Passing through a number of apartments, we reach a door where
we find the corpse of the owner. Further on in the interior
our men have wrecked everything like vandals. Everything has
been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle
of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description.
They have been shot at such short range that they are almost
decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest
corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places.
The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent,
from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent
is about to be set fire to; it may, however be ransomed if it
surrenders the guilty ones and pays a ransom of 15,000 francs.

We shall see as we proceed how these notebooks complement one another.

(d) Notebook of the Private Philipp, (from Kamenz, Saxony,
First Company, First Battalion, 178th Regiment.) On the day
indicated above--Aug. 23--a private of the same regiment was
the witness of a scene similar to that just described;
perhaps, the same scene, but the point of view is
different.--At 10 o'clock in the evening the First Battalion
of the 178th came down into the burning village to the north
of Dinant--a saddening spectacle--to make one shiver. At the
entrance to the village lay the bodies of some fifty citizens,
shot for having fired upon our troops from ambush. In the
course of the night many others were shot down in like manner,
so that we counted more than two hundred. Women and children,
holding their lamps, were compelled to assist at this horrible
spectacle. We then sat down midst the corpses to eat our rice,
as we had eaten nothing since morning. (Fig. 4.)