“Here, notwithstanding his protests, and proposals to produce papers, showing that he was a Dutch subject, the cigarette manufacturer was separated from his family, of whom he has since lost sight. He was surrounded by soldiers, who bound his hands behind his back, and with other refugees he was kept at the station many hours. During this time he saw a party of three hundred Belgian civilians, among whom were old men and lads of fourteen or fifteen, driven at the point of the bayonet to a remote spot near the station, where they were all shot before his eyes.
“After a terrible night, he and his group of seventy-six men were set free. They had had nothing to eat or drink for thirty-six hours. All streets and roads in and round Liége were strewn, according to the witness, with bodies of men, women, and children. Among those shot were the mayor, two aldermen, the rector of the University, two deans, and many police inspectors.”
VIII.
“Our German people will be the grand block on which the good God may complete His work of civilizing the world.”
From a speech of The Kaiser’s.
The Inferno at Visé.
A correspondent of the Handelsblad was an eye-witness of the scenes in Visé, near Liége, when it was burned, and told a tale of German barbarity, and of the murder and torture of its helpless inhabitants, of a nature to make one’s blood run cold. As summarized in the Daily News the story is as follows:—
“It was an awful sight. Every house was a mass of flames, through which the streets were hardly visible.
“At the entrance of the Grand Hotel were three disarmed soldiers bound hand and foot. Entering the hotel, I found the floor covered with dead bodies. In that hall of the dead several soldiers stood guard. From this awful, nauseating scene I hurried back to the blinding glare and suffocating heat of the burning villages.
“The correspondent describes how a colleague supported an aged lady found lying near her blazing house. She pleaded, ‘Let me die.’ Poor, unhappy creature, bereft of home and even of adequate clothing, the aged