"The Germans made the usual claim that the civil population had fired upon them and that it was necessary to take these measures, i. e., burn the churches, the library and other public monuments, burn and pillage houses, driving out and murdering the inhabitants, sacking the city in order to punish and to spread terror among the people, and General von Luttwitz had told me that it was reported that the son of the burgomaster had shot one of their generals. But the burgomaster of Louvain had no son and no officer was shot at Louvain. The story of a general shot by the son of a burgomaster was a repetition of a tragedy that had occurred at Aerschot, on the 19th, where the fifteen-year-old son of the burgomaster had been killed by a firing squad, not because he had shot a general, but because an officer had been shot, probably by Belgian soldiers retreating through the town. The story of this tragedy is told by the boy's mother, under oath, before the Belgian Commission, and is so simple, so touching, so convincing in its verisimilitude, that I attach a copy of it in extenso to this report. It seems to afford an altogether typical example of what went on all over the stricken land during those days of terror. (In other places it was the daughter of the burgomaster who was said to have shot a general.)
"The following facts may be noted: From the avowal of Prussian officers themselves, there was not one single victim, among their men at the barracks of St. Martin, Louvain, where it was claimed that the first shot had been fired from a house situated in front of the Caserne. This would appear to be impossible had the civilians fired upon them point blank from across the street. It was said that when certain houses near the barracks were burning, numerous explosions occurred, revealing the presence of cartridges; but these houses were drinking houses much frequented by German soldiers. It was said that Spanish students shot from the schools in the Rue de la Station, but Father Catala, rector of the school, affirms that the schools were empty. . . .
"If it was necessary, for whatever reason, to do what was done at Vise, at Dinant, at Aerschot, at Louvain, and in a hundred other towns that were sacked, pillaged and burned, where masses were shot down because civilians had fired on German troops, and if it was necessary to do this on a scale never before witnessed in history, one might not unreasonably assume that the alleged firing by civilians was done on a scale, if not so thoroughly organized, at least somewhat in proportion to the rage of destruction that punished it. And hence it would seem to be a simple matter to produce at least convincing evidence that civilians had fired on the soldiers; but there is no testimony to that effect beyond that of the soldiers who merely assert it: Man hat geschossen. If there were no more firing on soldiers by civilians in Belgium than is proved by the German testimony, it was not enough to justify the burning of the smallest of the towns that was overtaken by that fate. And there is not a scintilla of evidence of organized bands of francs-tireurs, such as were found in the war of 1870."
Under date of September 12, 1917, Minister Whitlock, in a report to the State Department of the United States, made the following summary: "As one studies the evidence at hand, one is struck at the outset by the fact so general that it must exclude the hypothesis of coincidence, and that is that these wholesale massacres followed immediately upon some check, some reverse, that the German army had sustained. The German army was checked by the guns of the forts to the east of Liege, and the horrors of Vise, Verviers, Bligny, Battice, Hervy and twenty villages follow. When they entered Liege, they burned the houses along two streets and killed many persons, five or six Spaniards among them. Checked before Namur they sacked Andenne, Bouvignies, and Champignon, and when they took Namur they burned one hundred and fifty houses. Compelled to give battle to the French army in the Belgian Ardennes they ravaged the beautiful valley of the Semois; the complete destruction of the village of Rossignlo and the extermination of its entire male population took place there. Checked again by the French on the Meuse, the awful carnage of Dinant results. Held on the Sambre by the French, they burn one hundred houses at Charleroi and enact the appalling tragedy of Tamines. At Mons, the English hold them, and after that all over the Borinage there is a systematic destruction, pillage and murder. The Belgian army drive them back from Malines and Louvain is doomed. The Belgian army failing back and fighting in retreat took refuge in the forts of Antwerp, and the burning and sack of Hougaerde, Wavre, Ottignies, Grimde, Neerlinter, Weert, St. George, Shaffen and Aerschot follow.
[Illustration: Painting: Three soldiers in a bombed out shack, one on a
telephone.]
AN OBSERVATION POST
Watching the effect of gun fire from a sand-bagged ruin near the
German lines.
[Illustration: Photograph of King and soldiers parading on horses.] Photo by Trans-Atlantic News Service KING ALBERT AT THE HEAD OF THE HEROIC SOLDIERS OF BELGIUM It is universally agreed that the Belgian monarch was no figurehead general but a real leader of his troops. It was these men, facing annihilation, who astonished the world by opposing the German military machine successfully enough to allow France to get her armies into shape and prevent the immediate taking of Paris that was planned by Germany.
[Illustration: Painting of soldiers dragging large guns through mud;
shells are exploding in the background; in the foreground a dead
soldier lies face down in the mud.]
THE TERRIBLE FLANDERS MUD
A German battery endeavoring to escape from a British advance sinks in
the mud. The gunners are endeavoring to pull the gun out with ropes.
"The Belgian troops inflicted serious losses on the Germans in the South of the Province of Limbourg, and the towns of Lummen, Bilsen, and Lanaeken are partially destroyed. Antwerp held out for two months, and all about its outer line of fortifications there was blood and fire, numerous villages were sacked and burned and the whole town of Termonde was destroyed. During the battles of September the village of Boortmeerbeek near Malines, occupied by the Germans, was retaken by the Belgians, and when the Germans entered it again they burned forty houses. Three times occupied by the Belgians and retaken by the Germans Boortmeerbeek was three times punished in the same way. That is to say, everywhere the German army met with a defeat it took it out, as we say in America, on the civil population. And that is the explanation of the German atrocities in Belgium."
A committee of the highest honor and responsibility was appointed by the
British Government to investigate the whole subject of atrocities in
Belgium and Northern France. Its chairman was the Rt. Hon. Viscount
James Bryce, formerly British Ambassador to the United States. Its other
members were the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward
Clark, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Sheffield, Mr. Harold Cox and Sir Kenelm E. Digby.
The report of the commission bears upon its face the stamp of painstaking search for truth, substantiates every statement made by Minister Whitlock and makes known many horrible instances of cruelty and barbarity. It makes the following deductions as having been proved beyond question: