Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-05-24
The Truth About Belgium

BY BRAND WHITLOCK

2
/ babies whose mothers, as they stood
up to face their pitiless murderers,
! held them in their arms.
The six babies were:
The child Flevet, three weeks old ;
Maurice Betemps. eleven months
old: Nelly Pollet, eleven months old;
Gilda Genen, eighteen months old;
| Gilda Marchet, two years old; Clara
Struvay, two years old.
Evening came; the soldiers were
fumbling among the mass of dead.
Some were still living; some, by a
miracle, were uninjured. And these
were dragged from the pile of bod
les and made to dig a pit and to
tumble into it the bodies of the vic
tins of the tragedy, their relatives,
their neighbors and their friends.
After Dinant, we began to have
news of Namur. Even in those
lovely September days the town was
still living under a reign OF terror.
The Germans, after a bombardment
lasting two hours, had entered on
the 22d of August, the same Sunday
that witnessed the horror of Dinant.
At 6: 80 that evening soldiers with
fixed bayonets and drawn revolvers,
entered every house in the neighbor-
hood OF the railway station, order
ed the people into the street; they
gathered about 500 of them in the
great waiting room of the station.
They were to be held as hostages.
But after an hour the women and
children were released, while the
men and youths were detained An
Lot
the hall. A man described the
strange scene, the strange method.
The officer stood there before them,
with heels together, then suddenly
shouted:
Declaration"
He paused; then:
I'VE make war on armies, not on
the populationsi"
Perhaps he was reading it. Then
he went on to announce that if they
fired on the German soldiers they
would all be shot, and he told them
Of the fate of Andenne.
At 10 o'clock the same officer re-
turned again with his strange for
mula.
"Silence!"
Declaration"
And after that:
You may go new he continued;
eff you have arms you must surren-
der them at once, even your pen
knives; you will be searched and then
you may CO."
The people remained calm, and in
a pathetic effort to placate the SOL
diers, even served meals to them. And
on the night of the 27th, suddenly,
no one knew why, in the best quar-
ter of the town, the Germans began
to set fire to the houses. The Hotel
de Vile and nearly all the houses on
the Place d'Armes, many buildings
in the Place Leopold, and many resi-
dences as far as the Rue des Brasse-
urs, were consumed by the flames.
And it was a final touch, one is al
most tempted to say artistic, to the
terror of that night, that all through
its horrid, tragic hours the Germans
kept the church bells tolling.
And one night, just as l was go
ing to bed, a man told be how the
Germans had set fire to the Eye and
Ear hospital, without giving them
time to evacuate the sick who were
lying there, so that the patients per-
ished in the flames.
They will tell you in Belgium that
Namur escaped the fate of Dinant
and Louvain because there was dis
agreement among the Germans, some
wishing to destroy it, while the
milder party wished merely to exact
a tribute from it. | know nothing of
the facts, except that Namur paid a
contribution of 100000 francs.
Spain, Russia and the Scandinavian
countries.)