“=Our German people will be the grand block on which the good God
may complete His work of civilizing the world.=”
From a speech of _The Kaiser’s_.
The Inferno at Visé.
A correspondent of the _Handelsblad_ was an eye-witness of the scenes in
Visé, near Liége, when it was burned, and told a tale of German
barbarity, and of the murder and torture of its helpless inhabitants, of
a nature to make one’s blood run cold. As summarized in the _Daily News_
the story is as follows:--
“It was an awful sight. Every house was a mass of flames, through which
the streets were hardly visible.
“At the entrance of the Grand Hotel were three disarmed soldiers bound
hand and foot. Entering the hotel, I found the floor covered with dead
bodies. In that hall of the dead several soldiers stood guard. From this
awful, nauseating scene I hurried back to the blinding glare and
suffocating heat of the burning villages.
“The correspondent describes how a colleague supported an aged lady
found lying near her blazing house. She pleaded, ‘Let me die.’ Poor,
unhappy creature, bereft of home and even of adequate clothing, the
aged
[Illustration: SHOWING THE DESTRUCTION IN THE CHURCH AT VISÉ.
_Photo, Sport and General._]
and defenceless victim of the Kaiser’s gallant army! He adds: ‘We fled
from the scene that must for ever blur the scutcheon of the Kaiser, and
I pray as long as I live it will never be my task to see such an inferno
again.’
“Absolutely incredible was the picture of incidents connected with the
burning of Visé by the Germans and the shooting given in private letters
which arrived from Eysden, on the Dutch frontier, and seen by the
_Telegraaf_. According to these letters, the Germans alleged that the
citizens had fired on the troops. All the inhabitants were then hunted
out of their houses to spend the night in the square watching the
burning. Men were taken prisoners, and possibly shot, and the rest were
driven out of the town, which was given to the flames. Eysden is filled
with refugees--one hundred and fifty in one canteen and two hundred and
fifty in the Protestant Church, while four hundred have been sent to
Maastricht.
“Two trainloads of refugees came into Brussels from the Tirlemont
district. The scenes I have witnessed,” telegraphs a Press Association
correspondent, “and the stories told by these poor people would melt a
heart of stone. Removal from the face of the earth--a phrase of the
German papers themselves--continues to be the invader’s idea of how best
to deal with unarmed, unoffending villages, the only crime of whose
people is that they have fallen in his path.
“The Germans entered Tirlemont, in the vicinity of which they have been
for some days. They were in strong force, mostly cavalry and artillery.
The big guns shelled the place, and the cavalry played at war by
attacking the flying and panic-stricken populace, shooting and stabbing
them at random.
“Never have I seen such a picture of woe as a peasant woman and five
children who stood bewildered in the Place de la Gare here, all crying
as if their hearts would break. It was a terrible story the woman had to
tell. ‘They shot my husband before my eyes,’ she said, ‘and trampled two
of my children to death.’
“A German knocked at the door of the house of the Burgomaster at Venne,
near the Dutch frontier, and when the Burgomaster’s wife opened the door
she was knocked down and killed with the butt end of a rifle.
“A solicitor, who was a member of the Belgian Chamber, and who was
staying in the house, rushed to the front door, and he also was
instantly knocked down and killed with a bayonet thrust. On hearing of
these atrocities the population fled in terror.”
Lancer’s Fiendish Act.
M. Isadore Felix Cruls, a Belgian refugee who arrived in London, had a
tragic story to tell. He carried on a prosperous printing business at
Saint Jossé, a suburb of Brussels. When hostilities broke out he was
called up for service in the Civil Guard, and stationed on the Chaussée
de Louvain, the road between Louvain and Brussels. As reported in the
_Daily Telegraph_, he stated:--
“At midnight on August 19th-20th I was on duty on the Chaussée de
Louvain watching the refugees come in from the various towns and
villages. The road was blocked when I got near. I saw that a party of
German Lancers were at the rear of the procession of refugees. I saw one
of the Lancers prodding a woman, who had four or five children walking
by her side.
“There was an old woman, evidently the mother of the young woman,
walking with them. One of the Lancers was amusing himself by pricking
this old woman with his lance in order to make her walk along more
quickly. The young woman turned round and shouted something at the
Lancer, either by way of remonstrance or insult. I was not near enough
to hear what she said. The Lancer took up his lance and ran it through
one of the little girls who was walking along, clutching the hand of her
mother. She was a fair-haired girl of about seven or eight years of age.
When the crowd saw this they became infuriated, and a panic ensued. The
Lancers bore down upon the people, scattering them in all directions.
What became of these people I do not know.”