obey the calls of nature; one man who quitted the truck for the purpose was killed by a bayonet.  Describing what happened to another body of prisoners, a witness says that they were made to cross Station Street, where the houses were burning, and taken to the station, placed in horse trucks, crowded together, men, women, and children, in each wagon.  They were kept at the station during the night, and the following day left for Cologne.  For two days and a half they were without food, and then they received a loaf of bread among ten persons, and some water.  The prisoners were afterward taken back to Belgium.  They were, in all, eight days in the train, crowded and almost without food.  Two of the men went mad.  The women and children were separated from the men at Brussels.  The men were taken to a suburb and then to the villages of Herent, Vilvorde, and Sempst, and afterward set at liberty.

This taking of the inhabitants, including some of the influential citizens, in groups and marching them to various places, and in particular the sending of them to Malines and the dispatch of great numbers to Cologne, must evidently have been done under the direction of the higher military authorities.  The ill-treatment of the prisoners was under the eyes and often by the direction or with the sanction of officers, and officers themselves took part in it.

The object of taking many hundreds of prisoners to Cologne and back into Belgium is at first sight difficult to understand.  Possibly it is to be regarded as part of the policy of punishment for Belgian resistance and general terrorization of the inhabitants—­possibly as a desire to show these people to the population of a German city and thus to confirm the belief that the Belgians had shot at their troops.

Whatever may have been the case when the burning began on the evening of the 25th, it appears clear that the subsequent destruction and outrages were done with a set purpose.  It was not until the 26th that the library, and other university buildings, the Church of St. Peter and many houses were set on fire.  It is to be noticed that cases occur in the depositions in which humane acts by individual officers and soldiers are mentioned, or in which officers are said to have expressed regret at being obliged to carry out orders for cruel action against the civilians.  Similarly, we find entries in diaries which reveal a genuine pity for the population and disgust at the conduct of the army.  It appears that a German non-commissioned officer stated definitely that he “was acting under orders and executing them with great unwillingness.”  A commissioned officer on being asked at Louvain by a witness—­a highly educated man—­about the horrible acts committed by the soldiers, said he “was merely executing orders,” and that he himself would be shot if he did not execute them.  Others gave less credible excuses, one stating that the inhabitants of Louvain had burned the city themselves because they did not wish to supply food and quarters for the German Army.  It was to the discipline rather than the want of discipline in the army that these outrages, which we are obliged to describe as systematic, were due, and the special official notices posted on certain houses that they were not to be destroyed show the fate which had been decreed for the others which were not so marked.