Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-05-03
The Truth About Belgium
BY BRAND WHITLOCK

Dand was away III the Belgian army.
For a week two German officers had
been quartered in her mouse. She
had just given, as sac SAID "a very
good dinner 10 one of the officers.
He had got up from the table; 1T was
about / o'clock. suddenly u
bugie bleW--the alert, the officer
said, and he must go. AS he Went
out OF the house, he said:
Dame, You are here alone with
your. two daughters. must go
Immediately and | should say moth
ing to you, Dut you have shown me
great deal of humanity, and so,
Confidentially, J warn you that IL
this night you hear in the city rite
or gun shot, take refuge at once in
the cellars. TOT it is going to- be ter
rible'
The officer went, anu the woman
ran out, warned her neighbors, hur-
ried home again, to be indoors by
s O'Clock The town was still,
the streets deserted, the doors
closed: no one was abroad. The or
der had been well obeyed,
At FIVE minutes after eight the
woman heard shots, fired in the rue
de Tirlemont. Others heard shots
at about the same time at other parts
of the city. The first thought of the
inhabitants was Que that ran through
the town with a thrill of joy; they
thought it meant deliverance, that
the English and the French had
come. And then all over the city
the soldiers began firing wildly at
the facades OF the closed houses; the
people ran to their cellars in terror;
the soldiers beat in the doors, turn
ed the people into the street, shot
them down, set fire to the houses.
There were riderless horses gallop-
ing about; a mad, blind, demonlac
rage seemed to have laid hold on the
Germans, and they went through
the streets, killing. Staying, burning
and footing, torturing, massacring;
and for three terrible days the
vast and awful tragedy was enacted,
with such scenes as appal the mag
nation.
1t was not only in the rue de
TirlemOnt, as the woman said, that
the fusillade began but, by signifi-
cant coincidence, other fuSilladeS
broke out simultaneously at various
points in the city, at the Porte de
Bruxelles, in the Rue Leopold, in
the rue Marie Terese and in the rue
DIS JoyuX Entrees. In the Place de
la Station, filled with troops just
detrained and crowded with army
wagons, there was a panic: the SOL
diers began shooting right and left,
doubtless wounding many of their
own.
The Place de la Station is the
square before the railway station
and around it on three sides are
hotels and cafes. These hotels,
from the day of the entry of the
Germans into Louvain had been oc-
cupied by officers and soldiers. They
had been rafsacked time and again
from cellar to garnet, to see that no
one was in hiding, and that there
were no arms. The German Off
GERS spent their money freely. The
echauffOuree (skirmish) in the
Place de la Station was the most
intense of all that suddenly broke
out that evening, and there was
another in the Place du Peuple, the
Quietest, most artistocratic square in
the city, where German troops were
waiting under the thick foliage of
the chestnut trees. The madness
spread to the rue de Diest, and final
ly to the Grand palace. The gray
soldiers were running everywhere,
firing right and left at random,
through the streets that were so
strangely Illuminated for their own
destruction. On the order of their
chiefs they set fire to the houses,
spraying salons with inflammable
liquid, using the apparatus they had
for that purpose, lighting and fling
ing in their incendiary pastels,
breaking in windows with the butts
of their rifles, that a draught might
be provided for the flames. The in
mates of the house thus doomed
ran out only to be shot down at
their own doors, or took refuge in
the cellars, to be burned to death and
buried beneath the ruins of their
homes. Men trying to escape over
the roofs were fired at by the SOL
diers in the streets; women, their
babies in their arms, hugging the
walls, tried to reach some place of
safety.