of Liege became mutinous and
that fifty persons were shot. The Belgian witnesses vehemently deny that
there had been any provocation given, some stating that many German
soldiers were drunk, others giving evidence which indicates that the
affair was planned beforehand. It is stated that at 5 o'clock in the
evening, long before the shooting, a citizen was warned by a friendly
German soldier not to go out that night.

Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known
with certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de
l'Universite and the Quai des Pecheurs were systematically fired with
benzine, and many inhabitants were burned alive in their houses, their
efforts to escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were
shot, while trying to escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses.
The Liege Fire Brigade turned out but was not allowed to extinguish the
fire. Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of
civilian corpses to the Town Hall. The fire burned on through the night
and the murders continued on the following day, the 21st. Thirty-two
civilians were killed on that day in the Place de l'Universite alone,
and a witness states that this was followed by the rape in open day of
fifteen or twenty women on tables in the square itself.

No depositions are before us which deal with events in the City of Liege
after this date. Outrages, however, continued in various places in the
province.

For example, on or about the 21st of August, at Pepinster two witnesses
were seized as hostages and were threatened, together with five others,
that, unless they could discover a civilian who was alleged to have
shot a soldier in the leg, they would be shot themselves. They escaped
their fate because one of the hostages convinced the officer that the
alleged shooting, if it took place at all, took place in the Commune of
Cornesse and not that of Pepinster, whereupon the Burgomaster of
Cornesse, who was old and very deaf, was shot forthwith.

The outrages on the civilian population were not confined to the
villages mentioned above, but appear to have been general throughout
this district from the very outbreak of the war.

An entry in one of the diaries says:

"We crossed the Belgian frontier on 15th August, 1914, at
11:50 in the forenoon, and then we went steadily along the
main road till we got into Belgium. Hardly were we there when
we had a horribl