AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT. 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." 9 One soldier was seen going along shooting in the air. 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. 10 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. 11 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. PART II. Having thus narrated the offenses committed in Belgium, which it has been proper to consider as a whole, we now turn to another branch of the subject, the breaches of the usages of war which appear in the conduct of the German Army generally. This branch has been considered under the following heads: First.—The treatment of noncombatants, whether in Belgium or in France, including— (a) The killing of noncombatants in France; (b) The treatment of women and children; (c) The using of innocent noncombatants as a screen or shield in the conduct of military operations; (d) Looting, burning, and the wanton destruction of property. Second.—Offenses committed in the course of ordinary military operations which violate the usages of war and the provisions of The Hague Convention. This division includes: (a) Killing of wounded or prisoners; (b) Firing on hospitals or on the Red Cross ambulances and stretcher bearers; (c) Abuse of the Red Cross or of the white flag. TREATMENT OF THE CIVILIAN POPULATION. (a) Killing of Noncombatants. The killing of civilians in Belgium has been already described sufficiently. Outrages on the civilian population of the invaded districts, the burning of villages, the shooting of innocent inhabitants, and the taking of hostages, pillage, and destruction continued as the German armies passed into France. The diary of the Saxon officer above referred to describes acts of this kind committed by the German soldiers in advancing to the Aisne at the end of August and after they had passed the French frontier, as well as when they were in Belgian territory. A proclamation, (a specimen of which was produced to the committee,) issued at Rheims and placarded over the town, affords a clear illustration of the methods adopted by the German Higher Command. The population of Rheims is warned that on the slightest disturbance part or the whole of the city will be burned to the ground and all the hostages taken from the city (a long list of whom is given in the proclamation) immediately shot. The evidence, however, submitted to the committee with regard to the conduct of the German Army in France is not nearly so full as that with regard to Belgium. There is no body of civilian refugees in England, and the French witnesses have generally laid their evidence before their own Government. The evidence forwarded to us consists principally of the statements of British officers and soldiers who took part in the retreat after the battle of Mons and in the subsequent advance, following the Germans from the Marne. The area covered is relatively small, and it is from French reports that any complete account of what occurred in the invaded districts in France as a whole must be obtained. Naturally, soldiers in a foreign country, with which they were unacquainted, cannot be expected always to give accurately the names of villages through which they passed on their marches, but this does not prevent their evidence from being definite as to what they actually saw in the farms and houses where the German troops had recently been. Many shocking outrages are recorded. Three examples may here suffice; others are given in the appendix. A Sergeant who had been through the retreat from Mons and then taken part in the advance from the Marne, and who had been engaged in driving out some German troops from a village, states that his troop halted outside a bakery just inside the village. It was a private house where baking was done, "not like our bakeries here." Two or three women were standing at the door. The women motioned them to come into the house, as did also three civilian Frenchmen who were there. They took them into a garden at the back of the house. At the end of the garden was the bakery. They saw two old men between 60 and 70 years of age and one old woman lying close to each other in the garden. All three had the scalps cut right through and the brains were hanging out. They were still bleeding. Apparently they had only just been killed. The three French civilians belonged to this same house. One of them spoke a few words of English. He gave them to understand that these three had been killed by the Germans because they had refused to bake bread for them. Another witness states that two German soldiers took hold of a young civilian named D. and bound his hands behind his back, and struck him in the face with their fists. They then tied his hands in front and fastened the cord to the tail of the horse. The horse dragged him for about fifty yards, and then the Germans loosened his hands and left him. The whole of his face was cut and torn, and his arms and legs were bruised. On the following day one of his sisters, whose husband was a soldier, came to their house with her four children. His brother, who was also married and who lived in a village near Valenciennes, went to fetch the bread for his sister. On the way back to their house he met a patrol of Uhlans, who took him to the market place at Valenciennes, and then shot him. About twelve other civilians were also shot in the market place. The Uhlans then burned nineteen houses in the village, and afterward burned the corpses of the civilians, including that of his brother. His father and his uncle afterward went to see the dead body of his brother, but the German soldiers refused to allow them to pass. A lance corporal in the Rifles, who was on patrol duty with five privates during the retirement of the Germans after the Marne, states that they entered a house in a small village and took ten Uhlans prisoners, and then searched the house and found two women and two children. One was dead, but the body not yet cold. The left arm had been cut off just below the elbow. The floor was covered with blood. The woman's clothing was disarranged. The other woman was alive but unconscious. Her right leg had been cut off above the knee. There were two little children, a boy about 4 or 5 and a girl of about 6 or 7. The boy's left hand was cut off at the wrist and the girl's right hand at the same place. They were both quite dead. The same witness states that he saw several women and children lying dead in various other places, but says he could not say whether this might not have been accidentally caused in legitimate fighting. The evidence before us proves that in the parts of France referred to murder of unoffending civilians and other acts of cruelty, including aggravated cases of rape, carried out under threat of death, and sometimes actually followed by murder of the victim, were committed by some of the German troops. (b) The Treatment of Women and Children. The evidence shows that the German authorities, when carrying out a policy of systematic arson and plunder in selected districts, usually drew some distinction between the adult male population on the one hand and the women and children on the other. It was a frequent practice to set apart the adult males of the condemned district with a view to the execution of a suitable number—preferably of the younger and more vigorous—and to reserve the women and children for milder treatment. The depositions, however, present many instances of calculated cruelty, often going the length of murder, toward the women and children of the condemned area. We have already referred to the case of Aerschot, where the women and children were herded in a church which had recently been used as a stable, detained for forty-eight hours with no food other than coarse bread, and denied the common decencies of life. At Dinant sixty women and children were confined in the cellar of a convent from Sunday morning till the following Friday, (Aug. 28,) sleeping on the ground, for there were no beds, with nothing to drink during the whole period, and given no food until the Wednesday, "when somebody threw into the cellar two sticks of macaroni and a carrot for each prisoner." In other cases the women and children were marched for long distances along roads, (e.g., march of women from Louvain to Tirlemont, Aug. 28,) the laggards pricked on by the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of having been brutally kicked by privates. Others were struck with the butt end of rifles. At Louvain, at Liège, at Aerschot, at Malines, at Montigny, at Andenne, and elsewhere, there is evidence that the troops were not restrained from drunkenness, and drunken soldiers cannot to be trusted to observe the rules or decencies of war, least of all when they are called upon to execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the very first women were not safe. At Liège women and children were chased about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, very circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the market place of the city, five young German officers assisting. At Aerschot men and women were deliberately shot when coming out of burning houses. At Liège, Louvain, Sempst, and Malines women were burned to death, either because they were surprised and stupefied by the fumes of the conflagration or because they were prevented from escaping by German soldiers. Witnesses recount how a great crowd of men, women, and children from Aerschot were marched to Louvain, and then suddenly exposed to a fire from a mitrailleuse and rifles. "We were all placed," recounts a sufferer, "in Station Street, Louvain, and the German soldiers fired on 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." Women and children suddenly turned out into the streets, and, compelled to witness the destruction by fire of their homes, provided a sad spectacle to such as were sober enough to see. A humane German officer, witnessing the ruin of Aerschot, exclaims in disgust: "I am a father myself, and I cannot bear this. It is not war, but butchery." Officers as well as men succumbed to the temptation of drink, with results which may be illustrated by an incident which occurred at Campenhout. In this village there was a certain well-to-do merchant (name given) who had a good cellar of champagne. On the afternoon of the 14th or 15th of August three German cavalry officers entered the house and demanded champagne. Having drunk ten bottles and invited five or six officers and three or four private soldiers to join them, they continued their carouse, and then called for the master and mistress of the house. "Immediately my mistress came in," says the valet de chambre, "one of the officers who was sitting on the floor got up, and, putting a revolver to my mistress temple, shot her dead. The officer was obviously drunk. The other officers continued to drink and sing, and they did not pay great attention to the killing of my mistress. The officer who shot my mistress then told my master to dig a grave and bury my mistress. My master and the officer went into the garden, the officer threatening my master with a pistol. My master was then forced to dig the grave and to bury the body of my mistress in it. I cannot say for what reason they killed my mistress. The officer who did it was singing all the time." In the evidence before us there are cases tending to show that aggravated crimes against women were sometimes severely punished. One witness reports that a young girl who was being pursued by a drunken soldier at Louvain appealed to a German officer, and that the offender was then and there shot. Another describes how an officer of the Thirty-second Regiment of the Line was led out to execution for the violation of two young girls, but reprieved at the request or with the consent of the girls' mother. These instances are sufficient to show that the maltreatment of women was no part of the military scheme of the invaders, however much it may appear to have been the inevitable result of the system of terror deliberately adopted in certain regions. Indeed, so much is avowed. "I asked the commander why we had been spared," says a lady in Louvain, who deposes to having suffered much brutal treatment during the sack. He said: "We will not hurt you any more. Stay in Louvain. All is finished." It was Saturday, Aug. 29, and the reign of terror was over. Apart from the crimes committed in special areas and belonging to a scheme of systematic reprisals for the alleged shooting by civilians, there is evidence of offenses committed against women and children by individual soldiers, or by small groups of soldiers, both in the advance through Belgium and France as in the retreat from the Marne. Indeed, the discipline appears to have been loose during the retreat, and there is evidence as to the burning of villages and the murder and violation of their female inhabitants during this episode of the war. In this tale of horrors hideous forms of mutilation occur with some frequency in the depositions, two of which may be connected in some instances with a perverted form of sexual instinct. A third form of mutilation, the cutting of one or both hands, is frequently said to have taken place. In some cases where this form of mutilation is alleged to have occurred it may be the consequence of a cavalry charge up a village street, hacking and slashing at everything in the way; in others the victim may possibly have held a weapon; in others the motive may have been the theft of rings. We find many well-established cases of the slaughter (often accompanied by mutilation) of whole families, including not infrequently that of quite small children. In two cases it seems to be clear that preparations were made to burn a family alive. These crimes were committed over a period of many weeks and simultaneously in many places, and the authorities must have known, or ought to have known, that cruelties of this character were being perpetrated; nor can any one doubt that they could have been stopped by swift and decisive action on the part of the heads of the German Army. The use of women and even children as a screen for the protection of the German troops is referred to in a later part of this report. From the number of troops concerned, it must have been commanded or acquiesced in by officers, and in some cases the presence and connivance of officers is proved. The cases of violation, sometimes under threat of death, are numerous and clearly proved. We referred here to comparatively few out of the many that have been placed in the appendix, because the circumstances are in most instances much the same. They were often accompanied with cruelty, and the slaughter of women after violation is more than once credibly attested. It is quite possible that in some cases where the body of a Belgian or a French woman is reported as lying on the roadside pierced with bayonet wounds or hanging naked from a tree, or else as lying gashed and mutilated in a cottage kitchen or bedroom, the woman in question gave some provocation. She may by act or word have irritated her assailant and in certain instances evidence has been supplied both as to the provocation offered and as to the retribution inflicted. (1) "Just before we got to Melen," says a witness who had fallen into the hands of the Germans on Aug. 5, "I saw a woman with a child in her arms standing on the side of the road on our left-hand side watching the soldiers go by. Her name was G., aged about 63, and a neighbor of mine. The officer asked the woman for some water in good French. She went inside her son's cottage to get some and brought it immediately he had stopped. The officer went into the cottage garden and drank the water. The woman then said, when she saw the prisoners, 'Instead of giving you water you deserve to be shot.' The officer shouted to us, 'March.' We went on, and immediately I saw the officer draw his revolver and shoot the woman and child. One shot killed both." Two old men and one old woman refused to bake bread for the Germans. They were butchered. Aug. 23—I went with two friends (names given) to see what we could see. About three hours out of Malines we were taken prisoners by a German patrol—an officer and six men—and marched off into a little wood of saplings, where there was a house. The officer spoke Flemish. He knocked at the door; the peasant did not come. The officer ordered the soldiers to break down the door, which two of them did. The peasant came and asked what they were doing. The officer said he did not come quickly enough and that they had "trained up" plenty of others. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was shot at once without a moment's delay. The wife came out with a little sucking child. She put the child down and sprang at the Germans like a lioness. She clawed their faces. One of the Germans took a rifle and struck her a tremendous blow with the butt on the head. Another took his bayonet and fixed it and thrust it through the child. He then put his rifle on his shoulder with the child upon it; its little arms stretched out once or twice. The officers ordered the houses to be set on fire, and straw was obtained and it was done. The man and his wife and the child were thrown on the top of the straw. There were about forty other peasant prisoners there also, and the officer said: "I am doing this as a lesson and example to you. When a German tells you to do something next time you must move more quickly." The regiment of Germans was a regiment of Hussars, with crossbones and a death's head on the cap. BARON STEPHAN BURIAN VON RAJECZ— The Hungarian Who Succeeded Count Berchtold as Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister and President of the Common Ministerial Council H.M. FERDINAND I.—The New King of Rumania, in succession to his uncle the late King Charles I.— (Photo from P.S. Rogers.) Can any one think that such acts as these, committed by women in the circumstances created by the invasion of Belgium, were deserving of the extreme form of vengeance attested by these and other depositions? In considering the question of provocation it is pertinent to take into account the numerous cases in which old women and very small children have been shot, bayoneted, and even mutilated. Whatever excuse may be offered by the Germans for the killing of grown-up women, there can be no possible defense for the murder of children, and if it can be shown that infants and small children were not infrequently bayoneted and shot it is a fair inference that many of the offenses against women require no explanation more recondite than the unbridled violence of brutal or drunken criminals. It is clearly shown that many offenses were committed against infants and quite young children. On one occasion children were even roped together and used as a military screen against the enemy; on another three soldiers went into action carrying small children to protect themselves from flank fire. A shocking case of the murder of a baby by a drunken soldier at Malines is thus recorded by one eyewitness and confirmed by another: "One day when the Germans were not actually bombarding the town I left my house to go to my mother's house in High Street. My husband was with me. I saw eight German soldiers, and they were drunk. They were singing and making a lot of noise and dancing about. As the German soldiers came along the street I saw a small child, whether boy or girl I could not see, come out of a house. The child was about two years of age. The child came into the middle of the street so as to be in the way of the soldiers. The soldiers were walking in twos. The first line of two passed the child. One of the second line, the man on the left, stepped aside and drove his bayonet with both hands into the child's stomach, lifting the child into the air on his bayonet and carrying it away on his bayonet, he and his comrades still singing. The child screamed when the soldier struck it with his bayonet but not afterward." These, no doubt, were for the most part the acts of drunken soldiers, but an incident has been recorded which discloses the fact that even sober and highly placed officers were not always disposed to place a high value on child life. Thus the General, wishing to be conducted to the Town Hall at Lebbeke, remarked in French to his guide, who was accompanied by a small boy: "If you do not show me the right way I will shoot you and your boy." There was no need to carry the threat into execution, but that the threat should have been made is significant. We cannot tell whether these acts of cruelty to children were part of the scheme for inducing submission by inspiring terror. In Louvain, where the system of terrorizing was carried to the furthest limit, outrages on children were uncommon. The same, however, cannot be said of some of the smaller villages which were subjected to the system. In Hofstade and Sempst, in Haecht, Rotselaer, and Wespelaer, many children were murdered. Nor can it be said of the village of Tamines, where three small children (whose names are given by an eye witness of the crime) were slaughtered on the green for no apparent motive. It is difficult to imagine the motives which may have prompted such acts. Whether or no Belgian civilians fired on German soldiers, young children at any rate did not fire. The number and character of these murders constitute the most distressing feature connected with the conduct of the war so far as it is revealed in the depositions submitted to the committee. (c) The Use of Civilians as Screens. We have before us a considerable body of evidence with reference to the practice of the Germans of using civilians and sometimes military prisoners as screens from behind which they could fire upon the Belgian troops, in the hope that the Belgians would not return the fire for fear of killing or wounding their own fellow-countrymen. In some cases this evidence refers to places where fighting was actually going on in the streets of a town or village, and to these cases we attach little importance. It might well happen when terrified civilians were rushing about to seek safety that groups of them might be used as a screen by either side of the combatants without any intention of inhumanity or of any breach of the rules of civilized warfare. But, setting aside these doubtful cases, there remains evidence which satisfies us that on so many occasions as to justify its being described as a practice the German soldiers, under the eyes and by the direction of their officers, were guilty of this act. Thus, for instance, outside Fort Fléron, near Liège, men and children were marched in front of the Germans to prevent the Belgian soldiers from firing. The progress of the Germans through Mons was marked by many incidents of this character. Thus, on Aug. 22 half a dozen Belgian colliers returning from work were marching in front of some German troops who were pursuing the English, and in the opinion of the witnesses they must have been placed there intentionally. An English officer describes how he caused a barricade to be erected in a main thoroughfare leading out of Mons when the Germans, in order to reach a crossroad in the rear, fetched civilians out of the houses on each side of the main road and compelled them to hold up white flags and act as cover. Another British officer who saw this incident is convinced that the Germans were acting deliberately for the purpose of protecting themselves from the fire of the British troops. Apart from this protection the Germans could not have advanced, as the street was straight and commanded by the British rifle fire at a range of 700 or 800 yards. Several British soldiers also speak to this incident, and their story is confirmed by a Flemish witness in a side street. On Aug. 24 men, women, and children were actually pushed into the front of the German position outside Mons. The witness speaks of 16 to 20 women, about a dozen children, and half a dozen men being there. Seven or eight women and five or six very young children were utilized in this way by some Uhlans between Landrécies and Guise. A Belgian soldier saw an incident of this character during the retreat from Namur. At the battle of Malines 60 or 80 Belgian civilians, among whom were some women, were driven before the German troops. Another witness saw a similar incident near Malines, but a much larger number of civilians was involved, and a priest was in front with a white flag. In another instance, related by a Belgian soldier, the civilians were tied by the wrists in groups. At Eppeghem, where the Germans were driven back by the Belgian sortie from Antwerp, civilians were used as a cover for the German retreat. Near Malines, early in September, about 10 children, roped together, were driven in front of a German force. At Londerzeel 30 or 40 civilians, men, women, and children, were placed at the head of a German column. One witness from Termonde was made to stand in front of the Germans, together with others, all with their hands above their heads. Those who allowed their hands to drop were at once prodded with the bayonet. Again, at Termonde, about Sept. 10, a number of civilians were shot by the Belgian soldiers, who were compelled to fire at the Germans, taking the risk of killing their own countrymen. At Tournai 400 Belgian civilians, men, women, and children, were placed in front of the Germans, who then engaged the French. The operations outside Antwerp were not free from incidents of this character. Near Willebroeck some civilians, including a number of children, a woman, and one old man, were driven in front of the German troops. German officers were present, and one woman who refused to advance was stabbed twice with the bayonet, and a little child who ran up to her as she fell had half its head blown away by a shot from a rifle. Other incidents of the same kind are reported from Nazareth and Ypres. The British troops were compelled to fire, in some cases at the risk of killing civilians. At Ypres the Germans drove women in front of them by pricking them with bayonets. The wounds were afterward seen by the witness. (d) Looting, Burning, and Destruction of Property. There is an overwhelming mass of evidence of the deliberate destruction of private property by the German soldiers. The destruction in most cases was effected by fire, and the German troops, as will be seen from earlier passages in the report, had been provided beforehand with appliances for rapidly setting fire to houses. Among the appliances enumerated by witnesses are syringes for squirting petrol, guns for throwing small inflammable bombs, and small pellets made of inflammable material. Specimens of the last mentioned have been shown to members of the committee. Besides burning houses, the Germans frequently smashed furniture and pictures; they also broke in doors and windows. Frequently, too, they defiled houses by relieving the wants of nature upon the floor. They also appear to have perpetrated the same vileness upon piled up heaps of provisions so as to destroy what they could not themselves consume. They also on numerous occasions threw corpses into wells, or left in them the bodies of persons murdered by drowning. In addition to these acts of destruction the German troops, both in Belgium and France, are proved to have been guilty of persistent looting. In the majority of cases the looting took place from houses, but there is also evidence that German soldiers and even officers robbed their prisoners, both civil and military, of sums of money and other portable possessions. It was apparently well known throughout the German Army that towns and villages would be burned whenever it appeared that any civilians had fired upon the German troops, and there is reason to suspect that this known intention of the German military authorities in some cases explains the sequence of events which led up to the burning and sacking of a town or village. The soldiers, knowing that they would have an opportunity of plunder if the place was condemned, had a motive for arranging some incident which would provide the necessary excuse for condemnation. More than one witness alleges that shots coming from the window of a house were fired by German soldiers who had forced their way into the house for the purpose of thus creating an alarm. It is also alleged that German soldiers on some occasions merely fired their rifles in the air in a side street and then reported to their officers that they had been fired at. On the report that firing had taken place orders were given for wholesale destruction, and houses were destroyed in streets and districts where there was no allegation that firing had taken place, as well as in those where the charge arose. That the destruction could have been limited is proved by the care taken to preserve particular houses whose occupants had made themselves in one way or another agreeable to the conquerors. These houses were marked in chalk, ordering them to be spared, and spared they were. The above statements have reference to the burning of towns and villages. In addition, the German troops in numerous instances have set fire to farmhouses and farm buildings. Here, however, the plea of military necessity can more safely be alleged. A farmhouse may afford convenient shelter to an enemy, and where such use is probable it may be urged that the destruction of the buildings is justifiable. It is clearly, however, the duty of the soldiers who destroy the buildings to give reasonable warning to the occupants so that they may escape. Doubtless this was in many cases done by the German commanders, but there is testimony that in some cases the burning of the farmhouse was accompanied by the murder of the inhabitants. The same fact stands out clearly in the more extensive burning of houses in towns and villages. In some cases, indeed, as a prelude to the burning, inhabitants were cleared out of their houses and driven along the streets, often with much accompanying brutality—some to a place of execution, others to prolonged detention in a church or other public buildings. In other cases witnesses assert that they saw German soldiers forcing back into the flames men, women, and children who were trying to escape from the burning houses. There is also evidence that soldiers deliberately shot down civilians as they fled from the fire. The general conclusion is that the burning and destruction of property which took place was only in a very small minority of cases justified by military necessity, and that even then the destruction was seldom accompanied by that care for the lives of noncombatants which has hitherto been expected from a military commander belonging to a civilized nation. On the contrary, it is plain that in many cases German officers and soldiers deliberately added to the sufferings of the unfortunate people whose property they were destroying.