XI.
The Crime of Louvain.
“In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has suffered a loss which can never be repaired.”—Press Bureau.
No words can adequately describe the wave of disgust which swept over the whole of the civilized communities of the world when it became known that the Germans had reduced to ashes the beautiful old city of Louvain. Mr. Asquith has described the sack of Louvain as
“the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years’ War. With its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivalled associations, a shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance.”
This ancient city, the Oxford of Belgium, has been reduced by the new Huns to a heap of ashes. “Every traveller in Belgium,” says Sir William Robertson Nicoll, “will remember the ancient mediæval town, its wonderful Hotel de Ville, the most perfect piece of architecture in Belgium, the Church of St. Peter, begun in 1425, and the University with its priceless library. All have perished, and why? The civil population had been disarmed, but in a night skirmish German soldiers accidentally fired on their own guard, and it was decided in the panic of the hour to destroy the whole town. A town of forty-five thousand inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”
The wanton destruction of this ancient seat of learning, rich in historic associations, was an act of vandalism almost without parallel in history, a crime not only against humanity, but against the generations of future years.
The restrained and dignified words in which our own Official Press Bureau made known the ruthless sacking of Louvain constitute a fearful indictment of German Militarism, which can give official sanction to such an appalling deed. Here are the words of the Press Bureau:—