The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1918-04-05
AERsCHoT AND DISTRICT.
Period III, (September.)


much particularly the events o.
the period beginning about Sept. 10
The Belgian soldiers. who had re
captured the place, found corpses o.
civilians who must have been muir
dered in Aerschot itself, just as they
found them in Sempst and the Other
villages on Aug. rs. Some of These
bodies were found in wells and some
had been burned alive in theiI
houses.
The prisoners released by the Bel
gian Army from the church were al
most starved.
HAECHT.-At Haecht several
children had been murdered, one OF
2 or years of age was found nailed
to the door of o farmhouse by its
hands and feet-a crime which
seems almost incredible, but the
evidence for which we feel bound to
accept. In the garden of this house
was the body of girl who had been
shot in the forehead.
CAPELEE-AU-BO Capelle-
au-Bois two children were murdered
in cart and their corpscs were seen
by many witnesses at different stages
of the carts journey.
EPPEGHEM.-A Eppeghem the
dead body of child of was seen
pinned to the ground with German
lance. Same witness saw a mutt
lated woman alive near Weerde on
the same day.
TREMELOO.-B Belgian soldiers on
patrol duty found young girl naked
on the ground, covered with scratch
es. She complained of having been
violated. On the same day an old
woman was seen knceling by the
body of her husband, and she told
them that the Germans had shot
him as he was trying to escape from
the house.
LOUVAIN AND DISTRICT.
The events spoken to as having
occurred in and around Louvain be-
tween the 10th and the 25th of
August deserve close attention.
For six days the Germans were in
peaceful occupation of the city. No
houses were set on flre-no citizens
killed. There waD a certain amount
of looting of empty houses, but 9TH
erwise discipline was effectively
maintained. The condition of Lou
vsin during these days was one of
relative peace and quietude, present
ing ctriking contrast to the pre-
vious and contemporaneous conduct
of the German Army elsewhere.
On tie evening of Aug. rs sudden
change takes place. The Germans,
on that day repuloed by the Belgians,
had retreated to end rcoccupied Lou
vain. Immediately the devastation
of the city and the holocaust of it's
populations commences. The infer
ence is irresistible that the army as
a whole wreakcd its vengeance on
the civil population and the build
inSs of the city in revenge for the
setback which the Belgian arms in
t1icted on them. A subsidiary cause
alleged was the assertion, often
made before, that civilians had fired
upon the German Army.
The dispositions which relate to
Louvain are numerous, and are be-
lieved by the committee to present a
true and fairly complete picture of
the events of the 25th and 26th of
August and subsequent days. We
find no grounds for thinking that
the inhabitants fired upon the Ger
man Army on the evening of the
25th of August. Eyewitnesses worthy
of credence detail exactly when,
where, and how the firing com
menced. Such firing was by Ger
mans on Germans. No impartial
tribunal could, in our opinion, come
to any other conclusion.
On the evening of the 25th firing
could be heard in the direction of
Herent, some three kilometers from
Louvain. An alarm YVES sounded in
the city. There was disorder and
confusion, and at 5 o'clock horses at
tached to baggage wagons stampeded
in the street and rife fire COM
menced. This was in the Rue de la
Station and came from the German
police guard, (21 in number,) who,
seeing the troops arrive in disorder,
thought it was the enemy. Then the
corps of incendiaries got to work.
They had broad belts with the
words "Gott NIT uns'' and their
consisted of q Ratchet, a
syringe, email shovel, and a re-