The following is the second report issued by the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, and which was published by the British Official Press Bureau on September 15th, 1914.

Second Report of the Belgian Committee of Inquiry.

To M. Carton de Wiart, Minister of Justice, Antwerp.

Sir,—The Commission of Inquiry has the honour to make the following report on acts of which the town of Louvain, the neighbourhood, and the district of Malines have been the scene.

The German Army entered Louvain on Wednesday, August 19th, after having burned down the villages through which it had passed.

As soon as they had entered the town of Louvain the Germans requisitioned food and lodging for their troops. They went to all the banks of the town and took possession of the cash in hand. German soldiers burst open the doors of houses which had been abandoned by their inhabitants, pillaged them, and committed other excesses.

The German authorities took as hostages the mayor of the city, Senator Van der Kelen, the Vice-Rector of the Catholic University, and the senior priest of the city, besides certain magistrates and aldermen. All the weapons possessed by the inhabitants, even fencing swords, had already been given up to the municipal authorities and placed by them in the Church of St. Pierre.

In a neighbouring village, Corbeek Loo, on Wednesday, August 19th, a young woman, aged twenty-two, whose husband was with the Army, and some of her relations, were surprised by a band of German soldiers. The persons who were with her were locked up in a deserted house, while she herself was dragged into another cottage, where she was assaulted by five soldiers.

Fate of 16-year-old Girl.

In the same village on Thursday, August 20, German soldiers fetched from their house a young girl, about sixteen years old, and her parents. They conducted them to a small deserted country house, and while some of them held back the father and mother, others entered the house, and, finding the cellar open, forced the girl to drink. They then brought her on to the lawn in front of the house and assaulted her. Finally they stabbed her in the breast with their bayonets.

When this young girl had been abandoned by them after these abominable deeds, she was brought back to her parents’ house, and the following day, in view of the gravity of her condition, she received extreme unction from the parish priest and was taken to the hospital of Louvain, as her life was despaired of.

On August 24 and 25 Belgian troops made a sortie from the entrenched camp of Antwerp and attacked the German army before Malines. The Germans were thrown back on Louvain and Vilvorde.

On entering the villages which had been occupied by the enemy the Belgian army found them devastated. The Germans, as they retired, had pillaged and burnt the villages, taking with them the male inhabitants, whom they forced to march in front of them.

Belgian soldiers entering Hofstade on August 25 found the body of an old woman who had been killed by bayonet thrusts. She still held in her hand the needle with which she was sewing when she was killed. A woman and her fifteen or sixteen year old son lay on the ground, pierced by bayonets. A man had been hanged.

At Sempst, a neighbouring village, were found the bodies of two men partially carbonised. One of them had his legs cut off at the knees; the other had the arms and legs cut off. A workman, whose burnt body has been seen by several witnesses, had been struck several times with bayonets, and then, while still alive, the Germans had poured petroleum over him and thrown him into a house to which they set fire. A woman who came out of her house was killed in the same way.

A witness, whose evidence has been taken by a reliable British subject, declares that he saw, on August 26, not far from Malines, during the last Belgian attack, an old man tied by the arms to one of the rafters in the ceiling of his farm. The body was completely carbonised, but the head, arms, and feet were unburnt. Further on, a child of about fifteen was tied up, the hands behind the back, and the body was completely torn open with bayonet wounds. Numerous corpses of peasants lay on the ground in positions of supplication, their arms lifted and their hands clasped.

Facts about Louvain.

At nightfall on August 26 the German troops, repulsed by our soldiers, entered Louvain panic-stricken. Several witnesses affirm that the German garrison which occupied Louvain was erroneously informed that the enemy were entering the town. Men of the garrison immediately marched to the station, shooting haphazard the while, and there met the German troops who had been repulsed by the Belgians, the latter having just ceased the pursuit.

Everything tends to prove that the German regiments fired on one another. At once the Germans began bombarding the town, pretending that civilians had fired on the troops, a suggestion which is contradicted by all the witnesses, and could scarcely have been possible, because the inhabitants of Louvain had had to give up their arms to the municipal authorities several days before.

The bombardment lasted till about ten o’clock at night. The Germans then set fire to the town. Wherever the fire had not spread, the German soldiers entered the houses and threw fire grenades, with which some of them seemed to be provided. The greater part of the town of Louvain was thus a prey to the flames, particularly the quarters of the upper town, comprising the modern buildings, the ancient Cathedral of St. Pierre, the university buildings, together with the university library, its manuscripts and collections, and the municipal theatre.

The Commission considers it its duty to insist, in the midst of all these horrors, on the crime committed against civilisation by the deliberate destruction of an academic library which was one of the treasures of Europe.

The corpses of many civilians encumbered the streets and squares. On the road from Tirlemont to Louvain alone a witness counted more than fifty. On the doorsteps of houses could be seen carbonised bodies of inhabitants, who, hiding in their cellars, were driven out by the fire, tried to escape, and fell into the flames. The suburbs of Louvain suffered the same fate.

We can affirm that the houses in all the districts between Louvain and Malines, and most of the suburbs of Louvain itself, have practically been destroyed.

Thousands Sent to Germany.

On Wednesday morning, August 26th, the Germans brought to the station squares of Louvain a group of more than seventy-five persons, including several prominent citizens of the town, among whom were Father Coloboet and another Spanish priest, and also an American priest.

The men were brutally separated from their wives and children, and after having been subjected to the most abominable treatment by the Germans, who several times threatened to shoot them, they were forced to march to the village of Campenhout in front of the German troops. They were shut up in the village church, where they passed the night.

About four o’clock the next morning a German officer told them they had better go to confession, as they would be shot half an hour later. About half-past four they were liberated. Shortly afterwards they were again arrested by a German brigade, which forced them to march before them in the direction of Malines. In reply to a question of one of the prisoners, a German officer said they were going to give them a taste of the Belgian quickfirers before Antwerp. They were at last released on the Thursday afternoon at the gates of Malines.

It appears from other witnesses that several thousand male inhabitants of Louvain, who had escaped the shooting and the fire, were sent to Germany for a purpose which is still unknown to us.

Eye-Witness’s Account.

The fire at Louvain burnt for several days. An eye-witness who left Louvain on August 30th gave the following description of the town at that time:—“Leaving Weert St. George’s, I only saw burnt-down villages and half-crazy peasants, who on meeting anyone held up their hands as a sign of submission. Before every house, even those burnt down, hung a white flag, and the burnt rags of them could be seen among the ruins.

“At Weert St. George’s I questioned the inhabitants on the causes of the German reprisals, and they affirmed most positively that no inhabitant had fired a shot, that in any case the arms had been previously collected, but that the Germans had taken vengeance on the population because a Belgian soldier belonging to the gendarmerie had killed an Uhlan.

“The population still remaining in Louvain have taken refuge in the suburb of HÉverlÉ, where they are extremely crowded. They have been cleared out of the town by the troops and the fire.

“The fire started a little beyond the American College, and the town is entirely destroyed, except for the town hall and the station. Furthermore, the fire was still burning to-day, and the Germans, far from taking any steps to stop it, seemed to feed it with straw, an instance of which I observed in the street adjoining the town hall.

“The cathedral and the theatre are destroyed and have fallen in, as also the library; in short, the town has the appearance of an ancient ruined city, in the midst of which only a few drunken soldiers move about, carrying bottles of wine and liqueurs, while the officers themselves, seated in arm-chairs round the tables, drink like their men.”

The Commission has not yet been able to obtain information about the fate of the Mayor of Louvain and of the other notables who were taken as hostages.

The Commission is able to draw the following conclusions from the facts which have so far been brought to its notice:—

In this war, the occupation of any place is systematically accompanied and followed, sometimes even preceded, by acts of violence towards the civil population, which acts are contrary both to the usages of war and to the most elementary principles of humanity.

Brutality Everywhere.

The German procedure is everywhere the same. They advance along a road, shooting inoffensive passers-by—particularly bicyclists—as well as peasants working in the fields.

In the towns or villages where they stop they begin by requisitioning food and drink, which they consume till intoxicated.

Sometimes from the interior of deserted houses they let off their rifles at random and declare that it was the inhabitants who fired. Then the scenes of fire, murder, and especially pillage begin, accompanied by acts of deliberate cruelty, without respect to sex or age. Even where they pretend to know the actual person guilty of the acts they allege, they do not content themselves with executing him summarily, but they seize the opportunity to decimate the population, pillage the houses, and then set them on fire.

After a preliminary attack and massacre they shut up the men in the church, and then order the women to return to their houses and to leave their doors open all night.

From several places the male population has been sent to Germany, there to be forced, it appears, to work at the harvest, as in the old days of slavery. There are many cases of the inhabitants being forced to act as guides and to dig trenches and entrenchments for the Germans. Numerous witnesses assert that during their marches, and even when attacking, the Germans place civilians, men and women, in their front ranks, in order to prevent our soldiers firing.

The evidence of Belgian officers and soldiers shows that German detachments do not hesitate to display either the white flag or the Red Cross flag in order to approach our troops with impunity. On the other hand, they fire on our ambulances and maltreat the ambulance men. They maltreat and even kill the wounded. The clergy seem to be particularly chosen as subjects for their brutality.

Finally, we have in our possession expanding bullets which had been abandoned by the enemy at Werchter, and we possess doctors’ certificates showing that wounds must have been inflicted by bullets of this kind.

The documents and evidence on which these conclusions rest will be published in due course.