xperiences in
detail. Some of the trucks were abominably filthy. Prisoners were not
allowed to leave to obey the calls of nature; one man who quitted the
truck for the purpose was killed by a bayonet. Describing what happened
to another body of prisoners, a witness says that they were made to
cross Station Street, where the houses were burning, and taken to the
station, placed in horse trucks, crowded together, men, women, and
children, in each wagon. They were kept at the station during the night,
and the following day left for Cologne. For two days and a half they
were without food, and then they received a loaf of bread among ten
persons, and some water. The prisoners were afterward taken back to
Belgium. They were, in all, eight days in the train, crowded and almost
without food. Two of the men went mad. The women and children were
separated from the men at Brussels. The men were taken to a suburb and
then to the villages of Herent, Vilvorde, and Sempst, and afterward set
at liberty.

This taking of the inhabitants, including some of the influential
citizens, in groups and marching them to various places, and in
particular the sending of them to Malines and the dispatch of great
numbers to Cologne, must evidently have been done under the direction of
the higher military authorities. The ill-treatment of the prisoners was
under the eyes and often by the direction or with the sanction of
officers, and officers themselves took part in it.

The object of taking many hundreds of prisoners to Cologne and back into
Belgium is at first sight difficult to understand. Possibly it is to be
regarded as part of the policy of punishment for Belgian resistance and
general terrorization of the inhabitants--possibly as a desire to show
these people to the population of a German city and thus to confirm the
belief that the Belgians had shot at their troops.

Whatever may have been the case when the burning began on the evening of
the 25th, it appears clear that the subsequent destruction and outrages
were done with a set purpose. It was not until the 26th that the
library, and other university buildings, the Church of St. Peter and
many houses were set on fire. It is to be noticed that cases occur in
the depositions in which humane acts by individual officers and soldiers
are mentioned, or in which officers are said to have expressed regret at
being obliged to carry out orders for cruel action against the
civilians. Similarly, we