New York Times Current History The European War From The Beginning To March Part 49

III.

Destruction of Louvain.

Antwerp, Aug. 31, 1914

To the Minister of Justice:

Sir: The Commission of Inquiry begs to make the following report on the deeds of which the City of Louvain and the surrounding localities and the vicinity of Malines have been the theatre.

The German Army penetrated into Louvain on Wednesday, Aug. 19, after having set fire to the towns through which it had pa.s.sed.

From the moment of their entrance into the City of Louvain the Germans requisitioned lodgings and victuals for their troops. They entered every private bank of the city and took over the bank balances. German soldiers broke the doors of houses abandoned by their inhabitants, pillaged them and indulged in orgies.

The German authorities took hostages--the Mayor of the city, Senator Vander Kelm, the Vice Rector of the Catholic University, the Dean of the city; magistrates and Aldermen were also detained. All arms, down to fencing foils, had been handed over to the town administration and deposited by the said authorities in the Church of St. Peter.

In a neighboring village, Corbeek-Loo, a young matron, 22 years old, whose husband was in the army, was surprised on Wednesday, Aug. 19, with several of her relatives, by a band of German soldiers. The persons who accompanied her were locked in an abandoned house, while she was taken into another house, where she was successively attacked by five soldiers.

In the same village, on Thursday, Aug. 20, German soldiers were searching a house where a young girl of 16 years lived with her parents.

They carried her into an abandoned house, and while some of them kept the father and mother off, others went into the house, the cellar of which was open, and forced the young woman to drink. Afterward they carried her out on the lawn in front of the house and attacked her successively. She continued to resist, and they pierced her breast with their bayonets. Having been abandoned by the soldiers after these abominable attacks, the girl was carried off by her parents, and the following day, owing to the gravity of her condition, she was administered the last rites of the Church by the priest of the parish and carried to the hospital at Louvain. At that time her life was in danger.

On Aug. 24 and 25 Belgian troops, leaving the intrenched camp in Antwerp, attacked the German Army which was outside of Malines.

The German troops were driven back as far as Louvain and Vilvorde.

Penetrating the towns which had been occupied by the enemy, the Belgian Army found the whole country devastated. The Germans, while retiring, had ravaged and set fire to the villages, taking with them all the male inhabitants, driving them before them.

Old Woman Killed by Bayonets.

Upon entering Hofstade, on Aug. 25, the Belgian soldiers found there the corpse of an old woman who had been killed by bayonet thrusts; she still held in her hands the needle with which she was sewing when she was attacked; one mother and her son, aged about 15 or 16 years, lay there, pierced with bayonet wounds; one man was found hanging.

In Sempst, a neighboring village, were found the corpses of two men partially burned. One of them was found with his legs cut off at the knees, the other was minus his arms and legs. A workman (whose charred body several witnesses have seen) had been pierced with bayonets, and afterward, while still living, the Germans soaked him with petroleum and locked him in a house, which they set on fire. An old man and his son had been killed by bullets; a woman coming out of her house had been stricken down in the same manner.

A witness whose declaration has been received by Edward Hertslet, son of Sir Cecil Hertslet, Consul General of Great Britain in Antwerp, testifies to have seen not far from Malines on Aug. 26 (that is, during the last attack of the Belgian troops) an old man attached by the arms to a beam of a barn. The body was completely burned; the head, the arms, and the feet were intact. Further on was a body all over stabbed with bayonet thrusts. Numerous corpses of peasants were found in positions of supplication, arms lifted and hands folded in prayer. The Belgian Consul to Unganda, who had entered the Belgian Army as a volunteer, reports that everywhere the Germans had pa.s.sed through the country was devastated. The few inhabitants who remained in the villages told of horrors committed by the enemy. Thus in Wacherzeel seven Germans are said to have consecutively attacked a woman, afterward killing her. In the same village they had stripped a young boy, threatening him with death by pointing a revolver at his breast, piercing him with their lances, and chasing him into the open fields and shooting after him, without, however, hitting him.

Everywhere there was ruin and devastation. At Bulcken numerous inhabitants, including the priest, a man more than 80 years old, were killed.

Between Impde and Wolverthem two wounded Belgian soldiers were lying near a house which was burning. The Germans threw these two unfortunate men into the raging fire.

The German troops repulsed by our soldiers entered Louvain in full panic. Various witnesses a.s.sure us that at that moment the German garrison occupying Louvain was advised erroneously that the enemy was entering the town. Immediately the German garrison withdrew toward the station, where it met with the German troops that had been repulsed and pursued by the Belgian troops. Everything seems to indicate that a collision took place between the two German regiments. From that moment, under pretext that the Louvain civilians had fired upon them, a fact which is contradicted by all witnesses, and which would hardly have been possible inasmuch as all the inhabitants of Louvain, for several days past, had been obliged to hand their arms over to the local authorities, the German soldiers began to bombard the city. Moreover, not one of the witnesses has seen the body of a single civilian at the place where the affray happened. The bombarding lasted until 10 o'clock at night. Afterward the Germans set fire to the city.

Burning of the Town.

The houses which had not taken fire were entered by German soldiers, who threw fire grenades, which seem to have been provided for the occasion.

The largest part of the City of Louvain, especially the quarters of the Ville Haute, comprising the modern houses, the Cathedral of St. Peter, the University Halls, with the whole library of the university, its ma.n.u.scripts, its collections, the largest part of the scientific inst.i.tutions, and the town theatres, were at the moment being consumed by flames.

The commission deems it necessary, in the midst of these horrors, to insist on the crime of lese humanity which the deliberate annihilation of an academic library--a library which was one of the treasures of our time--const.i.tutes.

Numerous corpses of civilians covered the street and squares. On the route from Louvain to Tirlemont alone one witness testifies having seen more than fifty of them. On the threshholds of houses were found burned corpses of people who, surprised in their cellars by the fire, had tried to escape and fell into the heap of live embers. The suburbs of Louvain have been completely annihilated.

A group of seventy-five persons, among whom were several notables of the city, such as Father Coloboet and a Spanish priest, and also an American priest, were conducted during the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 26, to the square in front of the station. The men were brutally separated from their wives and children, and after having received the most abominable treatment, and after repeated threats of being shot, they were driven in front of the German troops as far as the village of Campenhout. They were locked in the church during the night. The following day at 4 o'clock a German officer came to inform them that they might all confess themselves, and that they would be shot half an hour later. But at 4:30 o'clock they were allowed to go, and shortly afterward they were again arrested by a German brigade, which forced them to march in front of them to Malines. Answering a question on the part of one of the prisoners, a German officer told them that they were going to taste some of the Belgian grapeshot before Antwerp. At last they were liberated on Thursday afternoon at the entrance of Malines.

Further testimony shows that several thousand male inhabitants of Louvain who had escaped the shooting and burning were sent toward Germany. We do not at this writing know for what purpose.

The fire continued for several days. An eye-witness, who on Aug. 30 left Louvain, describes the state of the city as follows:

"From Weert St. Georges," he says, "I have seen nothing except burned towns and crazed villagers lifting to each comer their arms as a mark of submission. From each house was hanging a white flag, even from those that had been set on fire, and rags of them were found hanging from the ruins.

At Weert St. Georges I inquired from the inhabitants the cause of the German reprisals. They all a.s.sured me that absolutely none of the inhabitants had fired; that all arms had been previously given up, and that the Germans had taken vengeance on the population because a Belgian soldier of the Gendarme Corps had killed a Uhlan.

The population which remained in Louvain took refuge in the suburb of Heverle, where they are all piled up, the population having been driven from the town by the troops and by the fire.

The fire in Louvain began a little above the American College, and the city is entirely destroyed, with the exception of the Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) and the depot. Today the fire continued, and the Germans--far from trying to stop it--seem rather to maintain it by throwing straw into the fire, as I have myself seen in the streets behind the Hotel de Ville. The cathedral and the theatres have been destroyed and have fallen in, also the library. The town resembles an old city in ruins, in the midst of which drunken soldiers are circulating, carrying bottles of wine and liquor; the officers themselves being installed in armchairs, sitting around tables and drinking like their own men.

In the streets dead horses are decaying, horses which are already inflated, and the smell of the fire and of the decaying animals is such that it has followed me for a long time."

The commission up to this writing has been unable to obtain any information regarding the fate of the Burgomaster of Louvain, nor regarding the prominent persons taken for hostages.

Conclusions of the Commission.

By facts which have thus far been brought to its attention, the commission reaches the following conclusions:

In this war, German occupation of territory is systematically followed by (and is at times preceded by and accompanied by) acts of violence against the civil population, which acts of violence are contrary to the conventional laws of war and to the most elementary principles of humanity.

The procedure of the Germans is everywhere the same. They advance along the roads, shooting inoffensive pa.s.sersby, particularly cyclists and even peasants occupied in the fields which the Germans traverse.

In the towns and villages where they stop, the Germans first of all requisition victuals and drinks which they consume to the point of drunkenness; then they begin to shoot wildly, sometimes from the interior of empty houses, declaring that the inhabitants have fired the shots. It is then that the firing scenes begin, and murder and especially pillage accompanied by acts of cold cruelty set in, acts which respect neither s.e.x nor age. Even where they claim to know the perpetrator of the deeds which they allege, they do not content themselves with executing the culprits summarily, but take advantage of the occasions to decimate the population, to pillage all the inhabitants, and to set fire to them.

After a first ma.s.sacre, somewhat at random, they shut the men into the church of the town and order all women to go back to the houses and leave the doors open during the night.

In several localities the civil population has been sent to Germany, to be compelled there, it appears, to labor in the fields, as was done in the slave days of olden times. Numerous cases are known where the inhabitants were forced to serve as guides and to make trenches for the Germans. Numerous depositions reveal that in their march, and even in their attacks, the Germans put before them civilians, men and women, in order to prevent our soldiers from firing. Other testimony proves that German detachments do not hesitate to fly either a white flag or a Red Cross flag, so as to approach our troops without being suspected. On the other hand they fire on our ambulances and ill-treat our ambulance nurses. They ill-treat and even kill our wounded. Clergymen seem to be particularly the object of their attacks. Last, but not least, we have in our possession explosive bullets left behind them by the enemy at Wechter, and we are also in receipt of medical certificates testifying that the wounds must have been inflicted by bullets of the variety mentioned above.

Doc.u.ments and testimonials in support of these facts will be published.

(Signed)

GOOREMAN, President.

COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA.

ERNST DE BUNSWYCK, ORTS, Secretaries.