Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-05-07
The Truth About Belgium
CONTINUED from Last 1ssue)
BY BRAND WHITLOCK

But no, soon after his hands were
Ioosened; he was allowed to go into
the waiting room of the station,
where he was held until Saturday,
and then German sergeant took pity
on him and told him he could go.
And so for another day and an
other night the madness went on, the
murder, the looting, the sacking, the
riot and the burning and the lust;
with soldiers pillaging the houses,
bearing the wine in great baskets out
of the cellars, to be guzzled in the
street, while men and women and
children were shot down and their
bodies left to lie in cutters or on
the smoking ruins, or thrown into
foul cesspools.
~ HEN. on Thursday morning, the
9th of August, at 8 o'clock,
the Germans announced that
it was necessary to lombard the city,
and they issued an order to all the
inhabitants to leave the city at once.
1t was but another comedie, for there
was no bombardment, and probably
no intention of any; gun was fired
two or three times, that was all. But
again the soldiers went from house
to house, ordering the inhabitants
to leave, giving them no time to pre-
pare, refusing them permission to
take anything with them. And then
began that awful exodus. On all
the roads leading from Louvain the
people went, old men, women, chill
dren, nuns, priests, the sick, even
women just arisen from childbirth
driven like cattle. Ten thousand
of them in one body were forced to
march to Tirlemont, eighteen kilo-
meters from Louvain; perhaps as
many found their way to Brussels.
1t was a tragic hegira; many fell by
the roadside; some went mad; some
wandered for days in the fields and
woods around; some drowned them
selves in streams. The members OF
the Garde Civique, and hundreds OF
women and children, were sent TO
prison camp at Munster, in Ger
many, and kept there for months, ex-
hibited as specimens of the Belgian
franc-tireurs. No one was spared,
unless it were the occupants of the
houses in the demense of the Due
d'Arenberg, a German, at Heverle-
ter-Bank, where the duke has a
chateau. Many of these houses were
marked in chalk: "Nicht Plunderen"
Don't pillage).
The priests whom Villalobar and
I succeeded in liberating that same
night were in the throng that had
been driven out along the road to
the west of Louvain, toward Tervue-
rem. They we're nearly ninety, among
them the rector, the vice-rector and
the professors of the university and
the rector of the American college;
and there were about seventy mem
bers of a Jesuit community at Lou
vain, which for days had given food
and lodging to German officers, had
nursed the wounded, German ana
Belgian, and buried the dead. Some
of chem wore the brassard of the Red
Cross, bearing the German seal. They
set out, on foot of course, for Brus-
sells; they had reached Tervueren.
There the soldiers halted them,
searched them, taking away every
thing they had, including their pa
pers of identity, and tore the Red
Cross brassards from their arms.
The soldiers, who we're in masses,
Knocked, insulted and menaced them
with empty bottles, with guns,
and with bayonets; one soldier tried
to slip a cartridge into the pocket
of the soutane of one of the priests,
and two of the priests were pushed
into a ditch by an angry oberleut-
nant and ordered to remain there.
"From that moment" said the
Jesuit father, who calmly and in his
stately French, told me of his ex-
periences-I translate his words al.
most literally-''we had the impress
sion, which was not denied by the
events, that it was the rule of the
arbitrary, and that the officers were
abandoning the clerics to the invec-
tive and hatred or the soldiers. The
latter INDUCED themselves in such
acts, attitudes ano conduct as, from
the point of discipline alone, seemed
very strange on the part of subordi-
mates in the presence of their chiefs.
The officers did not make a gesture
or a sign that would put an end to
it, and their attitude was equal to
an approval or an encouragement;
several of them even joined their in
vectives to those Of their subordi-
Mates"
The priests were assembled in a
field, and made to sit back to back
on the grass, while the passing SOL
diers constantly menaced them with
death. An hour passed and an Of
ficer came, counted the prisoners, di-
vided them into groups, and ordered
the first group to stand in line.
"All the members of this group
are hostages" said the officer, land
will accompany a column of supplies.
If single shot is fired against the
column, all will be shot"
The Priests Who Bore the Burden.
While they were waiting for the
column to arrive, the oberlieutnant
suddenly remembered the two priests
whom he had thrown into the ditch.
One of them was Father Dupierreux,
q Young ecclesiastic student. The SOL
diers. in searching him, found a prl-
80 h.