Thus the General, wishing to be conducted to
the Town Hall at Lebbeke, remarked in French to his guide, who was
accompanied by a small boy: "If you do not show me the right way I will
shoot you and your boy." There was no need to carry the threat into
execution, but that the threat should have been made is significant.
We cannot tell whether these acts of cruelty to children were part of
the scheme for inducing submission by inspiring terror. In Louvain,
where the system of terrorizing was carried to the furthest limit,
outrages on children were uncommon. The same, however, cannot be said of
some of the smaller villages which were subjected to the system. In
Hofstade and Sempst, in Haecht, Rotselaer, and Wespelaer, many children
were murdered. Nor can it be said of the village of Tamines, where three
small children (whose names are given by an eye witness of the crime)
were slaughtered on the green for no apparent motive. It is difficult
to imagine the motives which may have prompted such acts. Whether or no
Belgian civilians fired on German soldiers, young children at any rate
did not fire. The number and character of these murders constitute the
most distressing feature connected with the conduct of the war so far as
it is revealed in the depositions submitted to the committee.
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