xtremely gentle
disposition, is said to have fired upon a superior German officer during
the night of Aug. 19. Still more improbable is the version of the
conspiracy organized by the Burgomaster. It is to be remarked that if--a
thing which is not known--a German officer has been hit on the Grand
Place, it might have happened by a stray bullet, German soldiers being
engaged in shooting in the neighboring streets in order to frighten the
populace.

Moreover, the Burgomaster, a very quiet man, had repeatedly warned his
fellow-citizens, by means of posters and circulars addressed to every
inhabitant of the town, that in case of invasion they were to abstain
from any hostility. These posters were still in evidence when the
Germans entered the city, and they were shown to them.

The German troops which were traversing localities situated on this side
of Aerschot indulged in the same horrors. They shot fleeing citizens and
set fire to and sacked private houses, all this without provocation.

At Rotselaer, for instance, they set fire to about fifteen houses. A
German officer, addressing an inhabitant whose house was afire, wanted
to make him declare, at the point of a pistol, that the fire had been
started by the Belgians. When this inhabitant protested, claiming that
the Belgians had left the town the previous evening, this officer
declared that if the Germans had set fire to the town it was due
probably to the fact that the civilians had fired at them, a fact which
is also denied by all the witnesses.

There, too, the German troops pillaged everything they could lay their
hands on during their passage.

Up to this writing the Commission of Inquiry has been unable to obtain
the testimony of inhabitants of Diest and Tirlemont, which towns were
occupied by the Germans on the 18th and 19th of August, 1914, and which
are cut off from communication.

However, the inhabitants of Schaffen, a town near Diest, have stated
that the same abominations were committed in their locality and in the
adjoining communities, Lummen and Molenstede. The whole region has been
laid waste. German troops, at an hour's distance from Diest, had begun
their work of destruction all along the highway from Diest to Beeringen.
Turning upon Diest they set fire to everything they could lay hands
on--farms, houses, furniture. Arriving at the village of Schaffen, the
Germans set fire to the town, massacring the few inhabitants who
remained behind, and whom