ur troops cannot seriously
pretend that they are inclined to needless or frivolous destruction.

GERMAN GENERAL STAFF.
_Berlin, August, 1914._

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_AERSCHOT AND AFTERWARDS_

The German troops penetrated into Aerschot, a town of 8,000 inhabitants,
on Wednesday, Aug. 19, in the morning. No Belgian forces remained
behind. No sooner did the Germans enter the town than they shot five or
six inhabitants whom they caused to leave their houses. In the evening,
pretending that a superior German officer had been killed on the Grand
Place by the son of the Burgomaster, or, according to another version of
the story, that a conspiracy had been hatched against the superior
commandant by the Burgomaster and his family, the Germans took every
man who was inside of Aerschot; they led them, fifty at a time, some
distance from the town, grouped them in lines of four men, and, making
them run ahead of them, shot them and killed them afterward with their
bayonets. More than forty men were found thus massacred.

BELGIAN GOV. COMMISSION'S REPORT.

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_BERNHARDISM_:

"_It's all right. If I hadn't done it someone else might_"

As regards private property, respect among German troops simply does not
exist. By the universal testimony of every British officer and soldier I
have interrogated the progress of the German troops is like a plague of
locusts over the land. What they can not carry off they destroy.
Furniture is thrown into the street, pictures are riddled with bullets
and pierced by sword cuts, municipal registers burnt, the contents of
shops scattered on the floor, drawers rifled, live stock slaughtered and
carcasses left to rot in the fields. Cases of petty larceny by German
soldiers appear to be innumerable; they take whatever seizes their
fancy, and leave the towns they evacuate laden like pedlars. Empty
ammunition wagons were drawn up in front of private houses and filled
with their contents for despatch to Germany.

I have had the reports of local commissions of police placed before me,
and they show that in smaller villages like those of Caestre and Merris,
with a population of about 1,500 souls or less, pillaging to the extent
of L4,000 and L6,000 was committed by the German troops.

PROFESSOR J. H. MORGAN _in "German
Atrocities," an Official Investigation._

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_FROM LIEGE TO AIX-LA-CHAPELLE_

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_SPOIL