The Crime of Louvain.
“=In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have
committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has
suffered a loss which can never be repaired.=”--_Press Bureau._
No words can adequately describe the wave of disgust which swept over
the whole of the civilized communities of the world when it became known
that the Germans had reduced to ashes the beautiful old city of Louvain.
Mr. Asquith has described the sack of Louvain as
“=the greatest crime committed against civilization and culture since the
Thirty Years’ War. With its buildings, its pictures, its unique library,
its unrivalled associations, a shameless holocaust of irreparable
treasures lit up by blind barbarian vengeance.=”
This ancient city, the Oxford of Belgium, has been reduced by the new
Huns to a heap of ashes. “Every traveller in Belgium,” says Sir William
Robertson Nicoll, “will remember the ancient mediæval town, its
wonderful Hotel de Ville, the most perfect piece of architecture in
Belgium, the Church of St. Peter, begun in 1425, and the University with
its priceless library. All have perished, and why? The civil population
had been disarmed, but in a night skirmish German soldiers accidentally
fired on their own guard, and it was decided in the panic of the hour to
destroy the whole town. A town of forty-five thousand inhabitants, the
intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth
century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”
The wanton destruction of this ancient seat of learning, rich in
historic associations, was an act of vandalism almost without parallel
in history, a crime not only against humanity, but against the
generations of future years.
The restrained and dignified words in which our own Official Press
Bureau made known the ruthless sacking of Louvain constitute a fearful
indictment of German Militarism, which can give official sanction to
such an appalling deed. Here are the words of the Press Bureau:--
“Ancient and beautiful Louvain, a town of forty-five thousand people, a
seat of learning, famous for its ancient and beautiful churches and
other buildings, many of them dating from the fifteenth century, has
been utterly destroyed by one of the Kaiser’s commanders in a moment of
passion to cover the blunder of his own men. The excuse for this
unpardonable act of barbarity and vandalism is that a discomfited band
of German troops returning to Louvain were fired upon by the people of
the town, who had been disarmed a week earlier. The truth is that the
Germans, making for the town in disorder, were fired upon by their
friends in occupation of Louvain, a mistake by no means rare in war. The
assumption of the German commander was, in the circumstances, so wide of
probability that it can only be supposed that in the desire to conceal
the facts the first idea which occurred to him was seized upon as an
excuse for an act unparalleled in the history of civilized people.
“The Emperor William has stated that the only means of preventing
surprise attacks from the civil population has been to interfere with
unrelenting severity and to create examples which, by their
frightfulness, would be a warning to the whole country. The case of
Louvain is such an ‘interference,’ without even the miserable excuse
suggested. Louvain is miles from the scene of real fighting. In
International Law it is recognized that ‘the only legitimate end which
the States should aim at in war is the weakening of the military forces
of the enemy.’ And the rules under the annex to Convention IV. of 1907,
which expand and demand the provision of the Declaration of Brussels,
lay down that any destruction or seizure of enemies’ property, not
imperatively called for by military necessities, is forbidden.
“In destroying the ancient town of Louvain, the German troops have
committed a crime for which there can be no atonement, and Humanity has
suffered a loss which can never be repaired.”
Incredible Wickedness.
But even the above statement does not relate one half of the fearful
crimes against property and human life committed by these uniformed
ruffians in the ill-fated city, perpetrated by hosts of armed men
against innocent and helpless non-combatants, aged men, defenceless
women, and children. The houses and buildings of the town were without
doubt deliberately set on fire. Helped by petrol poured on by brutal
Teuton soldiers, the flames spread rapidly and fiercely.
“=For every vile deed wrought under the impious benedictions of the
monarch who is ravaging Europe ample reparation shall be
exacted.=”--_Times._
Everyone who offered opposition was killed; everyone found in the
possession of arms shot. Wives saw their husbands murdered before their
eyes, mothers their sons. Men were brutally dragged away from their
weeping wives and children, propped up against a wall and shot, or
ruthlessly cut down where they stood. German soldiers, encouraged by
their officers, looted where and how they liked; the inhabitants were in
some cases driven to take refuge on the roofs of their houses, which
were set on fire. From burning houses were to be heard the agonized
cries of those perishing in the conflagration, which was destined to
reduce the city to ashes.
Many authenticated stories of these terrible happenings have reached
London. At first they seemed unbelievable, but each day brings further
corroboration. I take the liberty of reproducing a despatch of Mr. Hugh
Martin, the special correspondent of the _Daily News and Leader_, whose
vivid narrative brings home to us the details of the sufferings of the
poor victims of these abominable proceedings:--
“Stories of the sacking of Louvain, which are almost unbelievable in
their horror, reach here (Rotterdam) from the frontier. One of the most
vivid is that of an assistant in a bicycle shop, who, though a Dutchman,
was given special facilities for escape owing to his being mistaken for
a German.
“‘At mid-day last Tuesday,’ he begins, ‘a fearful uproar broke out in
the streets while we were at dinner, and the crackle of musketry was
soon followed by the roar of artillery near at hand.
“‘Hearing shrieks from the inhabitants of our streets, I rushed to the
window and saw that several houses were already in flames. Soldiers were
smashing the shop windows and looting in all directions.
Shot Down Like Rabbits.
“‘As the people rushed into the streets from the burning houses they
were shot down like rabbits. With my governor, his wife, and little boy,
we fled to the cellar, where I and the boy hid under a pile of tyres,
while the manager crept into a chest, and his wife far into a drain,
where she stood with water up to her waist for many hours.
“‘Night fell and the sound of shooting in the streets became brisker. I
crept out of my hiding-place to get some water, and, peeping out of the
window, saw, to my horror, that almost the whole street was in ruins.
Then we found that our own house was alight, and it was necessary to
choose between bolting and being burnt to death where we were.
“‘I decided to make a dash for it, but the moment I was outside the door
three Germans held me up with their revolvers and asked me where I was
going. My reply was that I was a German, and that my master and his wife
were Germans who had been trapped in the burning house.
“‘Apparently my German was good enough to make them believe my
statement, for they promised to give us safe conduct out of the town.
Our walk through the streets to the railway station I shall always
remember as a walk through hell.
“‘The beautiful town, with its noble buildings, was a sea of flame. Dead
bodies lay thick in the streets. Dreadful cries came from many of the
houses. It was half-past five on Wednesday morning when we reached the
railway station. Soldiers were even then still going about the streets
with lighted brands and explosives in their hands, setting alight any
buildings that still remained intact.
“‘In the parks they had already begun to bury the dead, but in many
cases so shallow were the graves that a large part of each body was
still visible. At the railway station we witnessed a truly harrowing
spectacle. Fifty citizens, both men and women, had been brought from
houses from which the soldiers swore that shots had been fired.
“‘They were lined up in the street, protesting with tears in their eyes
that they were innocent. Then came a firing squad. Volley followed
volley, and the fifty fell dead where they stood.’
“This appalling story is fully confirmed by an independent despatch from
a Dutch journalist who happened to be at Louvain on his way to Brussels.
He states that he was standing on Tuesday evening near the railway
station at Louvain talking to a German officer, when he was strongly
advised to leave the spot, owing to the great danger.
“A group of some five hundred men and women described as hostages were
ranked in the open space by the station, and they were informed that for
every soldier fired on in the town ten of them would be shot. This
arrangement was carried out with true German regard for the punctilious
observation of all rules.
“The wretched people sobbed and wrung their hands and fell on their
knees, but they might as well have appealed to men of stone.
“Ten by ten as the night wore on they were brought from the ranks and
slaughtered, without regard to age or sex, before the eyes of those who
remained.
“Accounts differ widely as to the origin of the trouble, some declaring
that the German patrols in the city fired on the German troops
retreating before a sortie from Antwerp, while others state that stray
shots were fired at a commissariat train passing through the town.
“I would draw special attention to the fact that so far as the main
facts are concerned both my informants are Dutchmen, who can have no
object in spreading anti-German lies.”
Further terrible details are supplied by a cigar manufacturer who
happened to be in Louvain about that time. Taken prisoner, he was
escorted by German soldiers from the town, which was then one mass of
flames, to the neighbouring village of Campenhout, where they witnessed
the shooting of seven priests.
“Altogether we were seventy-three men, handcuffed like criminals,” he
says, “and we were locked in the church, and had to lie on the cold
floor. Fresh prisoners arrived at intervals. Outside we could hear the
cries and lamentations of women and children. Inside an imprisoned
priest gave us absolution.
“When we left the church, Campenhout was burning fiercely. We were told
we should be freed, but must return to Louvain. On returning, we were
once more taken prisoners and driven in front of German soldiers across
country without rest or food, and used as a cover for the troops.”
The “Black Hole” Outdone.
Incredible inhuman treatment was accorded to some twelve hundred people
who were captured by the German barbarians in the act of fleeing from
the doomed city. The men were separated from the women and children, and
marched back to Louvain. Then began for them a terrible journey--a
journey that drove many mad and others to self-destruction.
“Like so many brutes,” says the _Times_ correspondent, “these burgesses
of Louvain, among them merchants, brewers, advocates, engineers, and
representatives of all social grades, were herded into wagons which had
served for the transport of horses and were inches deep in filth. Into
each wagon ninety men were crushed at the point of the bayonet by
soldiers who seemed to glory in the maltreatment of their fellow-men.
The unhappy prisoners had, of course, to stand, and to add to the
horrors of the fetid atmosphere, the doors were shut, and only fugitive
rays of light filtered through the chinks.
“For two hours they were kept like this at Louvain station, after which
the train left for Cologne. The journey occupied about fifty hours, and
the Belgians during this awful time were given neither food nor drink.
‘After such an experience,’ states one of them, ‘hell itself can have no
terrors.’
“Once strong physically and prosperous, he who spoke is now a nervous
wreck and destitute, living on the charity of friends who do not know
but what it may be their turn to-morrow.
“Arrived at Cologne, the prisoners were marched through jeering crowds
to the Exhibition Gardens. Men and women surged round the pitiful band,
hurling at them vile epithets, and shouting, ‘Zum Tod, zum Tod!’ (‘Kill
them, kill them!’) Even the children joined in kicking the prisoners as
they passed. The Belgians could gather no idea as to why they had been
dragged off to Germany, and even feared the worst. The night was passed
in the open, and in the morning they broke their prolonged fast on a
small portion of black bread.
“Suddenly the German authorities changed their minds. Back the prisoners
must go to Belgium, and, four abreast, the motley column regained the
station. A passenger train awaited them, but each compartment for nine
people was made to hold eighteen or nineteen. In some ways the home
journey was more terrible than the outward. For two days and three
nights the unfortunate inhabitants of Louvain were jolted about between
Cologne and the capital of their own country, again absolutely without
food.
“On rare occasions the guard exhibited a glimmering of pity, and
permitted the prisoners a mouthful of water. At the Gare du Nord, in
Brussels, compatriots smuggled food through the windows. The train only
stopped a short time here, and was off again to Schaerbeek.
“Completely at a loss what to do with their charges, the Prussian
officers ordered them out of the train, and under an armed guard
marched them on foot through Vilvorde and Pont Brulé and on to Malines.
When crossing the fields the prisoners tore up turnips and beetroots and
ate them ravenously. At Malines the officer in charge of the escort told
the half-dead men they were free, and by different routes they reached
Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, and other places in territory unoccupied by the
enemy.”
The Massacre of Innocents.
The stories of the poor panic-stricken women of Louvain who emerged
alive from the night of terror cannot fail to arouse horror. One woman
upon whose face were marks of the intense suffering through which she
had passed told how she tore down the curtains from her windows, wrapped
them round some wearing apparel, and ran from the house with her two
children. In the street she became involved in a stampede of men, women,
and children rushing away from their burning town, whither she knew not.
This miserable refugee’s story was so disjointed, so interspersed with
hysterical sobs and exclamations, that it is impossible to make a full
and coherent narrative of it.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, with a convulsive shudder, “I will tell you of the
burning of Louvain. We had pulled down some of the buildings so that the
Germans should not mount guns on them when they came. I believe that was
the reason. We were in a state of terror, because we had heard of the
cruelties of the Germans. But all we had heard of them was not so bad as
we experienced. In the streets people were cruelly butchered, and then
on all sides flames began to rise. We were prepared for what we regarded
as the worst, but never had we anticipated that they would burn us in
our homes. People rushed about frantic to save their property. They were
shot down by rifle volleys, struck down by sabres, and pierced by
lances. My God! What have we not suffered?”
Two young Oxford undergraduates who were present tell a graphic story,
in a letter to the _Times_, of the sack of the town and the burning of
the neighbouring village. Leaving Aix-la-Chapelle on the Wednesday in
question, they set off for Louvain. As they passed through the little
hamlet of Cortenbergh they encountered a body of German troops who had
been dispatched to destroy the village. Taken prisoners, they were
guarded while the inhuman soldiers of the Kaiser made use of the
cartloads of straw which they had brought with them for their terrible
purpose. Soon every house was a mass of flames.
“This was in the afternoon,” they relate, “and from three to six o’clock
we had to stand at the end of the street while the firing went on. It
was a terrible spectacle, and our first glimpse of the horrors of war,
for we saw five civilians, as they left their burning homes, ruthlessly
shot down by German soldiers. Neither of us will ever forget the
spectacle Louvain presented when we reached it the following morning.
The whole town had apparently capitulated to the Germans, although
occasionally we heard the sound of firing. The greater part of the town
was in flames. Houses were falling, telegraph and telephone poles were
tumbling into the streets, and the picture of desolation was complete,
while German soldiers were looting among the ruins. Dead bodies littered
the streets.... Some German soldiers told us that they had taken four
hundred English prisoners from among those who had attacked their
troop-trains, and three hundred and thirty of them had been shot that
morning because they were found in possession of dum-dum bullets.”
A Refugee’s Plight.
The pathetic tale of a Belgian woman, who reached a place of safety
after almost inconceivable hardship, was told in words which were few,
but pregnant with tragedy and suffering. “Panic-stricken, we women fled
from the burning town, and, half-running and half-walking, hurried from
the dreadful scene. Mile after mile we covered, until our feet seemed as
lead and our senses reeled. I am told we walked over seventy miles
before we came to a railway. I wanted to bow down and kiss the cold iron
rails. I fell exhausted, having carried my two children in turn.
Footsore, broken-hearted, after the first joy of sighting the railway, I
felt my head whirling, and I wondered whether it was all worth while.
Then I thought of my deliverance, and thanked God.
“What did Louvain look like? Like what it was--a mass of flame devouring
our homes, our property, and our relatives. Most of us women were
deprived of our husbands. In the town everybody who offered any
opposition was killed, and everyone found to be armed in any way was
shot. Wives saw their husbands shot in the streets. I myself saw the
Burgomaster shot, and I saw another man dragged roughly away from his
weeping wife and children and shot through the head.”
An American’s Story.
A vivid word-picture of the scene is given by Mr. Gerald Morgan, an
American, in the _Daily Telegraph_. “An hour before sunset we entered
Louvain,” he says, “and found the city a smoking furnace. The railway
station was crowded with troops, drunk with loot and liquor, and rapine
as well. From house to house, acting under orders, groups of soldiers
were carrying lighted straw, placing it in the basement, and then
passing on to the next. It was not one’s idea of a general
conflagration, for each house burned separately--hundreds of individual
bonfires--while the sparks shot up like thousands of shooting stars into
the still night-air. It was exactly like a display of fireworks or
Bengal lights and set-pieces at a grand display in Coney Island.
“Meanwhile, through the station arch we saw German justice being
administered. In a square outside, where the cabs stand, an officer
stood, and the soldiers drove the citizens of Louvain into his presence,
like so many
[Illustration: WRECKAGE IN THE STUDENTS’ QUARTER OF LOUVAIN.
_Photo, Newspaper Illustrations, Ld._
_Face p. 87._]
unwilling cattle on a market day. Some of the men, after a few words
between the officer and the escorts, were marched off under fixed
bayonets behind the railway station. Then we heard volleys, and the
soldiers returned. Then the train moved out, and the last we saw of the
doomed city was an immense red glare in the gathering darkness.”
What M. Carton de Wiart Told Me.
Before leaving the subject of Louvain it is necessary for me to
chronicle the following, which was told me by M. Carton de Wiart, the
Belgian Minister of Justice. “As to the sacking of Louvain,” he stated,
“we have here a statement dated August 30th, which has been handed to
the Commission by a person of universal repute in Belgium, and which has
been telegraphed to us. On August 30th that person went from Brussels to
Louvain. On the high-road, when he got to a place called Weerde St.
George, he saw only burning villages and peasants beside themselves with
terror. When he reached Louvain and got to the American College--a large
number of American students, young priests, and medical students come to
Louvain--he found that fire had destroyed the whole town except the town
hall and city station. This gentleman noted that on Sunday last the
Germans kept on kindling new fires and placing straw so as to carry the
fire farther. The cathedral and the theatre had been destroyed, and had
collapsed completely. So had the famous library, one of the most
precious in the world, especially as regards manuscripts and works of
art. The town,” he says, “presents the aspect of an old ruined city, a
city like Pompeii. In the midst of this scene of desolation the only
people you could see were drunken soldiers carrying bottles of wine and
liqueurs in their arms, and officers themselves sitting in the streets
around tables drinking like their men.”
The “Times” Speaks Out.