hand
and the women and children on the other. It was a frequent practice to
set apart the adult males of the condemned district with a view to the
execution of a suitable number--preferably of the younger and more
vigorous--and to reserve the women and children for milder treatment.
The depositions, however, present many instances of calculated cruelty,
often going the length of murder, toward the women and children of the
condemned area. We have already referred to the case of Aerschot, where
the women and children were herded in a church which had recently been
used as a stable, detained for forty-eight hours with no food other than
coarse bread, and denied the common decencies of life. At Dinant sixty
women and children were confined in the cellar of a convent from Sunday
morning till the following Friday, (Aug. 28,) sleeping on the ground,
for there were no beds, with nothing to drink during the whole period,
and given no food until the Wednesday, "when somebody threw into the
cellar two sticks of macaroni and a carrot for each prisoner." In other
cases the women and children were marched for long distances along
roads, (e.g., march of women from Louvain to Tirlemont, Aug. 28,) the
laggards pricked on by the attendant Uhlans. A lady complains of having
been brutally kicked by privates. Others were struck with the butt end
of rifles. At Louvain, at Liege, at Aerschot, at Malines, at Montigny,
at Andenne, and elsewhere, there is evidence that the troops were not
restrained from drunkenness, and drunken soldiers cannot to be trusted
to observe the rules or decencies of war, least of all when they are
called upon to execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the
very first women were not safe. At Liege women and children were chased
about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, very
circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the
market place of the city, five young German officers assisting. At
Aerschot men and women were deliberately shot when coming out of burning
houses. At Liege, Louvain, Sempst, and Malines women were burned to
death, either because they were surprised and stupefied by the fumes of
the conflagration or because they were prevented from escaping by German
soldiers. Witnesses recount how a great crowd of men, women, and
children from Aerschot were marched to Louvain, and then suddenly
exposed to a fire from a mitrailleuse and rifles. "We were all placed,"
re