Deny Any Civilian Attack.

From all the testimony taken it appears that the civil population of Aerschot has in no wise participated in the hostilities, that no shot was fired by them; that all the witnesses agree in pointing out the improbability of the German version, according to which the Burgomaster’s son, a youth of 151/2 years, and of extremely gentle disposition, is said to have fired upon a superior German officer during the night of Aug. 19.  Still more improbable is the version of the conspiracy organized by the Burgomaster.  It is to be remarked that if—­a thing which is not known—­a German officer has been hit on the Grand Place, it might have happened by a stray bullet, German soldiers being engaged in shooting in the neighboring streets in order to frighten the populace.

Moreover, the Burgomaster, a very quiet man, had repeatedly warned his fellow-citizens, by means of posters and circulars addressed to every inhabitant of the town, that in case of invasion they were to abstain from any hostility.  These posters were still in evidence when the Germans entered the city, and they were shown to them.

The German troops which were traversing localities situated on this side of Aerschot indulged in the same horrors.  They shot fleeing citizens and set fire to and sacked private houses, all this without provocation.

At Rotselaer, for instance, they set fire to about fifteen houses.  A German officer, addressing an inhabitant whose house was afire, wanted to make him declare, at the point of a pistol, that the fire had been started by the Belgians.  When this inhabitant protested, claiming that the Belgians had left the town the previous evening, this officer declared that if the Germans had set fire to the town it was due probably to the fact that the civilians had fired at them, a fact which is also denied by all the witnesses.

There, too, the German troops pillaged everything they could lay their hands on during their passage.

Up to this writing the Commission of Inquiry has been unable to obtain the testimony of inhabitants of Diest and Tirlemont, which towns were occupied by the Germans on the 18th and 19th of August, 1914, and which are cut off from communication.

However, the inhabitants of Schaffen, a town near Diest, have stated that the same abominations were committed in their locality and in the adjoining communities, Lummen and Molenstede.  The whole region has been laid waste.  German troops, at an hour’s distance from Diest, had begun their work of destruction all along the highway from Diest to Beeringen.  Turning upon Diest they set fire to everything they could lay hands on—­farms, houses, furniture.  Arriving at the village of Schaffen, the Germans set fire to the town, massacring the few inhabitants who remained behind, and whom they found in their houses or in the streets.

The witness gives the names and addresses of eighteen persons whom he knows to have been massacred.