WERCHTER.—­At Werchter the corpses of a man and woman and four younger persons were found in one house.  It is stated that they had been murdered because one of the latter, a girl, would not allow the Germans to outrage her.

This catalogue of crimes does not by any means represent the sum total of the depositions relating to this district laid before the committee.  The above are given merely as examples of acts which the evidence shows to have taken place in numbers that might have seemed scarcely credible.

In the rest of the district, that is to say, Aerschot and the other villages from which the Germans had not been driven, the effect of the battle was to cause a recrudescence of murder, arson, pillage, and cruelty, which had to some extent died down after Aug. 20 or 21.

In Aerschot itself fresh prisoners seem to have been taken and added to those who were already in the church, since it would appear that prisoners were kept to some extent in the church during the whole of the German occupation of Aerschot.  The second occasion on which large numbers of prisoners were put there was shortly after the battle of Malines, and it was then that the priest of Gelrode was brought to Aerschot Church, treated abominably, and finally murdered.

[Illustration:  GENERAL SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON, K.C.B.

Chief of the British General Staff, Who Made a Remarkable Record as
Quartermaster General in France

(Photo from Bain News Service.)]

[Illustration:  GENERAL FOCH

The Brilliant Strategist Who Commands the French Armies of the North

(Photo from P.S.  Rogers.)]

One witness describes the scene graphically: 

“The whole of the prisoners—­men, women and children—­were placed in the church.  Nobody was allowed to go outside the church to obey the calls of nature; the church had to be used for that purpose.  We were afterward allowed to go outside the church for this purpose, and then I saw the clergyman of Gelrode standing by the wall of the church with his hands above his head, being guarded by soldiers.”

The actual details of the murder of the priest are as follows:  The priest was struck several times by the soldiers on the head.  He was pushed up against the wall of the church.  He asked in Flemish to be allowed to stand with his face to the wall, and tried to turn around.  The Germans stopped him and then turned him with his face to the wall, with his hands above his head.  An hour later the same witness saw the priest still standing there.  He was then led away by the Germans a distance of about fifty yards.  There, with his face against the wall of a house, he was shot by five soldiers.

Other murders of which we have evidence appear in the appendix.

Some of the prisoners in the church at Aerschot were actually kept there until the arrival of the Belgian Army on Sept. 11, when they were released.  Others were marched to Louvain and eventually merged with other prisoners, both from Louvain itself and the surrounding districts, and taken to Germany and elsewhere.