Chapter XI: Part I (1)

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 Annexes, 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.

LIEGE AND DISTRICT.

On Aug. 4 the roads converging upon Liege 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 Fleron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la Chapelle to Liege. 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 Jaegers, who on Aug. 5 was in front of Fort Fleron. 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 Roemer 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 Liege. 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 Vise 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 Flemalle and marched off. There they were told that unless Fort Flemalle 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 Liege, and on the night of the 20th (Thursday) a massacre took place in the streets, beginning near the Cafe 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 Liege 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'Universite and the Quai des Pecheurs 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 Liege 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'Universite 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 Liege 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 Schuesse krackten und die fielen ruecklings
in das gruene Gras und erschliefen fuer 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 Vise and Namur, and carrying out the scheme of devastation which has already been described, detachments of the Second German Army, under General von Buelow, were proceeding up the Meuse valley toward Namur. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, the town of Huy, which stands half way between Namur and Liege, 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 Achene, 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 Liege 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 _Fete 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 ueber 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 Denee, 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 Hotel de Ville at Peronne, (Belgium,) where the bodies were left in the street for forty-eight hours. They burned the Hotel 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 Hotel 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 Liege 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 Liege forts the great line of railway which runs through Liege 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 Fleron, 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 cafe 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.