, but after the fall on Aug. 15 of the last of the Liege forts
the great line of railway which runs through Liege toward Brussels and
Antwerp in one direction and toward Namur and the French frontier in
another fell into the hands of the Germans. From this moment the advance
of the main army was swift and irresistible. On Aug. 19 Louvain and
Aerschot were occupied by the Germans, the former without resistance,
the latter after a struggle which resulted early in the day in the
retirement of the Belgian Army upon Antwerp. On Aug. 20 the invaders
made their entry into Brussels.

The quadrangle of territory bounded by the towns of Aerschot, Malines,
Vilvorde, and Louvain is a rich agricultural tract, studded with small
villages and comprising two considerable cities, Louvain and Malines.
This district on Aug. 19 passed into the hands of the Germans, and owing
perhaps to its proximity to Antwerp, then the seat of the Belgian
Government and headquarters of the Belgian Army, it became from that
date a scene of chronic outrage, with respect to which the committee has
received a great mass of evidence.

The witnesses to these occurrences are for the most part imperfectly
educated persons who cannot give accurate dates, so it is impossible in
some cases to fix the dates of particular crimes; and the total number
of outrages is so great that we cannot refer to all of them in the body
of the report or give all the depositions relating to them in the
appendix. The main events, however, are abundantly clear, and group
themselves naturally around three dates--Aug. 19, Aug. 25, and Sept. 11.

The arrival of the Germans in the district on Aug. 19 was marked by
systematic massacres and other outrages at Aerschot itself, Gelrode, and
some other villages.

On Aug. 25 the Belgians, sallying out of the defenses of Antwerp,
attacked the German positions at Malines, drove the enemy from the town,
and reoccupied many of the villages, such as Sempst, Hofstade, and
Eppeghem, in the neighborhood. And, just as numerous outrages against
the civilian population had been the immediate consequence of the
temporary repulse of the German vanguard from Fort Fleron, so a large
body of depositions testify to the fact that a sudden outburst of
cruelty was the response of the German Army to the Belgian victory at
Malines. The advance of the German Army to the Dyle had been accompanied
by reprehensible, and, indeed, (in certain cases,) terrible outrages,
b