There is an overwhelming mass of evidence of the deliberate destruction
of private property by the German soldiers. The destruction in most
cases was effected by fire, and the German troops, as will be seen from
earlier passages in the report, had been provided beforehand with
appliances for rapidly setting fire to houses. Among the appliances
enumerated by witnesses are syringes for squirting petrol, guns for
throwing small inflammable bombs, and small pellets made of inflammable
material. Specimens of the last mentioned have been shown to members of
the committee. Besides burning houses, the Germans frequently smashed
furniture and pictures; they also broke in doors and windows.
Frequently, too, they defiled houses by relieving the wants of nature
upon the floor. They also appear to have perpetrated the same vileness
upon piled up heaps of provisions so as to destroy what they could not
themselves consume. They also on numerous occasions threw corpses into
wells, or left in them the bodies of persons murdered by drowning.
In addition to these acts of destruction the German troops, both in
Belgium and France, are proved to have been guilty of persistent
looting.
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