It is specially forbidden “To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion. To make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag, or of the military insignia and uniform of the enemy.”—Hague Convention, Article XXIII.

Wanton Brutality.

I have made it plain from the official documents I have quoted that the German troops violated every item of this article. But in addition to cases of brutality already cited in the official document, the Belgian Mission, while in London, gave me the following:—

On August 19th Aerschot, in North Brabant, with about five thousand inhabitants, was, as already reported, destroyed. It appears that during the three days the German soldiery massacred and pillaged the town, which had not resisted, although there was no military force there whatever.

In the neighbouring village of Diest many of the inhabitants were put to the sword. The wife of Francis Luyckx, aged forty-five, and her daughter, twelve years of age, had, in their terror, taken refuge in a sewer. They were discovered, dragged out, and shot.

The little daughter of Jean Oyyen, a pretty child of nine, was shot, and a man named Andre Willem, aged twenty-three, the village sexton, was bound to a tree and burned alive.

In the village of Schaffen, near Diest, two men, named Lodts and Marken, both aged forty, were captured and entombed. When exhumed, it was found that they had been buried alive, head downwards. These occurrences—which are only a few of a very long list—had been fully inquired into, and confirmed by the committee of investigation, which was composed of the highest magistrates of Belgium and the chief professors of the Universities.

Statements were made that aged villagers in many places on the Franco-German frontier were hanged to trees; others, after being killed, had their eyes gouged out. In one place fifteen bodies were found mutilated in a heap, and along the whole frontier from Luxemburg to Basle outrages were committed on women, girls, and children.

Mlle. Marie Malet, the daughter of a judicial official in Brussels, who had been sent to London with a party of Belgian girls for safety, stated that she had seen a little girl, a friend of hers, aged ten, savagely sabred by a German officer, merely because she made a remark that the Germans were bullies. The child died an hour afterwards. Mlle. Malet stated that she had been sent from near Brussels with her sister, owing to the insults to which Belgian girls were subjected by German soldiers. Her mother had been wounded and her home looted of food and valuables.

The record of German atrocities in Belgium, indeed, rivals that of Alva in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. The worst Balkan methods were being pursued by the army of the pious Kaiser. At Pontillac, between LiÉge and Namur, the Burgomaster officially reported that the men of the 17th Hussars from Mecklenburg entered the place, met with no resistance, and demanded food, which the inhabitants at once gave them. After eating and drinking to their full, to the surprise of everyone they rode wildly through the streets emptying their carbines at the windows of the houses. Two Belgian soldiers who were secreted in the village returned their fire. A hot fusillade ensued, and then the Germans deliberately shot down all the villagers they could find. They also seized a M. Lahaye, a member of the Communal Council, and dragged him through the streets with a rope round his neck.

Drunken German Soldiers.

Further details regarding the wild savagery at Aerschot reached the Belgian Government after the issuing of the official report printed in the foregoing pages. It seems that the population of the Belgian provinces overrun by the Germans suffered, not only from the outrages of the troops acting under the orders of their officers, but also from atrocities due to drunken soldiers.

In one town some of them fired their rifles openly into the air and afterwards declared that the inhabitants had fired on them. On this pretext the people were dragged from their houses, which were then set on fire, and in many cases women and girls were outraged and the men shot. At Aerschot the troops—upon whom the Kaiser and the Austrian Emperor were beseeching God’s blessing—stabled their horses in the church, one of the most beautiful in Belgium, while the troops were set to work to destroy the pictures and fittings in the noble edifice. The Germans accused the son of the Burgomaster of killing the son of a German colonel. This was denied by the Burgomaster’s son, who only fired to defend his mother and sister from gross insults by the soldiery.

The Germans, however, surrounded the town. The inhabitants were then dragged from their homes and the women separated from the men. The latter were divided into batches and forced to run towards the river, the troops laughing at them and firing at them as they ran. One man who escaped by feigning death afterwards returned and counted forty-one bodies of his friends. Many of them had been stabbed by bayonets after being wounded. About one hundred and fifty of the male inhabitants of this place were compelled to watch the German troops shoot the Burgomaster, his son, and the Burgomaster’s brother.

Women Mutilated.

Mr. Adolph Coussmaekrs, a well-known resident of Antwerp, wrote giving nine cases of atrocities committed by the Germans in the districts of Orsmael and Barchon.

I do not reproduce here the nine cases instanced by this gentleman. The wanton mutilation on women and children is revolting and seems incredible.

In addition, there were criminal assaults on women which I cannot dwell upon in these pages; they have been narrated by unimpeachable persons. Mothers had their daughters dragged away from them by shameless officers to a fate that must have driven them to despair. Women and young children were injured by bayonet-thrusts and revolver-shots, and were still suffering from their wounds.