READ here a few sentences from the sworn and sifted testimony of witnesses who saw what happened at Aerschot in August, 1914.

“When the war broke out a German whom I knew well by sight had been living at Aerschot some three years. He had no apparent occupation, but lived on his means in a small house. Occasionally he was away for some time. On the outbreak of war he was expelled from Belgium. He came back with the German troops and pointed out to them all houses and other property belonging to the burgomaster, and the Germans destroyed it all. Many civilians in Aerschot were killed by the Germans. I myself saw some forty dead bodies, including three women. They had been shot.... In one house the wife of a man whom I know well was burned alive. Her husband broke both legs while attempting to rescue her.... The Germans with their rifles prevented anyone going to help this man, and he had to drag himself along the street, with his legs broken, as best he could....”

“I saw some German infantry soldiers kill with bayonets two women who were standing on their doorsteps....”

“There we saw a whole street burning.... We heard children and beasts crying in the flames.”

“The Germans deliberately fired beyond us at four women, a child of 11 or 12 years of age, an infant of six months (about) and four other children who were clinging to their mothers’ skirts. The infant was in its mother’s arms, and was riddled with shot, which passed through it into the mother’s body. While she was trying to crawl into safety on her knees the Germans still fired at her until she died.”

“I saw the body of a little boy about 6½ or 7 years of age, with four bayonet wounds in it. It was stiff and propped against a wall.”

“The first thing we saw was the body of a young girl of about 18 to 20, absolutely naked, with her abdomen cut open. Her body was also covered with bruises.... About a kilometer farther on I saw the body of a little boy, aged 8 or 9, with his head completely cut off. The head was some distance from the trunk.”

These simple phrases, and hundreds more like them, plain to read in the book of evidence, make a better commentary than any I could write on this drawing. There are, indeed, many passages more terrible, such as the tale of the unspeakable treatment of the priest, dragged into Aerschot from the neighboring village of Gelrode. And I turn from reading such things to an English newspaper, wherein is the report of the speech of a person at a great gathering of people interested in coÖperative trading—a person who hopes, after the war, to “take by the hand” the creatures guilty of these infamies. It has been my experience to know many sad blackguards in the worst parts of London, but I cannot remember one who could fall as low as that. To find such we must search the smuggeries and the priggeries and the Fellowships of Reconciliation.

ARTHUR MORRISON.