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Atrocities Around Liége
Belgian officials reported from Liége devilish atrocities committed in the town and suburbs. In the Place de l’Université, the Rue des Pitteurs, and the Quai des Pecheurs most of the houses were burned. The occupants, who had been awakened by the acrid smoke, fled in terror, and fifteen persons, men, women, and children, were killed as they ran, while in one instance a family were called together, and father and son were killed and then mutilated in front of them. Apparently many of the soldiers breaking into cafés were drunk, and after firing accused the inhabitants of it, taking vengeance by burning and murders without restraint. This indeed appeared to be part of the German campaign, for not only in Belgium, but also in France, the same inhuman and dastardly excuses were resorted to in order to attempt to justify the awful crimes which these “cultured” barbarians committed.
Road Strewn with Dead.
Georges Just, a restaurant-keeper at Chenee, province of Liége, said: “When we heard of the German approach my wife and I fled across the river into Liége. It seems now like a dream. Just before they entered the town the Germans committed all kinds of outrages. Never shall I forget the terrible sights along the roadside. Mutilated corpses of people I knew, and many wounded and dying, lay strewn in our path. In some places we saw the dead piled in heaps fifteen feet high.”
A letter written by a niece of Mr. John Redmond, M.P., who was living in a Belgian town occupied by the Germans, contained the following: —
“They are absolute barbarians, and treat the women like dogs. For the least thing the inhabitants are shot, and they all live in fear of their lives. The town’s most prominent men, in relays of three, guarded by soldiers, guarantee with their lives the good behaviour of the people. My husband is one of the guarantors. On Wednesday night he spent his hours of vigil in the town hall. Imagine my feelings.
“The Germans take everything. No matter how well they are treated and received, they behave filthily and brutally, officers and men alike. Empty houses they smash from top to bottom.”
What an Eye-Witness Saw.
Another eye-witness was Mr. Henry Frenkel, a Russian living in Antwerp, who volunteered in the
“The Belgian people are enduring the horrors of war, and after making every allowance for the source from which our information comes, we do not doubt that they are enduring them in a form which ought to be impossible amongst civilized nations.” —Bonar Law.
6th regiment of the line to serve with his Belgian friends. While the Germans were in Liége he was sent there upon an important mission. This is how he tells his story: —
“I got into Liége by Holland. I went first to Rosendael, then to Maastricht, last to Eysden, and then openly passed the frontier. I will not describe Visé, Mouland, Berneau, and other places, all burned, sacked, and devastated in the most horrible fashion. Although all I have seen has hardened my nerve, I still shiver when I think of it. One cannot grasp the idea of all that has really taken place there. The Germans, mad with rage on account of the resistance which we opposed to them, have acted like wild beasts, to give it a mild name. I have seen men, women, and children hanged or horribly mutilated. I have seen heaps of corpses, of which no trace will be left in a few hours, as the inhabitants round Liége have been commandeered to bury them in lots. Ah! the Prussians will have to render us a terrible account. I witnessed an incident on the Place Lambert, in Liége. A Belgian chauffeur was arguing with a German officer. Visibly, the Belgian chauffeur could not understand what was wanted of him. The crowd gathered, and I could not follow the rest of the scene; but I heard a revolver shot. Then German soldiers rushed out of the palace to stop the crowds, and I saw the chauffeur, with blood-covered face, carried into a house by two soldiers. Not a sign of revolt from the crowd. The rifles are loaded, ready to go off. At my side a German said, laughingly: ‘Ach, das ist nichts! Eine kleinigkeit.’ (‘Oh! that’s nothing. Only a small thing.’)”
Dinant Destroyed.
It was at Dinant, one of the most famous beauty spots of Belgium, and which is so well known to English tourists, who flock to it in great numbers every year, that some particularly atrocious outrages took place. According to the message of Reuter’s correspondent at Ostend, the women were confined in convents whilst hundreds of men were shot. A hundred prominent citizens were shot in the Place d’Armes. M. Hummers, manager of a large weaving factory employing two thousand men, and M. Poncelet, son of a former Senator, were both shot, the latter in the presence of his six children. The Germans appeared at the branch of the National Bank, where they demanded all the cash in the safe. When the manager refused to give them the money they tried to blow the safe open. Not succeeding in this they demanded the combination for the lock. The manager refused. On this the Germans shot him immediately, together with his two sons. Dinant was afterwards destroyed by shell-fire and incendiarism.
“The modern Attila respects neither the laws of nations nor the laws of God. His evil deeds cry aloud to Heaven and to the horror-struck watching nations.” —Times.
The wanton destruction of this ancient and beautiful town is a crime second only to that committed at Louvain.
Children Outraged.
A Belgian soldier who fought at Dinant was eye-witness of a terrible scene. Several German infantrymen had entered a house in a small village on the Meuse, and he, with four other Belgians, lay in wait for them. The Germans emerged with a young woman, whom they subjected to brutal ill-usage. The Belgians feared that if they fired they might hit the woman, but presently one of the Kaiser’s savages drew his bayonet and plunged it into the poor girl’s breast, whereupon she sank down uttering a piteous cry.
At Harseet the Uhlans suddenly descended upon the village, shot the first men they came across, numbering seven; this was followed by outrages on women, and twenty-two men were carried off as prisoners. Two Uhlans demanded a fowl from a peasant, who replied that he had none. They found one, and promptly shot him.
Because two Jesuit professors at Louvain University were found with newspapers upon them, telling of German atrocities, one was shot, while thirty of the Jesuits were taken away in carts to an unknown fate.
In La Préville a number of Uhlans who broke open a café and satiated themselves with drink saw a little boy of seven playing with a toy gun. Because he pointed it at a German soldier he was shot.
Base Act of Ingratitude.
Many Belgian refugees, after weary wanderings, found themselves in Paris, and some of them were given shelter in the vast Cirque de Paris, where straw was laid upon the floor upon which those made homeless and destitute by the Kaiser’s savage barbarians made their bed.
One old grey-haired man, bent and travel-stained, was found by a correspondent seated alone and silently weeping. A kindly Red Cross nurse inquired the reason of his despondency. He said: “My name is Jean Beauzon. I kept a little coffee-house just across the river from Liége, in the town of Grivegnee. When the army was mobilized my two sons, both strapping fine fellows, went off to join the regiment. I have two daughters, one left with my old father and the other here”; so saying he pointed to a bright-eyed girl of sixteen, whose face and head were swathed in bandages.
“You see,” he went on, “that poor dear face. Well, a German did that. They burst into my place and demanded wine, which I gave them. What happened then I cannot exactly remember. It all seems like a horrible nightmare. We subsequently left our home and wandered away in the opposite direction from the terrible cannonading that was going on.
“After walking in the dark for two hours my other daughter became too tired to go any farther and sat down in despair by the roadside.
“This girl here and I then went on to try to find some means of conveyance for her. A little way down the road we came upon a riderless horse, which we managed with great difficulty to catch and mount. We then went back to find my other daughter. We had not left her for more than half an hour, but she was no longer there. We spent the rest of the night looking for her, but found no sign or trace of her, and in the end were obliged to give up the search.
“Finally we got into a train, which brought us here. I was cared for by the Red Cross. I don’t know where they found me or anything else except that I have prayed all the time to the Blessed Virgin to return my cherished lamb to me undefiled.”
“What kind of soldiers can these be who slaughter old women with bayonet thrusts, who violate young girls and then murder them, who strip and stab young boys, who hang and burn old men, and who subject to degradation and insult innocent and unoffending priests?”
– From the Daily Telegraph.
XI
The Crime of Louvain
“In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has suffered a loss which can never be repaired.” —Press Bureau.
No words can adequately describe the wave of disgust which swept over the whole of the civilized communities of the world when it became known that the Germans had reduced to ashes the beautiful old city of Louvain. Mr. Asquith has described the sack of Louvain as
“the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years’ War. With its buildings, its pictures, its unique library, its unrivalled associations, a shameless holocaust of irreparable treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance.”
This ancient city, the Oxford of Belgium, has been reduced by the new Huns to a heap of ashes. “Every traveller in Belgium,” says Sir William Robertson Nicoll, “will remember the ancient mediæval town, its wonderful Hotel de Ville, the most perfect piece of architecture in Belgium, the Church of St. Peter, begun in 1425, and the University with its priceless library. All have perished, and why? The civil population had been disarmed, but in a night skirmish German soldiers accidentally fired on their own guard, and it was decided in the panic of the hour to destroy the whole town. A town of forty-five thousand inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”
The wanton destruction of this ancient seat of learning, rich in historic associations, was an act of vandalism almost without parallel in history, a crime not only against humanity, but against the generations of future years.
The restrained and dignified words in which our own Official Press Bureau made known the ruthless sacking of Louvain constitute a fearful indictment of German Militarism, which can give official sanction to such an appalling deed. Here are the words of the Press Bureau: —
“Ancient and beautiful Louvain, a town of forty-five thousand people, a seat of learning, famous for its ancient and beautiful churches and other buildings, many of them dating from the fifteenth century, has been utterly destroyed by one of the Kaiser’s commanders in a moment of passion to cover the blunder of his own men. The excuse for this unpardonable act of barbarity and vandalism is that a discomfited band of German troops returning to Louvain were fired upon by the people of the town, who had been disarmed a week earlier. The truth is that the Germans, making for the town in disorder, were fired upon by their friends in occupation of Louvain, a mistake by no means rare in war. The assumption of the German commander was, in the circumstances, so wide of probability that it can only be supposed that in the desire to conceal the facts the first idea which occurred to him was seized upon as an excuse for an act unparalleled in the history of civilized people.
“The Emperor William has stated that the only means of preventing surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by their frightfulness, would be a warning to the whole country. The case of Louvain is such an ‘interference,’ without even the miserable excuse suggested. Louvain is miles from the scene of real fighting. In International Law it is recognized that ‘the only legitimate end which the States should aim at in war is the weakening of the military forces of the enemy.’ And the rules under the annex to Convention IV. of 1907, which expand and demand the provision of the Declaration of Brussels, lay down that any destruction or seizure of enemies’ property, not imperatively called for by military necessities, is forbidden.
“In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has suffered a loss which can never be repaired.”
Incredible Wickedness.
But even the above statement does not relate one half of the fearful crimes against property and human life committed by these uniformed ruffians in the ill-fated city, perpetrated by hosts of armed men against innocent and helpless non-combatants, aged men, defenceless women, and children. The houses and buildings of the town were without doubt deliberately set on fire. Helped by petrol poured on by brutal Teuton soldiers, the flames spread rapidly and fiercely.
“For every vile deed wrought under the impious benedictions of the monarch who is ravaging Europe ample reparation shall be exacted.” —Times.
Everyone who offered opposition was killed; everyone found in the possession of arms shot. Wives saw their husbands murdered before their eyes, mothers their sons. Men were brutally dragged away from their weeping wives and children, propped up against a wall and shot, or ruthlessly cut down where they stood. German soldiers, encouraged by their officers, looted where and how they liked; the inhabitants were in some cases driven to take refuge on the roofs of their houses, which were set on fire. From burning houses were to be heard the agonized cries of those perishing in the conflagration, which was destined to reduce the city to ashes.
Many authenticated stories of these terrible happenings have reached London. At first they seemed unbelievable, but each day brings further corroboration. I take the liberty of reproducing a despatch of Mr. Hugh Martin, the special correspondent of the Daily News and Leader, whose vivid narrative brings home to us the details of the sufferings of the poor victims of these abominable proceedings: —
“Stories of the sacking of Louvain, which are almost unbelievable in their horror, reach here (Rotterdam) from the frontier. One of the most vivid is that of an assistant in a bicycle shop, who, though a Dutchman, was given special facilities for escape owing to his being mistaken for a German.
“ ‘At mid-day last Tuesday,’ he begins, ‘a fearful uproar broke out in the streets while we were at dinner, and the crackle of musketry was soon followed by the roar of artillery near at hand.
“ ‘Hearing shrieks from the inhabitants of our streets, I rushed to the window and saw that several houses were already in flames. Soldiers were smashing the shop windows and looting in all directions.
Shot Down Like Rabbits.
“ ‘As the people rushed into the streets from the burning houses they were shot down like rabbits. With my governor, his wife, and little boy, we fled to the cellar, where I and the boy hid under a pile of tyres, while the manager crept into a chest, and his wife far into a drain, where she stood with water up to her waist for many hours.
“ ‘Night fell and the sound of shooting in the streets became brisker. I crept out of my hiding-place to get some water, and, peeping out of the window, saw, to my horror, that almost the whole street was in ruins. Then we found that our own house was alight, and it was necessary to choose between bolting and being burnt to death where we were.
“ ‘I decided to make a dash for it, but the moment I was outside the door three Germans held me up with their revolvers and asked me where I was going. My reply was that I was a German, and that my master and his wife were Germans who had been trapped in the burning house.
“ ‘Apparently my German was good enough to make them believe my statement, for they promised to give us safe conduct out of the town. Our walk through the streets to the railway station I shall always remember as a walk through hell.
“ ‘The beautiful town, with its noble buildings, was a sea of flame. Dead bodies lay thick in the streets. Dreadful cries came from many of the houses. It was half-past five on Wednesday morning when we reached the railway station. Soldiers were even then still going about the streets with lighted brands and explosives in their hands, setting alight any buildings that still remained intact.
“ ‘In the parks they had already begun to bury the dead, but in many cases so shallow were the graves that a large part of each body was still visible. At the railway station we witnessed a truly harrowing spectacle. Fifty citizens, both men and women, had been brought from houses from which the soldiers swore that shots had been fired.
“ ‘They were lined up in the street, protesting with tears in their eyes that they were innocent. Then came a firing squad. Volley followed volley, and the fifty fell dead where they stood.’
“This appalling story is fully confirmed by an independent despatch from a Dutch journalist who happened to be at Louvain on his way to Brussels. He states that he was standing on Tuesday evening near the railway station at Louvain talking to a German officer, when he was strongly advised to leave the spot, owing to the great danger.
“A group of some five hundred men and women described as hostages were ranked in the open space by the station, and they were informed that for every soldier fired on in the town ten of them would be shot. This arrangement was carried out with true German regard for the punctilious observation of all rules.
“The wretched people sobbed and wrung their hands and fell on their knees, but they might as well have appealed to men of stone.
“Ten by ten as the night wore on they were brought from the ranks and slaughtered, without regard to age or sex, before the eyes of those who remained.
“Accounts differ widely as to the origin of the trouble, some declaring that the German patrols in the city fired on the German troops retreating before a sortie from Antwerp, while others state that stray shots were fired at a commissariat train passing through the town.
“I would draw special attention to the fact that so far as the main facts are concerned both my informants are Dutchmen, who can have no object in spreading anti-German lies.”
Further terrible details are supplied by a cigar manufacturer who happened to be in Louvain about that time. Taken prisoner, he was escorted by German soldiers from the town, which was then one mass of flames, to the neighbouring village of Campenhout, where they witnessed the shooting of seven priests.
“Altogether we were seventy-three men, handcuffed like criminals,” he says, “and we were locked in the church, and had to lie on the cold floor. Fresh prisoners arrived at intervals. Outside we could hear the cries and lamentations of women and children. Inside an imprisoned priest gave us absolution.
“When we left the church, Campenhout was burning fiercely. We were told we should be freed, but must return to Louvain. On returning, we were once more taken prisoners and driven in front of German soldiers across country without rest or food, and used as a cover for the troops.”
The “Black Hole” Outdone.
Incredible inhuman treatment was accorded to some twelve hundred people who were captured by the German barbarians in the act of fleeing from the doomed city. The men were separated from the women and children, and marched back to Louvain. Then began for them a terrible journey – a journey that drove many mad and others to self-destruction.
“Like so many brutes,” says the Times correspondent, “these burgesses of Louvain, among them merchants, brewers, advocates, engineers, and representatives of all social grades, were herded into wagons which had served for the transport of horses and were inches deep in filth. Into each wagon ninety men were crushed at the point of the bayonet by soldiers who seemed to glory in the maltreatment of their fellow-men. The unhappy prisoners had, of course, to stand, and to add to the horrors of the fetid atmosphere, the doors were shut, and only fugitive rays of light filtered through the chinks.
“For two hours they were kept like this at Louvain station, after which the train left for Cologne. The journey occupied about fifty hours, and the Belgians during this awful time were given neither food nor drink. ‘After such an experience,’ states one of them, ‘hell itself can have no terrors.’
“Once strong physically and prosperous, he who spoke is now a nervous wreck and destitute, living on the charity of friends who do not know but what it may be their turn to-morrow.
“Arrived at Cologne, the prisoners were marched through jeering crowds to the Exhibition Gardens. Men and women surged round the pitiful band, hurling at them vile epithets, and shouting, ‘Zum Tod, zum Tod!’ (‘Kill them, kill them!’) Even the children joined in kicking the prisoners as they passed. The Belgians could gather no idea as to why they had been dragged off to Germany, and even feared the worst. The night was passed in the open, and in the morning they broke their prolonged fast on a small portion of black bread.
“Suddenly the German authorities changed their minds. Back the prisoners must go to Belgium, and, four abreast, the motley column regained the station. A passenger train awaited them, but each compartment for nine people was made to hold eighteen or nineteen. In some ways the home journey was more terrible than the outward. For two days and three nights the unfortunate inhabitants of Louvain were jolted about between Cologne and the capital of their own country, again absolutely without food.
“On rare occasions the guard exhibited a glimmering of pity, and permitted the prisoners a mouthful of water. At the Gare du Nord, in Brussels, compatriots smuggled food through the windows. The train only stopped a short time here, and was off again to Schaerbeek.
“Completely at a loss what to do with their charges, the Prussian officers ordered them out of the train, and under an armed guard marched them on foot through Vilvorde and Pont Brulé and on to Malines. When crossing the fields the prisoners tore up turnips and beetroots and ate them ravenously. At Malines the officer in charge of the escort told the half-dead men they were free, and by different routes they reached Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, and other places in territory unoccupied by the enemy.”
The Massacre of Innocents.
The stories of the poor panic-stricken women of Louvain who emerged alive from the night of terror cannot fail to arouse horror. One woman upon whose face were marks of the intense suffering through which she had passed told how she tore down the curtains from her windows, wrapped them round some wearing apparel, and ran from the house with her two children. In the street she became involved in a stampede of men, women, and children rushing away from their burning town, whither she knew not.
This miserable refugee’s story was so disjointed, so interspersed with hysterical sobs and exclamations, that it is impossible to make a full and coherent narrative of it.
“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 unwilling cattle on a market day. Some of the men, after a few words between the officer and the escorts, were marched off under fixed bayonets behind the railway station. Then we heard volleys, and the soldiers returned. Then the train moved out, and the last we saw of the doomed city was an immense red glare in the gathering darkness.”
