flames, though innocent in my opinion. I hear that a cyclist fell off
his machine and that his fall caused his rifle to go off of itself. As a
consequence there was firing in his direction. Then, the male
inhabitants were simply hurled straight away into the flames. Such
horrors will not be repeated, we must hope ... There ought to be some
compulsion to verify suspicions of guilt in order to put a check on this
indiscriminate shooting of people."

The only shots fired at them inside, or in the neighbourhood of,
villages have been those of French or Belgian soldiers covering their
retreat. Sometimes this has been discovered, but too late, and they have
continued their crimes--in order to justify them.

Here is the statement of a neutral: "In one village they found corpses
of German soldiers with the fingers cut off, and instantly the officer
in command had the houses set on fire and the inhabitants shot.... In
the same district a German officer was billeted with a famous Flemish
poet; the officer behaved courteously, was treated with consideration,
and allowed himself to talk freely: his complaint was the misdeeds of
his soldiers. Near Haelen, he told his host, he had to have a soldier
shot on finding in his knapsack some fingers covered with rings: the
man, on being questioned, admitted that he had cut them off the bodies
of the German dead."[25]

In exceptional cases an enquiry is held; and in every such instance the
truth is discovered and massacre prevented.

At the end of August, Liebknecht,[26] a member of the Reichstag, set out
in his car for Louvain. He came to a village where there was
considerable excitement going on. The Germans had just found three of