A NIGHT IN LOUVAIN
In Paris I had met and talked with Arno Dosch Fleuro, an American
reporter who had been with Richard Harding Davis at Louvain while it was
burning. He had told me that when he was there the party was locked in a
railroad car but that they could see the blazing buildings from the car
window and hear and see the ungodly things which were taking place in
the station square. The German soldiers were heavily intoxicated and
were bringing lots of Belgians from all quarters of the city and
executing them.
One group of soldiers would come in from the street, driving perhaps a
dozen or twenty Belgians ahead of them. They would bring them into the
station square, hand them over to another detachment which would take
them out behind the station, and a volley of bullets would be heard.
Then another crowd would be brought in. They too would be taken out
behind the depot and then another volley of bullets.
One hilarious German jumped up onto a wagon and began haranguing and
explaining why it was necessary for these people to be killed.
"The whole Louvain affair, the wanton burning and the murder, was
nothing more than a drunken orgy." This was Arno's statement. The
officers acquiesced in the affair, but later on when learning of the
effect on neutral countries, the Kaiser said, "My heart bleeds for
Louvain." Arno also said that he was the only one of the party in the
car who could speak German and he had kept one soldier who was not so
drunk as the rest, engaged in conversation at the car window, and this
had protected them from the more intoxicated ones.
I knew that Arno himself was a German and I asked him if he had seen
Richard Harding Davis' book on the subject. He said, "No, Davis got back
long before I did, but I have heard that he wrote a book about it. What
did he say? Did he say he was out in the town of Louvain? If he did, he
is faking it up, because we were all locked in the car."
I said I could not remember just what Davis had said. When I returned to
my room in Paris, however, I looked up Davis' story again and found it
had agreed exactly with Arno's account. He admitted that they had not
been out of the train, so I knew the narrative was true.
Later on when I went to Louvain myself, I found that instead of
exaggerating the case these men had very much understated it. I am not
going to overstate it, but I will not cover up the facts in my recital
of the events. I was in Louvain twice, but the first time I only saw it
hurriedly and superficially on my way to Liège. The second time I stayed
a night and a day. Before the war began the city had a population of
forty-five thousand. It had perhaps ten thousand then. It was not all
destroyed and the statement that the Hôtel de Ville was burned is
incorrect. That beautiful city hall was saved by the Germans for their
own use. Outside of this one building, however, every public building in
Louvain is in ruins today. For several square miles in the heart of the
city there is not a structure left. The cathedral is burned, although
the walls still stand. The university library is gone, and in fact,
aside from a fringe of houses, mostly tenements, around the edge of the
city the most of the edifices are razed to the ground. And a man with
whom I talked told me that fifteen of his fellow-townsmen there were
taken by the German soldiers and thrown alive into a vat of quicklime in
a factory and were left to die in the agonies of hell. He pointed out
the place and told the story, crying as he did so. I believed him.