Under a strong escort two groups of men and women arrived, each a hundred strong. They were hostages. They were stood in rows by the station, and every time a soldier was shot in the town ten of these pitiful civilians were slaughtered. There was no mercy. Tears and pleadings were in vain. The good suffered with the bad. At night the scene was terrible, burning buildings shedding a lurid glow over this town, which was running with tears of blood.
This was no time for sleep. The sight of this terrible awfulness drove away all thoughts and desire for rest. Towards dawn the soldiers took possession of all buildings which had not been destroyed.
With the rising of the sun I walked on the boulevards, and saw them strewn with bodies, many of them being of old people and priests. Leaving Louvain for Tirlemont one passed continuously through utterly devastated country.
* * * * *
A Dutchman who escaped from Louvain says that when the German artillery began to demolish the houses and the German soldiers began looting everything he and his little son hid in a cellar beneath a pile of pneumatic tyres. One woman took refuge in a pit, in which water was up to her waist. Such was the terrible plight of the civilians in Louvain. Peeping out they saw that neighbours had been driven to the roof of a burning building, where they perished.
While still concealed in the cellar the Dutchman and his son discovered to their horror that the house above them was in flames. The situation was terrible, as the people who dared to leave their houses were shot like rabbits leaving burrows. They heard floor by floor, and then the roof, crash down above them. The situation was desperate. It was impossible to remain in the cellar. Driven out by dire necessity, they fled. They were immediately stopped by military rifles at the “present.”
“Do not fire, I am German,” said the Dutchman in German, seized with a sudden inspiration. This secured his safe conduct to the railway station. The journey through the town was, said this refugee, “like walking through hell.” From burning houses he heard agonised cries of those perishing in the conflagrations. While he was waiting at the station fifty people arrived there, driven by troops, who asserted that they found them hiding in houses from which shots had been fired. These people swore by all they held sacred they were innocent, but notwithstanding all were shot. The Dutchman is of opinion that the first firing was not by civilians, but by the German outpost on German soldiers retreating to Louvain from Malines.
Note:—There is no confirmation whatever of the Dutch correspondent’s assertion with regard to the firing on the German troops. On the contrary it has been expressly said by the Belgian Government that the Germans fired on their own men by mistake.
Drawn by E. Matania.