“Ah!” she exclaimed, with a convulsive shudder, “I will tell you of the burning of Louvain. We had pulled down some of the buildings so that the Germans should not mount guns on them when they came. I believe that was the reason. We were in a state of terror, because we had heard of the cruelties of the Germans. But all we had heard of them was not so bad as we experienced. In the streets people were cruelly butchered, and then on all sides flames began to rise. We were prepared for what we regarded as the worst, but never had we anticipated that they would burn us in our homes. People rushed about frantic to save their property. They were shot down by rifle volleys, struck down by sabres, and pierced by lances. My God! What have we not suffered?”
Two young Oxford undergraduates who were present tell a graphic story, in a letter to the Times, of the sack of the town and the burning of the neighbouring village. Leaving Aix-la-Chapelle on the Wednesday in question, they set off for Louvain. As they passed through the little hamlet of Cortenbergh they encountered a body of German troops who had been dispatched to destroy the village. Taken prisoners, they were guarded while the inhuman soldiers of the Kaiser made use of the cartloads of straw which they had brought with them for their terrible purpose. Soon every house was a mass of flames.
“This was in the afternoon,” they relate, “and from three to six o’clock we had to stand at the end of the street while the firing went on. It was a terrible spectacle, and our first glimpse of the horrors of war, for we saw five civilians, as they left their burning homes, ruthlessly shot down by German soldiers. Neither of us will ever forget the spectacle Louvain presented when we reached it the following morning. The whole town had apparently capitulated to the Germans, although occasionally we heard the sound of firing. The greater part of the town was in flames. Houses were falling, telegraph and telephone poles were tumbling into the streets, and the picture of desolation was complete, while German soldiers were looting among the ruins. Dead bodies littered the streets.... Some German soldiers told us that they had taken four hundred English prisoners from among those who had attacked their troop-trains, and three hundred and thirty of them had been shot that morning because they were found in possession of dum-dum bullets.”
A Refugee’s Plight.
The pathetic tale of a Belgian woman, who reached a place of safety after almost inconceivable hardship, was told in words which were few, but pregnant with tragedy and suffering. “Panic-stricken, we women fled from the burning town, and, half-running and half-walking, hurried from the dreadful scene. Mile after mile we covered, until our feet seemed as lead and our senses reeled. I am told we walked over seventy miles before we came to a railway. I wanted to bow down and kiss the cold iron rails. I fell exhausted, having carried my two children in turn. Footsore, broken-hearted, after the first joy of sighting the railway, I felt my head whirling, and I wondered whether it was all worth while. Then I thought of my deliverance, and thanked God.
“What did Louvain look like? Like what it was—a mass of flame devouring our homes, our property, and our relatives. Most of us women were deprived of our husbands. In the town everybody who offered any opposition was killed, and everyone found to be armed in any way was shot. Wives saw their husbands shot in the streets. I myself saw the Burgomaster shot, and I saw another man dragged roughly away from his weeping wife and children and shot through the head.”
An American’s Story.
A vivid word-picture of the scene is given by Mr. Gerald Morgan, an American, in the Daily Telegraph. “An hour before sunset we entered Louvain,” he says, “and found the city a smoking furnace. The railway station was crowded with troops, drunk with loot and liquor, and rapine as well. From house to house, acting under orders, groups of soldiers were carrying lighted straw, placing it in the basement, and then passing on to the next. It was not one’s idea of a general conflagration, for each house burned separately—hundreds of individual bonfires—while the sparks shot up like thousands of shooting stars into the still night-air. It was exactly like a display of fireworks or Bengal lights and set-pieces at a grand display in Coney Island.
“Meanwhile, through the station arch we saw German justice being administered. In a square outside, where the cabs stand, an officer stood, and the soldiers drove the citizens of Louvain into his presence, like so many
