Indeed,
so much is avowed. "I asked the commander why we had been spared," says
a lady in Louvain, who deposes to having suffered much brutal treatment
during the sack. He said: "We will not hurt you any more. Stay in
Louvain. All is finished." It was Saturday, Aug. 29, and the reign of
terror was over.
Apart from the crimes committed in special areas and belonging to a
scheme of systematic reprisals for the alleged shooting by civilians,
there is evidence of offenses committed against women and children by
individual soldiers, or by small groups of soldiers, both in the advance
through Belgium and France as in the retreat from the Marne. Indeed, the
discipline appears to have been loose during the retreat, and there is
evidence as to the burning of villages and the murder and violation of
their female inhabitants during this episode of the war.
In this tale of horrors hideous forms of mutilation occur with some
frequency in the depositions, two of which may be connected in some
instances with a perverted form of sexual instinct.
A third form of mutilation, the cutting of one or both hands, is
frequently said to have taken place.
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