Everywhere there was ruin and devastation.  At Bulcken numerous inhabitants, including the priest, a man more than 80 years old, were killed.

Between Impde and Wolverthem two wounded Belgian soldiers were lying near a house which was burning.  The Germans threw these two unfortunate men into the raging fire.

The German troops repulsed by our soldiers entered Louvain in full panic.  Various witnesses assure us that at that moment the German garrison occupying Louvain was advised erroneously that the enemy was entering the town.  Immediately the German garrison withdrew toward the station, where it met with the German troops that had been repulsed and pursued by the Belgian troops.  Everything seems to indicate that a collision took place between the two German regiments.  From that moment, under pretext that the Louvain civilians had fired upon them, a fact which is contradicted by all witnesses, and which would hardly have been possible inasmuch as all the inhabitants of Louvain, for several days past, had been obliged to hand their arms over to the local authorities, the German soldiers began to bombard the city.  Moreover, not one of the witnesses has seen the body of a single civilian at the place where the affray happened.  The bombarding lasted until 10 o’clock at night.  Afterward the Germans set fire to the city.

Burning of the Town.

The houses which had not taken fire were entered by German soldiers, who threw fire grenades, which seem to have been provided for the occasion.  The largest part of the City of Louvain, especially the quarters of the Ville Haute, comprising the modern houses, the Cathedral of St. Peter, the University Halls, with the whole library of the university, its manuscripts, its collections, the largest part of the scientific institutions, and the town theatres, were at the moment being consumed by flames.

The commission deems it necessary, in the midst of these horrors, to insist on the crime of lese humanity which the deliberate annihilation of an academic library—­a library which was one of the treasures of our time—­constitutes.

Numerous corpses of civilians covered the street and squares.  On the route from Louvain to Tirlemont alone one witness testifies having seen more than fifty of them.  On the threshholds of houses were found burned corpses of people who, surprised in their cellars by the fire, had tried to escape and fell into the heap of live embers.  The suburbs of Louvain have been completely annihilated.

A group of seventy-five persons, among whom were several notables of the city, such as Father Coloboet and a Spanish priest, and also an American priest, were conducted during the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 26, to the square in front of the station.  The men were brutally separated from their wives and children, and after having received the most abominable treatment, and after repeated threats of being shot, they were