At Londerzeel 30 or 40 civilians, men, women, and children, were placed at the head of a German column.

One witness from Termonde was made to stand in front of the Germans, together with others, all with their hands above their heads.  Those who allowed their hands to drop were at once prodded with the bayonet.  Again, at Termonde, about Sept. 10, a number of civilians were shot by the Belgian soldiers, who were compelled to fire at the Germans, taking the risk of killing their own countrymen.

At Tournai 400 Belgian civilians, men, women, and children, were placed in front of the Germans, who then engaged the French.

The operations outside Antwerp were not free from incidents of this character.  Near Willebroeck some civilians, including a number of children, a woman, and one old man, were driven in front of the German troops.  German officers were present, and one woman who refused to advance was stabbed twice with the bayonet, and a little child who ran up to her as she fell had half its head blown away by a shot from a rifle.

Other incidents of the same kind are reported from Nazareth and Ypres.  The British troops were compelled to fire, in some cases at the risk of killing civilians.

At Ypres the Germans drove women in front of them by pricking them with bayonets.  The wounds were afterward seen by the witness.

(d) Looting, Burning, and Destruction of Property.

There is an overwhelming mass of evidence of the deliberate destruction of private property by the German soldiers.  The destruction in most cases was effected by fire, and the German troops, as will be seen from earlier passages in the report, had been provided beforehand with appliances for rapidly setting fire to houses.  Among the appliances enumerated by witnesses are syringes for squirting petrol, guns for throwing small inflammable bombs, and small pellets made of inflammable material.  Specimens of the last mentioned have been shown to members of the committee.  Besides burning houses, the Germans frequently smashed furniture and pictures; they also broke in doors and windows.  Frequently, too, they defiled houses by relieving the wants of nature upon the floor.  They also appear to have perpetrated the same vileness upon piled up heaps of provisions so as to destroy what they could not themselves consume.  They also on numerous occasions threw corpses into wells, or left in them the bodies of persons murdered by drowning.

In addition to these acts of destruction the German troops, both in Belgium and France, are proved to have been guilty of persistent looting.  In the majority of cases the looting took place from houses, but there is also evidence that German soldiers and even officers robbed their prisoners, both civil and military, of sums of money and other portable possessions.  It was apparently well known throughout the German Army that towns and villages would be burned whenever