28,) the
laggards pricked on by the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of having
been brutally kicked by privates. Others were struck with the butt end
of rifles. At Louvain, at Liege, at Aerschot, at Malines, at Montigny,
at Andenne, and elsewhere, there is evidence that the troops were not
restrained from drunkenness, and drunken soldiers cannot to be trusted
to observe the rules or decencies of war, least of all when they are
called upon to execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the
very first women were not safe. At Liege women and children were chased
about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, very
circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the
market place of the city, five young German officers assisting. At
Aerschot men and women were deliberately shot when coming out of burning
houses. At Liege, Louvain, Sempst, and Malines women were burned to
death, either because they were surprised and stupefied by the fumes of
the conflagration or because they were prevented from escaping by German
soldiers. Witnesses recount how a great crowd of men, women, and
children from Aerschot were marched to Louvain, and then suddenly
exposed to a fire from a mitrailleuse and rifles.
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