten und die fielen rücklings in das grüne Gras und erschliefen für immer."]

VALLEYS OF MEUSE AND SAMBRE.

While the First Army, under the command of General Alexander von Kluck, was mastering the passages of the Meuse between Visé and Namur, and carrying out the scheme of devastation which has already been described, detachments of the Second German Army, under General von Bülow, were proceeding up the Meuse valley toward Namur. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, the town of Huy, which stands half way between Namur and Liège, was seized. On Aug. 20 German guns opened fire on Namur itself. Three days later the city was evacuated by its defenders, and the Germans proceeded along the valley of the Sambre through Tamines and Charleroi to Mons. Meanwhile a force under General von Hausen had advanced upon Dinant, by Laroche, Marche, and Achène, and on Aug. 15 made an unsuccessful assault upon that town. A few days later the attack was renewed and with success, and, Dinant captured, von Hausen's army streamed into France by Bouvines and Rethel, firing and looting the villages and shooting the inhabitants as they passed through.

The evidence with regard to the Province of Namur is less voluminous than that relating to the north of Belgium. This is largely due to the fact that the testimony of soldiers is seldom available, as the towns and villages once occupied by the Germans were seldom reoccupied by the opposing troops, and the number of refugees who have reached England from the Namur district is comparatively small.

ANDENNE.

Andenne is a small town on the Meuse between Liège and Namur, lying opposite the village of Seilles, (with which it is connected by a bridge over the river,) and was one of the earlier places reached on the German advance up the Meuse. In order to understand the story of the massacre which occurred there on Thursday Aug. 20, the following facts should be borne in mind: The German advance was hotly contested by Belgian and French troops. From daybreak onward on the 19th of August the Eighth Belgian Regiment of the Line were fighting with the German troops on the left bank of the Meuse on the heights of Seilles. At 8 A.M. on the 19th the Belgians found further resistance impossible in the district, and retired under shelter of the forts of Namur. As they retired they blew up Andenne Bridge. The first Germans arrived at Andenne at about 10 A.M., when ten or twelve Uhlans rode into the town. They went to the bridge and found it was destroyed. They then retired, but returned about half an hour afterward. Soon after that several thousand Germans entered the town and made arrangements to spend the night there. Thus, on the evening of the 19th of August, a large body of German troops were in possession of the town, which they had entered without any resistance on the part of the allied armies or of the civilian population.

About 4:30 on the next afternoon shots were fired from the left bank of the Meuse and replied to by the Germans in Andenne. The village of Andenne had been isolated from the district on the left bank of the Meuse by the destruction of the bridge, and there is nothing to suggest that the firing on the left came from the inhabitants of Andenne. Almost immediately, however, the slaughter of these inhabitants began, and continued for over two hours and intermittently during the night. Machine guns were brought into play. The German troops were said to be for the most part drunk, and they certainly murdered and ravaged unchecked. A reference to the German diaries in the appendix will give some idea of the extent to which the army gave itself up to drink through the month of August.

When the fire slackened about 7 o'clock, many of the townspeople fled in the direction of the quarries; others remained in their houses. At this moment the whole of the district around the station was on fire and houses were flaming over a distance of two kilometers in the direction of the hamlet of Tramaka. The little farms which rise one above the other on the high ground of the right bank were also burning.

At 6 o'clock on the following morning, the 21st, the Germans began to drag the inhabitants from their houses. Men, women, and children were driven into the square, where the sexes were separated. Three men were then shot, and a fourth was bayoneted. A German Colonel was present whose intention in the first place appeared to be to shoot all the men. A young German girl who had been staying in the neighborhood interceded with him, and after some parleying, some of the prisoners were picked out, taken to the banks of the Meuse and there shot. The Colonel accused the population of firing on the soldiers, but there is no reason to think that any of them had done so, and no inquiry appears to have been made.

About 400 people lost their lives in this massacre, some on the banks of the Meuse, where they were shot according to orders given, and some in the cellars of the houses where they had taken refuge. Eight men belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close to a machine gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body home on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked it, and piled up all the eatables in a heap on the floor and relieved themselves upon it.

A hairdresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was sitting with a child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. After this came the general sack of the town. Many of the inhabitants who escaped the massacre were kept as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of corpses and bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the Germans had built across the river, and were so used to prevent the Belgian forts from firing upon it.

A few days later the Germans celebrated a _Fête Nocturne_ in the square. Hot wine, looted in the town, was drunk, and the women were compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing "Deutschland über Alles."

NAMUR DISTRICT.

The fight around Namur was accompanied by sporadic outrages. Near Marchovelette wounded men were murdered in a farm by German soldiers. The farm was set on fire. A German cavalryman rode away holding in front of him one of the farmer's daughters crying and disheveled.

At Temploux, on the 23d of August, a professor of modern languages at the College of Namur was shot at his front door by a German officer. Before he died he asked the officer the reason for this brutality, and the officer replied that he had lost his temper because some civilians had fired upon the Germans as they entered the village. This allegation was not proved. The Belgian Army was still operating in the district, and it may well be that it was from them that the shots in question proceeded. After the murder the house was burned.

On the 24th and 25th of August massacres were carried out at Surice, in which many persons belonging to the professional classes, as well as others, were killed.

Namur was entered on the 24th of August. The troops signalized their entry by firing on a crowd of 150 unarmed unresisting civilians, ten alone of whom escaped.

A witness of good standing who was in Namur describes how the town was set on fire systematically in six different places. As the inhabitants fled from the burning houses they were shot by the German troops. Not less than 140 houses were burned.

On the 25th the hospital at Namur was set on fire with inflammable pastilles, the pretext being that soldiers in the hospital had fired upon the Germans.

At Denée, on the 28th of August, a Belgian soldier who had been taken prisoner saw three civilian fellow-prisoners shot. One was a cripple and another an old man of eighty who was paralyzed. It was alleged by two German soldiers that these men had shot at them with rifles. Neither of them had a rifle, nor had they anything in their pockets. The witness actually saw the Germans search them and nothing was found.

CHARLEROI DISTRICT.

In Tamines, a large village on the Meuse between Namur and Charleroi, the advance guard of the German Army appeared in the first fortnight in August, and in this as well as in other villages in the district, it is proved that a large number of civilians, among them aged people, women, and children, were deliberately killed by the soldiers. One witness describes how she saw a Belgian boy of fifteen shot on the village green at Tamines, and a day or two later on the same green a little girl and her two brothers, (name given,) who were looking at the German soldiers, were killed before her eyes for no apparent reason.

The principal massacre at Tamines took place about Aug. 28. A witness describes how he saw the public square littered with corpses, and after a search found those of his wife and child, a little girl of seven.

Another witness, who lived near Tamines, went there on Aug. 27, and says: "It is absolutely destroyed and a mass of ruins."

At Morlanwelz, about this time, the British Army, together with some French cavalry, were compelled to retire before the German troops. The latter took the Burgomaster and his man servant prisoner and shot them both in front of the Hôtel de Ville at Péronne, (Belgium,) where the bodies were left in the street for forty-eight hours. They burned the Hôtel de Ville and sixty-two houses. The usual accusation of firing by civilians was made. It is strenuously denied by the witness, who declares that three or four days before the arrival of the Germans, circulars had been distributed to every house and placards had been posted in the town ordering the deposit of all firearms at the Hôtel de Ville and that this order had been complied with.

At Monceau-sur-Sambre, on the 21st of August, a young man of eighteen was shot in his garden. His father and brother were seized in their house and shot in the courtyard of a neighboring country house. The son was shot first. The father was compelled to stand close to the feet of his son's corpse and to fix his eyes upon him while he himself was shot. The corpse of the young man shot in the garden was carried into the house and put on a bed. The next morning the Germans asked where the corpse was. When they found it was in the house, they fetched straw, packed it around the bed on which the corpse was lying, and set fire to it and burned the house down. A great many houses were burned in Monceau.

A vivid picture of the events at Montigny-sur-Sambre has been given by a witness of high standing who had exceptional opportunities of observation. In the early morning of Saturday, Aug. 22, Uhlans reached Montigny. The French Army was about four kilometers away, but on a hill near the village were a detachment of French, about 150 to 200 strong, lying in ambush. At about 1:30 o'clock the main body of the German Army began to arrive. Marching with them were two groups of so-called hostages, about 400 in all. Of these, 300 were surrounded with a rope held by the front, rear, and outside men. The French troops in ambush opened fire, and immediately the Germans commenced to destroy the town. Incendiaries with a distinctive badge on their arm went down the main street throwing handfuls of inflammatory and explosive pastilles into the houses. These pastilles were carried by them in bags, and in this way about 130 houses were destroyed in the main street. By 10:30 P.M. some 200 more hostages had been collected. These were drawn from Montigny itself, and on that night about fifty men, women, and children were placed on the bridge over the Sambre and kept there all night. The bridge was similarly guarded for a day or two, apparently either from a fear that it was mined or in the belief that these men, women, and children would afford some protection to the Germans in the event of the French attempting to storm the bridge. At one period of the German occupation of Montigny, eight nuns of the Order of Ste. Marie were captives on the bridge. House burning was accompanied by murder, and on the Monday morning twenty-seven civilians from one parish alone were seen lying dead in the hospital.

Other outrages committed at Jumet, Bouffioulx, Charleroi, Marchiennes-au-Pont, Couillet, and Maubeuge are described in the depositions given in the appendix.

DINANT.

A clear statement of the outrages at Dinant, which many travelers will recall as a singularly picturesque town on the Meuse, is given by one witness, who says that the Germans began burning houses in the Rue St. Jacques on the 21st of August, and that every house in the street was burned. On the following day an engagement took place between the French and the Germans, and the witness spent the whole day in the cellar of a bank with his wife and children. On the morning of the 23d, about 5 o'clock, firing ceased, and almost immediately afterward a party of Germans came to the house. They rang the bell and began to batter at the door and windows. The witness's wife went to the door and two or three Germans came in. The family were ordered out into the street. There they found another family, and the two families were driven with their hands above their heads along the Rue Grande. All the houses in the street were burning. The party was eventually put into a forge where there were a number of other prisoners, about a hundred in all, and were kept there from 11 A.M. till 2 P.M. They were then taken to the prison. There they were assembled in a courtyard and searched. No arms were found. They were then passed through into the prison itself and put into cells. The witness and his wife were separated from each other. During the next hour the witness heard rifle shots continually, and noticed in the corner of a courtyard leading off the row of cells the body of a young man with a mantle thrown over it. He recognized the mantle as having belonged to his wife. The witness's daughter was allowed to go out to see what had happened to her mother, and the witness himself was allowed to go across the courtyard half an hour afterward for the same purpose. He found his wife lying on the floor in a room. She had bullet wounds in four places, but was alive and told her husband to return to the children, and he did so. About 5 o'clock in the evening he saw the Germans bringing out all the young and middle-aged men from the cells, and ranging their prisoners, to the number of forty, in three rows in the middle of the courtyard. About twenty Germans were drawn up opposite, but before any thing was done there was a tremendous fusillade from some point near the prison and the civilians were hurried back to their cells. Half an hour later the same forty men were brought back into the courtyard. Almost immediately there was a second fusillade like the first and and they were driven back to the cells again. About 7 o'clock the witness and other prisoners were brought out of their cells and marched out of the prison. They went between two lines of troops to Roche Bayard, about a kilometer away. An hour later the women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant, passing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison the witness saw three lines of bodies which he recognized as being those of neighbors. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. There were about 120 bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay there till 8 o'clock in the morning. On the following day they were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in Germany.

Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the prison. About ninety bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass square opposite the convent. They included many relatives of a witness whose deposition will be found in the appendix. This witness asked a German officer why her husband had been shot, and he told her that it was because two of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at the Germans. As a matter of fact one of her sons was at that time in Liège and the other in Brussels. It is stated that, besides the ninety corpses referred to above, sixty corpses of civilians were recovered from a hole in the brewery yard and that forty-eight bodies of women and children were found in a garden. The town was systematically set on fire by hand grenades.

Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one of whose legs was broken and the other injured by a bayonet.

We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation, or that any other defense can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.

As regards this town and the advance of the German Army from Dinant to Rethel on the Aisne, a graphic account is given in the diary of a Saxon officer.[1] This diary confirms what is clear from the evidence as a whole, both as regards these and other districts, that civilians were constantly taken as prisoners, often dragged from their homes, and shot under the direction of the authorities without any charge being made against them. An event of the kind is thus referred to in a diary entry:

"Apparently 200 men were shot. There must have been some innocent men among them. In future we shall have to hold an inquiry as to their guilt instead of shooting them."

[Footnote 1: A copy of this diary was given by the French military authorities to the British Headquarters Staff in France, and the latter have communicated it to the committee. It will be found in Appendix B after the German diaries shown to us by the British War Office.]

The shooting of inhabitants, women and children as well as men, went on after the Germans had passed Dinant on their way into France. The houses and villages were pillaged and property wantonly destroyed.

AERSCHOT, MALINES, VILVORDE, AND LOUVAIN QUADRANGLE.

About Aug. 9 a powerful screen of cavalry masking the general advance of the First and Second German Armies was thrown forward into the provinces of Brabant and Limburg. The progress of the invaders was contested at several points, probably near Tirlemont on the Louvain road, and at Diest, Haelen, and Schaffen, on the Aerschot road, by detachments of the main Belgian Army, which was drawn up upon the line of the Dyle. In their preliminary skirmishes the Belgians more than once gained advantages, but after the fall on Aug. 15 of the last of the Liège forts the great line of railway which runs through Liège toward Brussels and Antwerp in one direction and toward Namur and the French frontier in another fell into the hands of the Germans. From this moment the advance of the main army was swift and irresistible. On Aug. 19 Louvain and Aerschot were occupied by the Germans, the former without resistance, the latter after a struggle which resulted early in the day in the retirement of the Belgian Army upon Antwerp. On Aug. 20 the invaders made their entry into Brussels.

The quadrangle of territory bounded by the towns of Aerschot, Malines, Vilvorde, and Louvain is a rich agricultural tract, studded with small villages and comprising two considerable cities, Louvain and Malines. This district on Aug. 19 passed into the hands of the Germans, and owing perhaps to its proximity to Antwerp, then the seat of the Belgian Government and headquarters of the Belgian Army, it became from that date a scene of chronic outrage, with respect to which the committee has received a great mass of evidence.

The witnesses to these occurrences are for the most part imperfectly educated persons who cannot give accurate dates, so it is impossible in some cases to fix the dates of particular crimes; and the total number of outrages is so great that we cannot refer to all of them in the body of the report or give all the depositions relating to them in the appendix. The main events, however, are abundantly clear, and group themselves naturally around three dates--Aug. 19, Aug. 25, and Sept. 11.

The arrival of the Germans in the district on Aug. 19 was marked by systematic massacres and other outrages at Aerschot itself, Gelrode, and some other villages.

On Aug. 25 the Belgians, sallying out of the defenses of Antwerp, attacked the German positions at Malines, drove the enemy from the town, and reoccupied many of the villages, such as Sempst, Hofstade, and Eppeghem, in the neighborhood. And, just as numerous outrages against the civilian population had been the immediate consequence of the temporary repulse of the German vanguard from Fort Fléron, so a large body of depositions testify to the fact that a sudden outburst of cruelty was the response of the German Army to the Belgian victory at Malines. The advance of the German Army to the Dyle had been accompanied by reprehensible, and, indeed, (in certain cases,) terrible outrages, but these had been, it would appear, isolated acts, some of which are attributed by witnesses to indignation at the check at Haelen, while others may have been the consequence of drunkenness. But the battle of Malines had results of a different order. In the first place, it was the occasion of numerous murders committed by the German Army in retreating through the villages of Sempst, Hofstade, Eppeghem, Elewyt, and elsewhere. In the second place, it led, as it will be shown later, to the massacres, plunderings, and burnings at Louvain, the signal for which was provided by shots exchanged between the German Army retreating after its repulse at Malines and some members of the German garrison of Louvain who mistook their fellow-countrymen for Belgians. Lastly, the encounter at Malines seems to have stung the Germans into establishing a reign of terror in so much of the district comprised in the quadrangle as remained in their power. Many houses were destroyed and their contents stolen. Hundreds of prisoners were locked up in various churches and were in some instances marched about from one village to another. Some of these were finally conducted to Louvain and linked up with the bands of prisoners taken in Louvain itself, and sent to Germany and elsewhere.

On Sept. 11, when the Germans were driven out of Aerschot across the River Demer by a successful sortie from Antwerp, murders of civilians were taking place in the villages which the Belgian Army then recaptured from the Germans. These crimes bear a strong resemblance to those committed in Hofstade and other villages after the battle of Malines.

AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.

Period I., (Aug. 19 and following days.)

AERSCHOT.

The German Army entered Aerschot quite early in the morning. Workmen going to their work were seized and taken as hostages.

The Germans, apparently already irritated, proceeded to make a search for the priests and threatened to burn the convent if the priests should happen to be found there. One priest was accused of inciting the inhabitants to fire on the troops, and when he denied it the Burgomaster was blamed by the officer. The priest then showed the officer the notices on the walls, signed by the Burgomaster, warning the inhabitants not to intervene in hostilities.

It appears that they accused the priest of having fired at the Germans from the tower of the church. This is important because it is one of the not infrequent cases in which the Germans ascribed firing from a church to priests, whereas in fact this firing came from Belgian soldiers, and also because it seems to show that the Germans from the moment of their arrival in Aerschot were seeking to pick a quarrel with the inhabitants, and this goes far to explain their subsequent conduct. Hostages were collected until 200 men, some of whom were invalids, were gathered together.

M. Tielmans, the Burgomaster, was then ordered by some German officers to address the crowd and to tell them to hand in any weapons which they might have in their possession at the Town Hall, and to warn them that any one who was found with weapons would be killed. As a matter of fact, the arms in the possession of civilians had already been collected at the beginning of the war. The Burgomaster's speech resulted in the delivery of one gun, which had been used for pigeon shooting. The hostages were then released. Throughout the day the town was looted by the soldiers. Many shop windows were broken, and the contents of the shop fronts ransacked.

A shot was fired about 7 o'clock in the evening, by which time many of the soldiers were drunk. The Germans were not of one mind as to the direction from which the shot proceeded. Some said it came from a jeweler's shop, and some said it came from other houses. No one was hit by this shot, but thereafter German soldiers began to fire in various directions at people in the streets.

It is said that a German General or Colonel was killed at the Burgomaster's house. As far as the committee have been able to ascertain, the identity of the officer has never been revealed. The German version of the story is that he was killed by the 15-year-old son of the Burgomaster. The committee, however, is satisfied by the evidence of several independent witnesses that some German officers were standing at the window of the Burgomaster's house, that a large body of German troops was in the square, that some of these soldiers were drunk and let off their rifles, that in the volley one of the officers standing at the window of the Burgomaster's house fell, that at the time of the accident the wife and son of the Burgomaster had gone to take refuge in the cellar, and that neither the Burgomaster nor his son were in the least degree responsible for the occurrence which served as the pretext for their subsequent execution, and for the firing and sack of the town.[A]

[Footnote A: This account agrees substantially with that given in a letter written by Mme. Tielmans, the Burgomaster's wife, which is printed in the fifth report of the Belgian Commission. The letter is as follows:

This is how it happened. About 4 in the afternoon my husband was giving cigars to the sentinels stationed at the door. I saw that the General and his aides de camp were looking at us from the balcony and told him to come indoors. Just then I looked toward the Grand Place, where more than 2,000 Germans were encamped, and distinctly saw two columns of smoke followed by a fusillade. The Germans were firing on the houses and forcing their way into them. My husband, children, servant, and myself had just time to dash into the staircase leading to the cellar. The Germans were even firing into the passages of the houses. After a few minutes of indescribable horror, one of the General's aides de camp came down and said: "The General is dead. Where is the Burgomaster?" My husband said to me, "This will be serious for me." As he went forward I said to the aide de camp: "You can see for yourself, Sir, that my husband did not fire." "That makes no difference," he said. "He is responsible." My husband was taken off. My son, who was at my side, took us into another cellar. The same aide de camp came and dragged him out and made him walk in front of him, kicking him as he went. The poor boy could hardly walk. That morning when they came to the town the Germans had fired through the windows of the houses, and a bullet had come into the room where my son was, and he had been wounded in the calf by the ricochet. After my husband and son had gone I was dragged all through the house by Germans, with their revolvers leveled at my head. I was compelled to see their dead General. Then my daughter and I were thrown into the street without cloaks or anything. We were massed in the Grand Place, surrounded by a cordon of soldiers, and compelled to witness the destruction of our beloved town. And then, by the hideous light of the fire, I saw them for the last time, about 1 in the morning, my husband and my boy tied together. My brother-in-law was behind them. They were being led out to execution.]

The houses were set on fire with special apparatus, while people were dragged from their houses, already burning, and some were shot in the streets.

Many civilians were marched to a field on the road to Louvain and kept there all night. Meanwhile many of the inhabitants were collected in the square. By this time very many of the troops were drunk.

On the following day a number of the civilians were shot under the orders of an officer, together with the Burgomaster, his brother, and his son. Of this incident, which is spoken to by many witnesses, a clear account is given:

"German soldiers came and took hold of me and every other man they could see, and eventually there were about sixty of us, including some of 80, (i.e., years of age,) and they made us accompany them ... all the prisoners had to walk with their hands above their heads. We were then stopped and made to stand in a line, and an officer, a big fat man who had a bluish uniform ... came along the line and picked out the Burgomaster, his brother, and his son, and some men who had been employed under the Red Cross. In all, ten men were picked out ... the remainder were made to turn their backs upon the ten. I then heard some shots fired, and I and the other men turned around and we saw all the ten men, including the Burgomaster, were lying on the ground."

This incident is spoken to by other witnesses also. Some of their depositions appear in the appendix.

GELRODE.

On the same day at Gelrode, a small village close to Aerschot, twenty-five civilians were imprisoned in the church. Seven were taken out by fifteen German soldiers in charge of an officer just outside. One of the seven tried to run away, whereupon all the six who remained behind alive were shot. This was on the night of Aug. 19. No provocation whatever had been given. The men in question had been searched, and no arms had been found upon them. Here, as at Aerschot, precautions had been taken previously to secure the delivery up of all arms in the hands of civilians.

Some of the survivors were compelled to dig graves for the seven. At a later date the corpses were disinterred and reburied in consecrated ground. The marks of the bullets in the brick wall against which the six were shot were then still plainly visible. On the same day a woman was shot by some German soldiers as she was walking home. This was done at a distance of 100 yards and for no apparent reason.

An account of a murder by an officer at Campenhout is given in a later part of this report, and depositions relating to Rotselaer, Tremeloo, and Wespelaer will be found in the appendix.

The committee is specially impressed by the character of the outrages committed in the smaller villages. Many of these are exceptionally shocking and cannot be regarded as contemplated or prescribed by the responsible commanders of the troops by whom they were committed. The inference, however, which we draw from these occurrences is that when once troops have been encouraged in a career of terrorism the more savage and brutal natures, of whom there are some in every large army, are liable to run to wild excess, more particularly in those regions where they are least subject to observation and control.

AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.

Period II., (Aug. 25.)

Immediately after the battle of Malines, which resulted in the evacuation by the Germans of the district of Malines, Sempst, Hofstade, and Eppeghem, a long series of murders were committed either just before or during the retreat of the army. Many of the inhabitants who were unarmed, including women and young children, were killed--some of them under revolting circumstances.

Evidence given goes to show that the death of these villagers was due not to accident, but to deliberate purpose. The wounds were generally stabs or cuts, and for the most part appear to have been inflicted with the bayonet.

MALINES.

In Malines itself many bodies were seen. One witness saw a German soldier cut a woman's breasts after he had murdered her, and saw many other dead bodies of women in the streets.

HOFSTADE.

In Hofstade a number of houses had been set on fire and many corpses were seen, some in houses, some in back yards, and some in the streets.

Several examples are given below.

Two witnesses speak to having seen the body of a young man pierced by bayonet thrusts with the wrists cut also.

On a side road the corpse of a civilian was seen on his doorstep with a bayonet wound in his stomach, and by his side the dead body of a boy of 5 or 6 with his hands nearly severed.

The corpses of a woman and boy were seen at the blacksmith's. They had been killed with the bayonet.

In a café a young man, also killed with the bayonet, was holding his hands together as if in the attitude of supplication.

Two young women were lying in the back yard of the house. One had her breasts cut off, the other had been stabbed.

A young man had been hacked with the bayonet until his entrails protruded. He also had his hands joined in the attitude of prayer.

In the garden of a house in the main street bodies of two women were observed, and in another house the body of a boy of 16 with two bayonet wounds in the chest.

SEMPST.

In Sempst a similar condition of affairs existed. Houses were burning and in some of them were the charred remains of civilians.

In a bicycle shop a witness saw the burned corpse of a man. Other witnesses speak to this incident.

Another civilian, unarmed, was shot as he was running away. As will be remembered, all the arms had been given up some time before by order of the Burgomaster.

The corpse of a man with his legs cut off, who was partly bound, was seen by another witness, who also saw a girl of 17 dressed only in a chemise, and in great distress. She alleged that she herself and other girls had been dragged into a field, stripped naked, and violated, and that some of them had been killed with the bayonet.

WEERDE.--At Weerde four corpses of civilians were lying in the road. It was said that these men had fired upon the German soldiers; but this is denied. The arms had been given up long before.

Two children were killed in a village, apparently Weerde, quite wantonly as they were standing in the road with their mother. They were 3 or 4 years old and were killed with the bayonet.

A small farm burning close by formed a convenient means of getting rid of the bodies. They were thrown into the flames from the bayonets. It is right to add that no commissioned officer was present at the time.

EPPEGHEM.--At Eppeghem on Aug. 25 a pregnant woman who had been wounded with a bayonet was discovered in the convent. She was dying. On the road six dead bodies of laborers were seen.

ELEWYT.--At Elewyt a man's naked body was tied up to a ring in the wall in the back yard of a house. He was dead, and his corpse was mutilated in a manner too horrible to record. A woman's naked body was also found in a stable abutting on the same back yard.

VILVORDE.--At Vilvorde corpses of civilians were also found. These villages are all on the line from Malines to Brussels.

BOORT MEERBEEK.--At Boort Meerbeek a German soldier was seen to fire three times at a little girl 5 years old. Having failed to hit her, he subsequently bayoneted her. He was killed with the butt end of a rifle by a Belgian soldier who had seen him commit this murder from a distance.

HERENT.--At Herent the charred body of a civilian was found in a butcher's shop, and in a handcart twenty yards away was the dead body of a laborer.

Two eyewitnesses relate that a German soldier shot a civilian and stabbed him with a bayonet as he lay. He then made one of these witnesses, a civilian prisoner, smell the blood on the bayonet.

HAECHT.--At Haecht the bodies of ten civilians were seen lying in a row by a brewery wall.

In a laborer's house, which had been broken up, the mutilated corpse of a woman of 30 to 35 was discovered.

A child of 3 with its stomach cut open by a bayonet was lying near a house.

WERCHTER.--At Werchter the corpses of a man and woman and four younger persons were found in one house. It is stated that they had been murdered because one of the latter, a girl, would not allow the Germans to outrage her.

This catalogue of crimes does not by any means represent the sum total of the depositions relating to this district laid before the committee. The above are given merely as examples of acts which the evidence shows to have taken place in numbers that might have seemed scarcely credible.

In the rest of the district, that is to say, Aerschot and the other villages from which the Germans had not been driven, the effect of the battle was to cause a recrudescence of murder, arson, pillage, and cruelty, which had to some extent died down after Aug. 20 or 21.

In Aerschot itself fresh prisoners seem to have been taken and added to those who were already in the church, since it would appear that prisoners were kept to some extent in the church during the whole of the German occupation of Aerschot. The second occasion on which large numbers of prisoners were put there was shortly after the battle of Malines, and it was then that the priest of Gelrode was brought to Aerschot Church, treated abominably, and finally murdered.

One witness describes the scene graphically:

"The whole of the prisoners--men, women and children--were placed in the church. Nobody was allowed to go outside the church to obey the calls of nature; the church had to be used for that purpose. We were afterward allowed to go outside the church for this purpose, and then I saw the clergyman of Gelrode standing by the wall of the church with his hands above his head, being guarded by soldiers."

The actual details of the murder of the priest are as follows: The priest was struck several times by the soldiers on the head. He was pushed up against the wall of the church. He asked in Flemish to be allowed to stand with his face to the wall, and tried to turn around. The Germans stopped him and then turned him with his face to the wall, with his hands above his head. An hour later the same witness saw the priest still standing there. He was then led away by the Germans a distance of about fifty yards. There, with his face against the wall of a house, he was shot by five soldiers.

Other murders of which we have evidence appear in the appendix.

Some of the prisoners in the church at Aerschot were actually kept there until the arrival of the Belgian Army on Sept. 11, when they were released. Others were marched to Louvain and eventually merged with other prisoners, both from Louvain itself and the surrounding districts, and taken to Germany and elsewhere.

It is said by one witness that about 1,500 were marched to Louvain and that the journey took six hours.

The journey to Louvain is thus described by a witness: We were all marched off to Louvain, walking. There were some very old people, among others a man 90 years of age. The very old people were drawn in carts and barrows by the younger men. There was an officer with a bicycle, who shouted, as people fell out by the side of the road, "Shoot them!"

AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.

Period III., (September.)

It is unnecessary to describe with much particularity the events of the period beginning about Sept. 10. The Belgian soldiers, who had recaptured the place, found corpses of civilians who must have been murdered in Aerschot itself just as they found them in Sempst and the other villages on Aug. 25. Some of these bodies were found in wells and some had been burned alive in their houses.

The prisoners released by the Belgian Army from the church were almost starved.

HAECHT.--At Haecht several children had been murdered, one of 2 or 3 years of age was found nailed to the door of a farmhouse by its hands and feet--a crime which seems almost incredible, but the evidence for which we feel bound to accept. In the garden of this house was the body of a girl who had been shot in the forehead.

CAPELLE-AU-BOIS.--At Capelle-au-Bois two children were murdered in a cart and their corpses were seen by many witnesses at different stages of the cart's journey.

EPPEGHEM.--At Eppeghem the dead body of a child of 2 was seen pinned to the ground with a German lance. Same witness saw a mutilated woman alive near Weerde on the same day.

TREMELOO.--Belgian soldiers on patrol duty found a young girl naked on the ground, covered with scratches. She complained of having been violated. On the same day an old woman was seen kneeling by the body of her husband, and she told them that the Germans had shot him as he was trying to escape from the house.

LOUVAIN AND DISTRICT.

The events spoken to as having occurred in and around Louvain between the 19th and the 25th of August deserve close attention.

For six days the Germans were in peaceful occupation of the city. No houses were set on fire--no citizens killed. There was a certain amount of looting of empty houses, but otherwise discipline was effectively maintained. The condition of Louvain during these days was one of relative peace and quietude, presenting a striking contrast to the previous and contemporaneous conduct of the German Army elsewhere.

On the evening of Aug. 25 a sudden change takes place. The Germans, on that day repulsed by the Belgians, had retreated to and reoccupied Louvain. Immediately the devastation of that city and the holocaust of its population commences. The inference is irresistible that the army as a whole wreaked its vengeance on the civil population and the buildings of the city in revenge for the setback which the Belgian arms had inflicted on them. A subsidiary cause alleged was the assertion, often made before that civilians had fired upon the German Army.

The depositions which relate to Louvain are numerous, and are believed by the committee to present a true and fairly complete picture of the events of the 25th and 26th of August and subsequent days. We find no grounds for thinking that the inhabitants fired upon the German Army on the evening of the 25th of August. Eyewitnesses worthy of credence detail exactly when, where, and how the firing commenced. Such firing was by Germans on Germans. No impartial tribunal could, in our opinion, come to any other conclusion.

On the evening of the 25th firing could be heard in the direction of Herent, some three kilometers from Louvain. An alarm was sounded in the city. There was disorder and confusion, and at 8 o'clock horses attached to baggage wagons stampeded in the street and rifle fire commenced. This was in the Rue de la Station and came from the German police guard, (21 in number,) who, seeing the troops arrive in disorder, thought it was the enemy. Then the corps of incendiaries got to work. They had broad belts with the words "Gott mit uns," and their equipment consisted of a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. Fires blazed up in the direction of the Law Courts, St. Martin's Barracks, and later in the Place de la Station. Meanwhile an incessant fusillade was kept up on the windows of the houses. In their efforts to escape the flames the inhabitants climbed the walls.

"My mother and servants," says a witness, "had to do the same and took refuge at Monsieur A.'s, whose cellars are vaulted and afforded a better protection than mine. A little later we withdrew to Monsieur A.'s stables, where about thirty people who had got there by climbing the walls were to be found. Some of these poor wretches had to climb twenty walls. A ring came at the bell. We opened the door. Several civilians flung themselves under the porch. The Germans were firing upon them from the street. Every moment new fires were lighting up, accompanied by explosions. In the middle of the night I heard a knock at the outer door of the stable which led into a little street, and heard a woman's voice crying for help. I opened the door, and just as I was going to let her in a rifle shot fired from the street by a German soldier rang out and the woman fell dead at my feet. About 9 in the morning things got quieter, and we took the opportunity of venturing into the street. A German who was carrying a silver pyx and a number of boxes of cigars told us we were to go to the station, where trains would be waiting for us. When we got to the Place de la Station we saw in the square seven or eight dead bodies of murdered civilians. Not a single house in the place was standing. A whole row of houses behind the station at Blauwput was burned. After being driven hither and thither interminably by officers, who treated us roughly and insulted us throughout, we were divided."

The prisoners were then distributed between different bodies of troops and marched in the direction of Herent. Seventy-seven inhabitants of Louvain, including a number of people of good position, (the names of several are given,) were thus taken to Herent.

"We found the village of Herent in flames, so much so that we had to quicken up to prevent ourselves from being suffocated and burned up by the flames in the middle of the road. Half-burned corpses of civilians were lying in front of the houses. During a halt soldiers stole cattle and slaughtered them where they stood. Firing started on our left. We were told it was the civilians firing, and that we were going to be shot. The truth is that it was the Germans themselves who were firing to frighten us. There was not a single civilian in the neighborhood. Shortly afterward we proceeded on our march to Malines. We were insulted and threatened.... The officers were worse than the men. We got to Campenhout about 7 P.M., and were locked into the church with all the male population of the village. Some priests had joined our numbers. We had had nothing to eat or drink since the evening of the day before. A few compassionate soldiers gave us water to drink, but no official took the trouble to see that we were fed."

Next day, Thursday, the 27th, a safe conduct to return to Louvain was given, but the prisoners had hardly started, when they were stopped and taken before a Brigade General and handed to another escort. Some were grossly ill-treated. They were accused of being soldiers out of uniform, and were told they could not go to Louvain, "as the town was going to be razed to the ground." Other prisoners were added, even women and children, until there were more than 200. They were then taken toward Malines, released, and told to go to that town together, and that those who separated would be fired on. Other witnesses corroborate the events described by the witness.

A woman employed by an old gentleman living in the Rue de la Station tells the story of her master's death:

"We had supper as usual about 8, but two German officers, (who were staying in the house,) did not come in to supper that evening. My master went to bed at 8:15, and so did his son. The servants went to bed at 9:30. Soon after I got to my bedroom I saw out of my room flames from some burning house near by. I roused my master and his son. As they came down the stairs they were seized by German soldiers and both were tied up and led out, my master being tied with a rope and his son with a chain. They were dragged outside. I did not actually see what happened outside, but heard subsequently that my master was bayoneted and shot, and that his son was shot. I heard shots from the kitchen, where I was, and was present at the burial of my master and his son thirteen days later. German soldiers came back into the house and poured some inflammable liquid over the floors and set fire to it. I escaped by another staircase to that which my master and his son had descended."

On the 26th, (Wednesday,) in the City of Louvain, massacre, fire, and destruction went on. The university, with its library, the Church of St. Peter, and many houses were set on fire and burned to the ground. Citizens were shot and others taken prisoners and compelled to go with the troops. Soldiers went through the streets saying "Man hat geschossen."[A] One soldier was seen going along shooting in the air.

[Footnote A: "They have been shooting."]

Many of the people hid in cellars, but the soldiers shot down through the gratings. Some citizens were shot on opening the doors, others in endeavoring to escape. Among other persons whose houses were burned was an old man of 90 lying dangerously ill, who was taken out on his mattress and left lying in his garden all night. He died shortly after in the hospital to which a friend took him the following morning.

On Thursday, the 27th, orders were given that every one should leave the city, which was to be razed to the ground. Some citizens, including a canon of the cathedral, with his aged mother, were ordered to go to the station and afterward to take the road to Tirlemont. Among the number were about twenty priests from Louvain. They were insulted and threatened, but ultimately allowed to go free and make their way as best they could, women and sick persons among them, to Tirlemont. Other groups of prisoners from Louvain were on the same day taken by other routes, some early in the morning, through various villages in the direction of Malines, with hands tightly bound by a long cord. More prisoners were afterward added, and all made to stay the night in the church at Campenhout. Next day, the 28th, this group, then consisting of about 1,000 men, women and children, was taken back to Louvain. The houses along the road were burning and many dead bodies of civilians, men and women, were seen on the way. Some of the principal streets in Louvain had by that time been burned out. The prisoners were placed in a large building on the cavalry exercise ground--"One woman went mad, some children died, others were born." On the 29th the prisoners were marched along the Malines road, and at Herent the women and children and men over 40 were allowed to go; the others were taken to Boort Meerbeek, 15 kilometers from Malines, and told to march straight to Malines or be shot. At 11 P.M. they reached the fort of Waelhem and were at first fired on by the sentries, but on calling out they were Belgians were allowed to pass. These prisoners were practically without food from early morning on the 26th until midnight on the 29th. Of the corpses seen on the road, some had their hands tied behind their backs, others were burned, some had been killed by blows, and some corpses were those of children who had been shot.

Another witness, a man of independent means, was arrested at noon by the soldiers of the One Hundred and Sixty-fifth Regiment and taken to the Place de la Station. He was grossly ill-treated on the way and robbed by an officer of his purse and keys. His hands were tied behind his back. His wife was kept a prisoner at the other side of the station. He was then made to march with about 500 other prisoners until midnight, slept in the rain that night, and next day, having had no food since leaving Louvain, was taken to the church in Rotselaer, where there were then about 1,500 prisoners confined, including some infants. No food was given, only some water. Next day they were taken through Wespelaer and back to Louvain. On the way from Rotselaer to Wespelaer fifty bodies were seen, some naked and carbonized and unrecognizable. When they arrived at Louvain the Fish Market, the Place Marguerite, the cathedral, and many other buildings were on fire. In the evening about 100 men, women, and children were put in horse trucks from which the dung had not been removed, and at 6 the next morning left for Cologne.

The wife of this witness was also taken prisoner with her husband and her maid, but was separated from him, and she saw other ladies made to walk before the soldiers with their hands above their heads. One, an old lady of 85, (name given,) was dragged from her cellar and taken with them to the station. They were kept there all night, but set free in the morning, Thursday, but shortly afterward sent to Tirlemont on foot. A number of corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners, of whom there are said to have been thousands, were not allowed even to have water to drink, although there were streams on the way from which the soldiers drank. Witness was given some milk at a farm, but as she raised it to her lips it was taken away from her.

A priest was taken on Friday morning Aug. 28, and placed at the head of a number of refugees from Wygmael. He was led through Louvain, abused and ill-treated, and placed with some thousands of other people in the riding school in the Rue du Manège. The glass roof broke in the night from the heat of burning buildings around. Next day the prisoners were marched through the country with an armed guard. Burned farms and burned corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners were finally separated into three groups, and the younger men marched through Herent and Bueken to Campenhout, and ultimately reached the Belgian lines about midnight on Saturday, Aug. 29. All the houses in Herent, a village of about 5,000 inhabitants, had been burned.

The massacre of civilians at Louvain was not confined to its citizens. Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain from the surrounding districts, not only from Aerschot and Gelrode as above mentioned, but also from other places. For example, a witness describes how many women and children were taken in carts to Louvain, and there placed in a stable. Of the hundreds of people thus taken from the various villages and brought to Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred there, others were forced to march along with citizens of Louvain through various places, some being ultimately sent on the 29th to the Belgian lines at Malines, others were taken in trucks to Cologne as described below, others were released. An account of the massacre of some of these unfortunate civilian prisoners given by two witnesses may be quoted:

"We were all placed in Station Street, Louvain, and the German soldiers fired upon us. I saw the corpses of some women in the street. I fell down, and a woman who had been shot fell on top of me. I did not dare to look at the dead bodies in the street, there were so many of them. All of them had been shot by the German soldiers. One woman whom I saw lying dead in the street was a Miss J., about 35. I also saw the body of A.M., (a woman.) She had been shot. I saw an officer pull her corpse underneath a wagon."

Another witness, who was taken from Aerschot, also describes the occurrence:

"I was afterward taken with a large number of other civilians and placed in the church at Louvain. Then we were taken to Station Street, Louvain. There were about 1,500 civilians of both sexes, and we had been marched from Aerschot to Louvain. When we were in Station Street I felt that something was about to happen, and I tried to shelter in a doorway. The German soldiers then fired a mitrailleuse and their rifles upon the people, and the people fell on all sides. Two men next to me were killed. I afterward saw some one give a signal, and the firing ceased. I then ran away with a married woman named B., (whose maiden name was A.M.,) aged 29, who belonged to Aerschot, but we were again captured. She was shot by the side of me, and I saw her fall. Several other people were shot at the same time. I again ran away, and in my flight saw children falling out of their mothers' arms. I cannot say whether they were shot, or whether they fell from their mothers' arms in the great panic which ensued. I, however, saw children bleeding."

JOURNEY TO COLOGNE.

The greatest number of prisoners from Louvain, however, were assembled at the station and taken by trains to Cologne. Several witnesses describe their sufferings and the ill-treatment they received on the journey. One of the first trains started in the afternoon. It consisted of cattle trucks, about 100 being in each truck. It took three days to get to Cologne. The prisoners had nothing to eat but a few biscuits each, and they were not allowed to get out for water and none was given. On a wagon the words "Civilians who shot at the soldiers at Louvain" were written. Some were marched through Cologne afterward for the people to see. Ropes were put about the necks of some and they were told they would be hanged. An order then came that they were to be shot instead of hanged. A firing squad was prepared and five or six prisoners were put up, but were not shot. After being kept a week at Cologne some of these prisoners were taken back--this time only thirty or forty in a truck--and allowed to go free on arriving at Limburg. Several witnesses who were taken in other trains to Cologne describe their experiences in detail. Some of the trucks were abominably filthy. Prisoners were not allowed to leave to obey the calls of nature; one man who quitted the truck for the purpose was killed by a bayonet. Describing what happened to another body of prisoners, a witness says that they were made to cross Station Street, where the houses were burning, and taken to the station, placed in horse trucks, crowded together, men, women, and children, in each wagon. They were kept at the station during the night, and the following day left for Cologne. For two days and a half they were without food, and then they received a loaf of bread among ten persons, and some water. The prisoners were afterward taken back to Belgium. They were, in all, eight days in the train, crowded and almost without food. Two of the men went mad. The women and children were separated from the men at Brussels. The men were taken to a suburb and then to the villages of Herent, Vilvorde, and Sempst, and afterward set at liberty.

This taking of the inhabitants, including some of the influential citizens, in groups and marching them to various places, and in particular the sending of them to Malines and the dispatch of great numbers to Cologne, must evidently have been done under the direction of the higher military authorities. The ill-treatment of the prisoners was under the eyes and often by the direction or with the sanction of officers, and officers themselves took part in it.

The object of taking many hundreds of prisoners to Cologne and back into Belgium is at first sight difficult to understand. Possibly it is to be regarded as part of the policy of punishment for Belgian resistance and general terrorization of the inhabitants--possibly as a desire to show these people to the population of a German city and thus to confirm the belief that the Belgians had shot at their troops.

Whatever may have been the case when the burning began on the evening of the 25th, it appears clear that the subsequent destruction and outrages were done with a set purpose. It was not until the 26th that the library, and other university buildings, the Church of St. Peter and many houses were set on fire. It is to be noticed that cases occur in the depositions in which humane acts by individual officers and soldiers are mentioned, or in which officers are said to have expressed regret at being obliged to carry out orders for cruel action against the civilians. Similarly, we find entries in diaries which reveal a genuine pity for the population and disgust at the conduct of the army. It appears that a German non-commissioned officer stated definitely that he "was acting under orders and executing them with great unwillingness." A commissioned officer on being asked at Louvain by a witness--a highly educated man--about the horrible acts committed by the soldiers, said he "was merely executing orders," and that he himself would be shot if he did not execute them. Others gave less credible excuses, one stating that the inhabitants of Louvain had burned the city themselves because they did not wish to supply food and quarters for the German Army. It was to the discipline rather than the want of discipline in the army that these outrages, which we are obliged to describe as systematic, were due, and the special official notices posted on certain houses that they were not to be destroyed show the fate which had been decreed for the others which were not so marked.

We are driven to the conclusion that the harrying of the villages in the district, the burning of a large part of Louvain, the massacres there, the marching out of the prisoners, and the transport to Cologne, (all done without inquiry as to whether the particular persons seized or killed had committed any wrongful act,) were due to a calculated policy carried out scientifically and deliberately, not merely with the sanction but under the direction of higher military authorities, and were not due to any provocation or resistance by the civilian population.

TERMONDE.

To understand the depositions describing what happened at Termonde it is necessary to remember that the German Army occupied the town on two occasions, the first, from Friday, Sept. 4, to Sunday, Sept. 6, and again later in the month, about the 16th. The civilians had delivered up their arms a fortnight before the arrival of the Germans.

Early in the month, probably about the 4th, a witness saw two civilians murdered by Uhlans. Another witness saw their dead bodies, which remained in the street for ten days. Two hundred civilians were utilized as a screen by the German troops about this date.

On the 5th the town was partially burned. One witness was taken prisoner in the street by some German soldiers, together with several other civilians. At about 12 o'clock some of the tallest and strongest men among the prisoners were picked out to go around the streets with paraffin. Three or four carts containing paraffin tanks were brought up, and a syringe was used to put paraffin on to the houses, which were then fired. The process of destruction began with the houses of rich people, and afterward the houses of the poorer classes were treated in the same manner. German soldiers had previously told this witness that if the Burgomaster of Termonde, who was out of town, did not return by 12 o'clock that day the town would be set on fire. The firing of the town was in consequence of his failure to return. The prisoners were afterward taken to a factory and searched for weapons. They were subsequently provided with passports enabling them to go anywhere in the town, but not outside. The witness in question managed to effect his escape by swimming across the river.

Another witness describes how the tower of the Church of Termonde St. Gilles was utilized by the Belgian troops for offensive purposes. They had in fact mounted a machine gun there. This witness was subsequently taken prisoner in a cellar in Termonde in which he had taken refuge with other people. All the men were taken from the cellar and the women were left behind. About seventy prisoners in all were taken; one, a brewer who could not walk fast enough, was wounded with a bayonet. He fell down and was compelled to get up and follow the soldiers. The prisoners had to hold up their hands, and if they dropped their hands they were struck on the back with the butt end of rifles. They were taken to Lebbeke, where there were in all 300 prisoners, and there they were locked up in the church for three days and with scarcely any food.

A witness living at Baesrode was taken prisoner with 250 others and kept all night in a field. The prisoners were released on the following morning. This witness saw three corpses of civilians, and says that the Germans on Sunday, the 6th, plundered and destroyed the houses of those who had fled. The Germans left on the following day, taking about thirty men with them, one a man of 72 years of age.

Later in the month civilians were again used as a screen, and there is evidence of other acts of outrage.

ALOST.

Alost was the scene of fighting between the Belgian and German Armies during the whole of the latter part of the month of September. In connection with the fighting numerous cruelties appear to have been perpetrated by the German troops.

On Saturday, Sept. 11, a weaver was bayoneted in the street. Another civilian was shot dead at his door on the same night. On the following day the witness was taken prisoner together with thirty others. The money of the prisoners was confiscated, and they were subsequently used as a screen for the German troops who were at that moment engaged in a conflict with the Belgian Army in the town itself. The Germans burned a number of houses at this time. Corpses of 14 civilians were seen in the streets on this occasion.

A well-educated witness, who visited the Wetteren Hospital shortly after this date, saw the dead bodies of a number of civilians belonging to Alost, and other civilians wounded. One of these stated that he took refuge in the house of his sister-in-law; that the Germans dragged the people out of the house, which was on fire, seized him, threw him on the ground, and hit him on the head with the butt end of a rifle, and ran him through the thigh with a bayonet. They then placed him with seventeen or eighteen others in front of the German troops, threatening them with revolvers. They said that they were going to make the people of Alost pay for the losses sustained by the Germans. At this hospital was an old woman of 80 completely transfixed by a bayonet.

Other crimes on noncombatants at Alost belong to the end of the month of September. Many witnesses speak to the murder of harmless civilians.

In Binnenstraat the Germans broke open the windows of the houses and threw fluid inside, and the houses burst into flames. Some of the inhabitants were burned to death.

The civilians were utilized on Saturday, Sept. 26, as a screen. During their retreat the Germans fired twelve houses in Rue des Trois Clefs, and three civilians, whose names are given, were shot dead in that street after the firing of the houses. On the following day a heap of nine dead civilians were lying in the Rue de l'Argent.

Similar outrages occurred at Erpe, a village a few miles from Alost, about the same date. The village was deliberately burned. The houses were plundered and some civilians were murdered.

Civilians were apparently used as a screen at Erpe, but they were prisoners taken from Alost and not dwellers in that village.

DIARIES OF GERMAN SOLDIERS.

This disregard for the lives of civilians is strikingly shown in extracts from German soldiers' diaries, of which the following are representative examples.

Barthel, who was a Sergeant and standard bearer of the Second Company of the First Guards Regiment of Foot, and who during the campaign received the Iron Cross, says, under date Aug. 10, 1914:

"A transport of 300 Belgians came through Duisburg in the morning. Of these, eighty, including the Oberburgomaster, were shot according to martial law."

Matbern of the Fourth Company of Jägers, No. 11, from Marburg, states that at a village between Birnal and Dinant on Sunday, Aug. 23, the Pioneers and Infantry Regiment One Hundred and Seventy-eight were fired upon by the inhabitants. He gives no particulars beyond this. He continues:

"About 220 inhabitants were shot, and the village was burned. Artillery is continuously shooting--the village lies in a large ravine. Just now, 6 o'clock in the afternoon, the crossing of the Meuse begins near Dinant. All villages, châteaux and houses are burned down during the night. It is a beautiful sight to see the fires all around us in the distance."

Bombardier Wetzel of the Second Mounted Battery, First Kurhessian Field Artillery Regiment, No. 11, records an incident which happened in French territory near Lille on Oct. 11: "We had no fight, but we caught about twenty men and shot them." By this time killing not in a fight would seem to have passed into a habit.

Diary No. 32 gives an accurate picture of what took place in Louvain:

"What a sad scene--all the houses surrounding the railway station completely destroyed--only some foundation walls still standing. On the station square captured guns. At the end of a main street there is the Council Hall which has been completely preserved with all its beautiful turrets; a sharp contrast: 180 inhabitants are stated to have been shot after they had dug their own graves."

The last and most important entry is that contained in Diary No. 19. This is a blue book interleaved with blotting paper, and contains no name and address; there is, however, one circumstance which makes it possible to speak with certainty as to the regiment of the writer. He gives the names of First Lieutenant von Oppen, Count Eulenburg, Captain von Roeder, First Lieutenant von Bock und Polach, Second Lieutenant Count Hardenberg, and Lieutenant Engelbrecht. A perusal of the Prussian Army list of June, 1914, shows that all these officers, with the exception of Lieutenant Engelbrecht, belonged to the First Regiment of Foot Guards. On Aug. 24, 1914, the writer was in Ermeton. The exact translation of the extract, grim in its brevity, is as follows:

"24.8.14. We took about 1,000 prisoners: at least 500 were shot. The village was burned because inhabitants had also shot. Two civilians were shot at once."

We may now sum up and endeavor to explain the character and significance of the wrongful acts done by the German Army in Belgium.

If a line is drawn on a map from the Belgian frontier to Liège and continued to Charleroi, and a second line drawn from Liège to Malines, a sort of figure resembling an irregular Y will be formed. It is along this Y that most of the systematic (as opposed to isolated) outrages were committed. If the period from Aug. 4 to Aug. 30 is taken it will be found to cover most of these organized outrages. Termonde and Alost extend, it is true, beyond the Y lines, and they belong to the month of September. Murder, rape, arson, and pillage began from the moment when the German Army crossed the frontier. For the first fortnight of the war the towns and villages near Liège were the chief sufferers. From Aug. 19 to the end of the month, outrages spread in the directions of Charleroi and Malines and reach their period of greatest intensity. There is a certain significance in the fact that the outrages around Liège coincide with the unexpected resistance of the Belgian Army in that district, and that the slaughter which reigned from Aug. 19 to the end of the month is contemporaneous with the period when the German Army's need for a quick passage through Belgium at all costs was deemed imperative.

Here let a distinction be drawn between two classes of outrages.

Individual acts of brutality--ill-treatment of civilians, rape, plunder, and the like--were very widely committed. These are more numerous and more shocking than would be expected in warfare between civilized powers, but they differ rather in extent than in kind from what has happened in previous though not recent wars.

In all wars many shocking and outrageous acts must be expected, for in every large army there must be a proportion of men of criminal instincts whose worst passions are unloosed by the immunity which the conditions of warfare afford. Drunkenness, moreover, may turn even a soldier who has no criminal habits into a brute, who may commit outrages at which he would himself be shocked in his sober moments, and there is evidence that intoxication was extremely prevalent among the German Army, both in Belgium and in France, for plenty of wine was to be found in the villages and country houses which were pillaged. Many of the worst outrages appear to have been perpetrated by men under the influence of drink. Unfortunately, little seems to have been done to repress this source of danger.

In the present war, however--and this is the gravest charge against the German Army--the evidence shows that the killing of noncombatants was carried out to an extent for which no previous war between nations claiming to be civilized, (for such cases as the atrocities perpetrated by the Turks on the Bulgarian Christians in 1876, and on the Armenian Christians in 1895 and 1896, do not belong to that category,) furnishes any precedent. That this killing was done as part of a deliberate plan is clear from the facts hereinbefore set forth regarding Louvain, Aerschot, Dinant, and other towns. The killing was done under orders in each place. It began at a certain fixed date, and stopped, (with some few exceptions,) at another fixed date. Some of the officers who carried out the work did it reluctantly, and said they were obeying directions from their chiefs. The same remarks apply to the destruction of property. House burning was part of the program; and villages, even large parts of a city, were given to the flames as part of the terrorizing policy.

Citizens of neutral States who visited Belgium in December and January report that the German authorities do not deny that noncombatants were systematically killed in large numbers during the first weeks of the invasion, and this, so far as we know, has never been officially denied. If it were denied, the flight and continued voluntary exile of thousands of Belgian refugees would go far to contradict a denial, for there is no historical parallel in modern times for the flight of a large part of a nation before an invader.

The German Government have, however, sought to justify their severities on the grounds of military necessity, and have excused them as retaliation for cases in which civilians fired on German troops. There may have been cases in which such firing occurred, but no proof has ever been given, or, to our knowledge, attempted to be given, of such cases, nor of the stories of shocking outrages perpetrated by Belgian men and women on German soldiers.

The inherent improbability of the German contention is shown by the fact that after the first few days of the invasion every possible precaution had been taken by the Belgian authorities, by way of placards and handbills, to warn the civilian population not to intervene in hostilities. Throughout Belgium steps had been taken to secure the handing over of all firearms in the possession of civilians before the German Army arrived. These steps were sometimes taken by the police and sometimes by the military authorities.

The invaders appear to have proceeded upon the theory that any chance shot coming from an unexpected place was fired by civilians. One favorite form of this allegation was that priests had fired from the church tower. In many instances the soldiers of the allied armies used church towers and private houses as cover for their operations. At Aerschot, where the Belgian soldiers were stationed in the church tower and fired upon the Germans as they advanced, it was at once alleged by the Germans when they entered the town, and with difficulty disproved, that the firing had come from civilians. Thus one elementary error creeps at once into the German argument, for they were likely to confound, and did in some instances certainly confound, legitimate military operations with the hostile intervention of civilians.

Troops belonging to the same army often fire by mistake upon each other. That the German Army was no exception to this rule is proved not only by many Belgian witnesses, but by the most irrefragable kind of evidence--the admission of German soldiers themselves, recorded in their war diaries. Thus Otto Clepp, Second Company of the Reserve, says, under date of Aug. 22: "Three A.M. Two infantry regiments shot at each other--9 dead and 50 wounded--fault not yet ascertained." In this connection the diaries of Kurt Hoffman and a soldier of the 112th Regiment, (Diary No. 14,) will repay study. In such cases the obvious interest of the soldier is to conceal his mistake, and a convenient method of doing so is to raise the cry of "francs-tireurs!"

Doubtless the German soldiers often believed that the civilian population, naturally hostile, had, in fact, attacked them. This attitude of mind may have been fostered by the German authorities themselves before the troops passed the frontier, and thereafter stories of alleged atrocities committed by Belgians upon Germans, such as the myth referred to in one of the diaries relating to Liège, were circulated among the troops and roused their anger.

The diary of Barthel, when still in Germany on Aug. 10, shows that he believed that the Oberburgomaster of Liège had murdered a Surgeon General. The fact is that no violence was inflicted on the inhabitants at Liège until the 19th, and no one who studies these pages can have any doubt that Liège would immediately have been given over to murder and destruction if any such incident had occurred.

Letters written to their homes which have been found on the bodies of dead Germans bear witness, in a way that now sounds pathetic, to the kindness with which they were received by the civil population. Their evident surprise at this reception was due to the stories which had been dinned into their ears of soldiers with their eyes gouged out, treacherous murders, and poisoned food--stories which may have been encouraged by the higher military authorities in order to impress the mind of the troops, as well as for the sake of justifying the measures which they took to terrify the civil population. If there is any truth in such stories, no attempt has been made to establish it. For instance, the Chancellor of the German Empire, in a communication made to the press on Sept. 2 and printed in the Nord Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of Sept. 21, said as follows:

"Belgian girls gouged out the eyes of the German wounded. Officials of Belgian cities have invited our officers to dinner and shot and killed them across the table. Contrary to all international law, the whole civilian population of Belgium was called out and, after having at first shown friendliness, carried on in the rear of our troops terrible warfare with concealed weapons. Belgian women cut the throats of soldiers whom they had quartered in their homes while they were sleeping."

No evidence whatever seems to have been adduced to prove these tales, and though there may be cases in which individual Belgians fired on the Germans, the statement that "the whole civilian population of Belgium was called out" is utterly opposed to the fact.

An invading army may be entitled to shoot at sight a civilian caught redhanded, or any one who, though not caught redhanded, is proved guilty on inquiry. But this was not the practice followed by the German troops. They do not seem to have made any inquiry. They seized the civilians of the villages indiscriminately and killed them, or such as they selected from among them, without the least regard to guilt or innocence. The mere cry, "Civilisten haben geschossen!" was enough to hand over a whole village or district, and even outlying places, to ruthless slaughter.

We gladly record the instances where the evidence shows that humanity had not wholly disappeared from some members of the German Army, and that they realized that the responsible heads of that organization were employing them not in war, but in butchery: "I am merely executing orders, and I should be shot if I did not execute them," said an officer to a witness at Louvain. At Brussels another officer says: "I have not done one-hundredth part of what we have been ordered to do by the high German military authorities."

As we have already observed, it would be unjust to charge upon the German Army generally acts of cruelty which, whether due to drunkenness or not, were done by men of brutal instincts and unbridled passions. Such crimes were sometimes punished by the officers. They were in some cases offset by acts of humanity and kindliness. But when an army is directed or permitted to kill noncombatants on a large scale the ferocity of the worst natures springs into fuller life, and both lust and the thirst of blood become more widespread and more formidable. Had less license been allowed to the soldiers and had they not been set to work to slaughter civilians there would have been fewer of those painful cases in which a depraved and morbid cruelty appears.

Two classes of murders in particular require special mention because one of them is almost new and the other altogether unprecedented. The former is the seizure of peaceful citizens as so-called hostages, to be kept as a pledge for the conduct of the civil population or as a means to secure some military advantage or to compel the payment of a contribution, the hostages being shot if the condition imposed by the arbitrary will of the invader is not fulfilled. Such hostage-taking, with the penalty of death attached, has now and then happened, the most notable case being the shooting of the Archbishop of Paris and some of his clergy by the Communards of Paris in 1871, but it is opposed both to the rules of war and to every principle of justice and humanity. The latter kind of murder is the killing of the innocent inhabitants of a village because shots have been fired, or are alleged to have been fired, on the troops by some one in the village. For this practice no previous example and no justification have been or can be pleaded. Soldiers suppressing an insurrection may have sometimes slain civilians mingled with insurgents, and Napoleon's forces in Spain are said to have now and then killed promiscuously when trying to clear guerrillas out of a village. But in Belgium large bodies of men, sometimes including the Burgomaster and the priest, were seized, marched by officers to a spot chosen for the purpose, and there shot in cold blood, without any attempt at trial or even inquiry, under the pretense of inflicting punishment upon the village, though these unhappy victims were not even charged with having themselves committed any wrongful act, and though, in some cases at least, the village authorities had done all in their power to prevent any molestation of the invading force. Such acts are no part of war, for innocence is entitled to respect even in war. They are mere murders, just as the drowning of the innocent passengers and crews on a merchant ship is murder and not an act of war.

That these acts should have been perpetrated on the peaceful population of an unoffending country which was not at war with its invaders, but merely defending its own neutrality, guaranteed by the invading power, may excite amazement and even incredulity. It was with amazement and almost with incredulity that the committee first read the depositions relating to such acts. But when the evidence regarding Liège was followed by that regarding Aerschot, Louvain, Andenne, Dinant, and the other towns and villages, the cumulative effect of such a mass of concurrent testimony became irresistible, and we were driven to the conclusion that the things described had really happened. The question then arose, how they could have happened. Not from mere military license, for the discipline of the German Army is proverbially stringent, and its obedience implicit. Not from any special ferocity of the troops, for whoever has traveled among the German peasantry knows that they are as kindly and good-natured as any people in Europe, and those who can recall the war of 1870 will remember that no charges resembling those proved by these depositions were then established. The excesses recently committed in Belgium were, moreover too widespread and too uniform in their character to be mere sporadic outbursts of passion or rapacity.

The explanation seems to be that these excesses were committed--in some cases ordered, in others allowed--on a system and in pursuance of a set purpose. That purpose was to strike terror into the civil population and dishearten the Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance and extinguish the very spirit of self-defense. The pretext that civilians had fired upon the invading troops was used to justify not merely the shooting of individual francs-tireurs, but the murder of large numbers of innocent civilians, an act absolutely forbidden by the rules of civilized warfare.[A]

[Footnote A: As to this, see, in appendix, the Rules of The Hague Convention of 1907, to which Germany was a signatory.]

In the minds of Prussian officers war seems to have become a sort of sacred mission, one of the highest functions of the omnipotent State, which is itself as much an army as a State. Ordinary morality and the ordinary sentiment of pity vanish in its presence, superseded by a new standard, which justifies to the soldier every means that can conduce to success, however shocking to a natural sense of justice and humanity, however revolting to his own feelings. The spirit of war is deified. Obedience to the State and its war lord leaves no room for any other duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory. Proclaimed by the heads of the army, this doctrine would seem to have permeated the officers and affected even the private soldiers, leading them to justify the killing of noncombatants as an act of war, and so accustoming them to slaughter that even women and children become at last the victims. It cannot be supposed to be a national doctrine, for it neither springs from nor reflects the mind and feelings of the German people as they have heretofore been known to other nations. It is a specifically military doctrine, the outcome of a theory held by a ruling caste who have brooded and thought, written and talked, and dreamed about war until they have fallen under its obsession and been hypnotized by its spirit.

The doctrine is plainly set forth in the German Official Monograph on the usages of war on land, issued under the direction of the German Staff. This book is pervaded throughout by the view that whatever military needs suggest becomes thereby lawful, and upon this principle, as the diaries show, the German officers acted.[A]

[Footnote A: "Kriegsbrauch im Landkriege," Berlin, 1902, in Vol. VI., in the series entitled "Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften," published in 1905. A translation of this monograph, by Professor J.H. Morgan, has recently been published.]

If this explanation be the true one, the mystery is solved, and that which seemed scarcely credible becomes more intelligible, though not less pernicious. This is not the only case that history records in which a false theory, disguising itself as loyalty to a State or to a Church, has perverted the conception of duty and become a source of danger to the world.