FURTHER REPORTS.
Cabled to Royal Commission at Washington from Belgian Foreign Office.
Cablegram Received Sept. 8.
You have received the reports of the commission of Aug. 25 and 31.
Since then a great many localities, situated in the Vilvorde-Malines- Louvain triangle, an extremely fertile and densely populated district, have been partially pillaged and totally destroyed by fire. Their inhabitants have fled, while a number of them, among others women and children, were arrested and shot without trial, and without apparent reason, except to inspire the population with terror. This was done in Sempst, Weerde, Elewyt, Hofstade, Wespelaer, Wilsele, Bucken, Eppeghem, Houthem, Tremeloo, Tistelt, Gelrode, Herent. At Wavre, where the population was unable to pay a levy of 3,000,000 francs, fifty-six houses were set on fire. The largest part of Cortenberg is burned. To excuse these attacks the Germans allege that an army of civilians resisted them. According to trustworthy testimony, no provocation can be proved at Vise, Aerschot, Louvain, Wavre, and in other localities situated in the Malines-Louvain-Vilvorde district, where fire was set and ma.s.sacres committed several days after the German occupation.
Cablegram Received Sept. 15.
Inform the Belgian Commission that the Belgian Committee on Inquiry continues to report ruins and devastations and pillage, systematically organized by German troops in the towns invested by them. The City of Termonde was destroyed without any hostile partic.i.p.ation on the part of the civilian population. Out of 1,400 houses, only 295 remain standing, others were destroyed by fire and razed from the ground, after the Germans entered the city. Several civilians were imprisoned and executed with bayonets in the presence of their relatives and fellow-citizens. In Melle nine civilians were killed and forty-five properties destroyed, without any reason.
The re-occupation of Aerschot by the Belgian Army reveals disastrous deeds. Dwellings, which were not destroyed by fire were completely sacked and pillaged on Sept. 6 before the return of the Belgian troops.
Four hundred civilians, among them thirty clergymen, were locked since Aug. 30 in the church without food, carried off, and sent to destinations unknown. Localities in the neighborhood are completely destroyed, and everywhere along the road are corpses. Women and young girls were outraged. Systematic pillage.
A SUPPLEMENT.
Published by Belgian Commission of Inquiry on Sept. 10 to Complete Its Report of Aug. 31.
Of the two reports, dated August 28 and 31, which the Commission has had the honor of addressing to you, the former recounted more particularly the events which occurred at Aerschot and in the neighboring district, while the latter dealt with the destruction of the town of Louvain by the German troops. In order to complete its report of Aug. 31, the Commission thinks it its duty to record that after the burning of Louvain the houses which remained standing, the inhabitants of which had been forced to flee, were pillaged under the eyes of German officers. On Sept. 2 the Germans were seen setting fire to four houses.
The "Chastis.e.m.e.nt" of Louvain.
Another fact which emphasizes the ruthless character of the treatment to which the peaceable population of Louvain was subjected has also been established. On Aug. 28 a crowd of 6,000 to 8,000 persons, men, women and children, of every age and condition, was conducted under the escort of a detachment of the 162nd Regiment of German infantry to the riding school of the town, where they spent the whole night. The place of confinement was so small in proportion to the number of the occupants that all had to remain standing, and so great were their sufferings that in the course of this tragic night several women lost their reason and children of tender years died in their mothers" arms.
A communique from the German Great General Staff, the text of which is published in the Cologne Gazette of Aug. 29, declares that the "chastis.e.m.e.nt" inflicted upon Louvain was justified by the fact that a battalion of Landwehr, which had been left unsupported in the town in order to guard the communications, had been attacked by the civil population, which was under the impression that the main German Army had definitely retired. The same journal has published a narrative purporting to come from a person who was a witness of the occurrence.
The inquiry has established that this statement must be considered false. It is, in fact, ascertained that the people of Louvain, who, moreover, had been disarmed by the Communal Authority, did not provoke the Germans by any act of hostility.
The commission has resumed the inquiry begun at Brussels on the subject of the occurrences at Vise.
This place was the first Belgian town destroyed in pursuance of the system applied subsequently by the invader to so many other of our cities and villages. It is for this reason that we have been careful to determine what truth there is in the German version according to which the civilian population of Vise took part in the defense of the town or rose against the Germans after the town had been occupied.
Several witnesses now at Antwerp have been heard, notably soldiers belonging to the detachment which disputed with the Germans the pa.s.sage of the Meuse, north of Liege, and a lady of German nationality, who belongs to the religious community of the Sisters of Notre Dame at Vise.
Innocent Vise.
The result is to prove that the inhabitants took no part whatever in the fighting which took place on Aug. 4 at the ford of Lixhe and at Vise itself.
Moreover, it was only in the night of Aug. 15-16 that the destruction of the town began, the signal being given by several shots fired on the evening of the 15th. The Germans a.s.serted that the inhabitants had fired upon them, particularly from a house the owner of which gave evidence before the commission.
The Germans discovered no arms in this house, any more than they did in neighboring buildings, which, nevertheless, were burned after being pillaged, and the male occupants of which were carried off to Germany.
The evidence has brought to light the improbability of any rising among a disarmed population against a numerous German garrison at a time when the last Belgian troops had for eleven days evacuated the district, and the witnesses have declared that the first shots were fired by intoxicated German infantry soldiers at their own officers. This fact appears not to be exceptional. It is, indeed, notorious that at Maestricht, either by mistake or in consequence of a mutiny, Germans about this same time killed one another during the night at a cavalry camp which they had established at Mesch, close to the Dutch frontier in Limbourg.
It is confirmed that the town of Vise was entirely burned, with the exception, it appears, of a religious establishment which seems to have been respected, and that several citizens, both of the town and of the village of Canne, were shot.
A Deliberate System.
A large number of places situated in the triangle between Vilvorde, Malines, and Louvain--that is to say, in one of the most populous and, a few days ago, one of the most prosperous regions in Belgium--have been given over to plunder, partially or entirely destroyed by fire, their population dispersed, while the inhabitants were indiscriminately arrested and shot without trial and without apparent reason, the sole object being, it seems, to inspire terror and to compel the migration of the population.
This was notably the case in the communes or hamlets of Sempst, Weerde, Elewyt, Holstade, Wespelaer, Wilsele, Bueken, Eppeghem, Wackerzeele, Rotselaer, Werchter, Thildonck, Boortmeerbeek, Houthem, Tremeloo. In this last village only the church and the presbytery remained standing.
On the few houses which have been spared may be seen the following inscriptions: "Nicht abbrennen," (do not burn,) "Bitte schonen,"
(please spare,) "Gute leute, nicht plundren," (good people, do not plunder.) These houses, however, were sacked afterward.
In all these villages the women who have been unable to escape are exposed to the brutal instincts of the German soldiers.
The district immediately adjoins that of Aerschot, the devastation of which was described in an earlier report. It extends at present to the northwest of Brussels, where the important towns of Grimberghen and Wolverthem have been sacked, while southeast of the capital, more than twenty-five kilometers from the scene of military operations, the town of Wavre, which was unable to furnish the exorbitant war levy of 3,000,000 francs (120,000) imposed by the General Staff of the enemy, has seen fifty-six of its houses destroyed by fire.
We must also record that on Sept. 4 and 5 bombs were hurled from an aeroplane upon Ghent and Escloo, which are open and undefended towns.
Finally, you are aware, M. le Ministre, that the town of Malines, after it had been completely evacuated by Belgian troops on Aug. 27, was subjected for several days to a bombardment which has seriously damaged the cathedral church of St. Rombaut, the pride of this ancient city. The town of Heyst-opden-Berg was also bombarded without mercy, though there was no strategic interest to warrant such an act.
The Plea of Armed Resistance.
The Germans, in order to excuse their violence, declare that, wherever they have shot civilians or burned and pillaged towns and villages, armed resistance has been offered by the inhabitants. While there may possibly have been isolated instances of this kind, that is nothing more than occurs in all wars, and if they had confined themselves to executing the guilty persons we could only have bowed before the rigor of military law. But in no case could individual and absolutely exceptional acts of aggression justify the wholesale measures of repression which have been adopted against the persons and the property of the inhabitants of our towns and villages--the shooting, the burning, the pillaging which has proceeded pretty well everywhere in our country, not only by way of reprisals but with a refinement of cruelty. Moreover, no provocation has been proved at Vise, Marsage, Louvain, Wavre, Termonde, and other places which have been entirely and deliberately destroyed several days after being occupied, not to mention the systematic burning of isolated buildings situated in the line of march of the troops, and the shooting of the unfortunate inhabitants who fled.
The Germans have a.s.serted in their newspapers that the Belgian Government distributed to the civil population arms which were to be used against the invaders. They add that the Catholic clergy preached a sort of holy war and incited their flock everywhere to ma.s.sacre the Germans. Finally, they have declared, in order to justify the ma.s.sacres of women, that women showed themselves as ferocious as the men, and went so far as to pour boiling oil from their windows upon the troops on the march.
A Tissue of Falsehoods.
All these allegations are so many falsehoods. Far from having distributed arms, the authorities everywhere on the approach of the enemy disarmed the inhabitants. The Burgomasters everywhere warned the townspeople against acts of violence, which would involve reprisals. The clergy have unceasingly preached calm to their flock. As for the women, if we except a story in a foreign newspaper, the source of which is suspected, everything shows that their only anxiety was to escape the horrors of a ruthless war.
The true motives for the atrocities the moving evidence of which we have gathered can only be, on the one hand, the desire to terrorize and demoralize the people in accordance with the inhuman theories of German military writers, and, on the other hand, the desire for plunder. A shot fired, no one knows where, or by whom, or against whom, by a drunken soldier, or an excited sentry, is enough to furnish a pretext for the sack of a whole city. Individual plunder is succeeded by war levies of a magnitude which it is impossible to satisfy and by the taking of hostages who will be shot or kept in confinement until payment of the ransom in full, according to the well-known procedure of cla.s.sic brigandage. It must also be stated that in order to establish the German case all resistance offered by detachments of the regular army is laid to the account of the civilian population, and that the invader invariably avenges himself upon the civilians for the checks or even the disappointments which he suffers in the course of the campaign.
In the course of this inquiry we use only facts supported by trustworthy evidence. It should be noted that up to the present we have been able to record only a small part of the crimes committed against law, humanity, and civilization, which will const.i.tute one of the most sinister and most revolting pages in contemporary history. If an international inquiry, like that which was conducted in the Balkans by the Carnegie Commission, could be conducted in our country, we are convinced that it would establish the truth of our a.s.sertions.
[Signed by M. Gooreman, Minister of State, President.]
"NOT A WORD OF TRUTH."
Denial of Belgian Charges by Count von Bernstorff, German Amba.s.sador at Washington, Sept. 17.