Inhuman hate appeared to possess those Prussian invaders, whom terror drove and terror alone could curb. Belgians who dealt with them at close quarters, as at Dormael, declared that these Uhlans fought with the bitterness of personal fury, and, not content with killing those who manfully resisted them in fight, assassinated numbers who had laid down their weapons and held their hands up. Many of the corpses have their hands raised and their elbows on a level with the shoulders. The wounds of these brave defenders are horrible, having been inflicted with weapons fired at a distance of a couple of inches from the mouth or breast.
Some Uhlans met a Belgian chemist who was riding a bicycle near Jodoigne. Arresting him they inquired their way to the town hall, placing the muzzles of revolvers to his head while they listened. He gave them the required information and was allowed to pass on, but before he had gone ten yards they sent three bullets into his back.
On Friday afternoon, August 14th, the Press Bureau issued the following statement, summing up the position in Northern Belgium:
(1) After a successful resistance of five days at the passes of Sainte Marie aux Mines and Le Bonhomme, the French troops have occupied the region of the Saale Pass, which commands the valley of the Burche, an affluent of the Rhine.
(2) At Saale numerous desertions from the German troops are notified. The French have taken many prisoners, and have captured some machine-guns.
(3) It is now confirmed that in Belgium the Belgians were successful in an engagement which took place on August 12th between their troops and six regiments of German cavalry, supported by 2,500 infantry, machine-guns and artillery. The enemy was completely disorganised; the six cavalry regiments suffered great losses, and the Belgians pursued the infantry which gave way.
(4) This (Friday) morning, towards Eghezée, sixteen kilomètres to the north of Namur, a mixed detachment from the garrison surprised some German cavalry regiments in camp, threw them into confusion and forced them back towards the east, after taking numerous prisoners and capturing cannon and machine-guns. To the south of the Meuse the German cavalry avoids contact with the French.
(5) The news of fighting about Haelen yesterday is confirmed. The Germans were driven back eastwards, and there is now no German cavalry between Hasselt and Ramillies.
(6) Liège forts are reported to be still holding out, and to have plenty of supplies.
(7) German cavalry patrols are now reported north of Montmedy.
(8) General Joffre, by virtue of the powers conferred on him by the Ministry of War (decision of August 8th, 1914), has made Lieutenant Bruyant, of the Dragoons, a Knight of the Legion of Honour. "This officer," it is stated in the text of his appointment, "accompanied by seven horsemen, did not hesitate to charge a platoon of some thirty Uhlans: he killed the officer in charge of them with his own hand, and routed the German platoon, inflicting severe losses upon it."
(9) The Commander-in-Chief has conferred the first war medal of the campaign on Escoffier, Corporal of Dragoons, for having charged with the greatest courage and received several wounds.
(10) Belgian cyclists and cavalry from Namur surprised yesterday a force of German cavalry, accompanied by artillery and machine-guns, and compelled them to retire. The Germans lost a field gun and several machine-guns.
The French army was meanwhile making good progress, and on the night of the 14th it was officially announced by the War Ministry in Paris that the French were entering Belgium through Charleroi and were proceeding in the direction of Gembloux, some thirty miles to the north-east.
Reports were current on Friday evening that the German attack had been renewed, but these were afterwards seen to be baseless. The German forces around Liège were content to remain on the defensive for a time; and even towards the south, in the Vosges, the French troops were slowly driving the invaders before them. At Liège itself several bodies of the enemy had taken up their position in the town, but the forts were still intact. An observer of the scene at this juncture commented on the changed physiognomy of that once gay capital of the Walloon country. Some 30,000 of the inhabitants had fled from the place in terror when the enemy's guns began to shower shells upon the forts from Fléron. The remainder buried themselves in cellars and underground passages, scores huddling together without food, drink, or other of life's necessaries. The city bore marks of havoc everywhere. Gaping bridges, half-demolished houses, many without doors, which had been taken off their hinges and cast into the courtyard or the roadside, fallen roofs, smouldering ruins, told their dismal tale.
There was not a street in which shells had not fallen. The very asphalt was ploughed up in places like a cornfield at sowing time. Hurriedly-made graves with their soft mounds protruded in unexpected places. During the day the Germans were everywhere in evidence: they patrolled the principal thoroughfares, stood at the barricades which they had raised at all the approaches to the town, or crept up towards the forts with remarkable recklessness. Nine of them on bicycles rode to within 300 mètres of the forts one morning; eight returned unharmed, only one paying for the pleasant sense of daring adventure with his life. The inhabitants were cowed by recent deterrent examples and by the terrors hanging over them.
At nightfall the city assumed the aspect of a churchyard. The silence was soul-curdling, yet the hearts of the inhabitants beat quicker and louder when that silence was broken by the heavy tread of the Prussian patrols or the rending thunder of heavy guns. All the doors still extant had to be kept wide open. Early in the morning when the bakers removed their bread from the ovens, German guards, posted wherever victuals are to be had, were in the habit of pouncing down on the entire output of the bakeries, for which they sometimes paid; but the ill-starred inhabitants had no share. The soldiers made their own coffee and soup in great motor cauldrons, from which it was poured into metal porringers that they carry with them. They now wore reformed field uniforms, rendering them hardly distinguishable from a distance, just as their airships were so re-painted as to resemble the grey of cloudland.
At Haelen and Diest, the scene of Wednesday's engagement, one drew nearer to the ghastly realities of war. The struggle waxed desperate, man meeting man, striking, thrusting, and wrestling in the final fight for life or death. Here the once peaceful country-side was utterly transformed. In the background heaps of ruins that so lately were farmhouses still emitted pungent smoke. Between the leafy trees one saw the charred rents in the dwellings still erect, animals erring hither and thither, barricades hastily erected of dead horses, their horrible wounds gaping and spreading the mephitic reek of death, and along the carriage-road on either side freshly-made ridges which hid the German dead.
The serious attention of the civilised world was at this juncture once again directed to the inhuman methods of warfare practised by the German soldiery in Belgium, else, it was declared, the campaign would assume a character of fiendish savagery unmatched in the annals of war. "Unless some real respect be shown to the usages received by civilised nations," said one observer, "both sides will end by making no prisoners. If even a tithe of the narratives now passing from mouth to mouth about the atrocities committed by the invaders be well founded—and they are vouched for by credible and level-headed clergymen, mayors, and foreigners who feel no personal animus against the Germans—the soldiery of the Fatherland have outrun the Hercules pillars of inhumanity."