“Official couriers arriving here from the American Legation at Brussels
witnessed a fresh sample of German atrocity toward the conquered
Belgians,” says a correspondent in Antwerp. “Passing slowly through
Louvain in an automobile, they saw sitting outside a partly burned house
a boy 8 years old whose hands and feet had been cut off at the wrists
and ankles. The Americans stopped and asked the child’s mother what had
happened.
“‘The Germans did it,’ she said with spiritless apathy.
“Evidently in terror lest she had said too much, she refused to answer
further questions. The child’s wrists and ankles were bandaged as if the
frightful injuries were inflicted recently. Details of the shooting down
of one Jesuit priest of Louvain were told to the American couriers by
another priest who witnessed the affair.
“It appears that the Jesuit kept a diary in which he had written the
following commentary on the sacking of the Louvain library: ‘Vandalism
worthy of Attila himself.’
“German officers forced him to read the words aloud, then marked a cross
in chalk on the back of his cassock as a target and sent a dozen bullets
into his back in the presence of twenty other Louvain priests.”