drunken soldier at Malines is thus recorded by one eyewitness and
confirmed by another:

"One day when the Germans were not actually bombarding the
town I left my house to go to my mother's house in High
Street. My husband was with me. I saw eight German soldiers,
and they were drunk. They were singing and making a lot of
noise and dancing about. As the German soldiers came along the
street I saw a small child, whether boy or girl I could not
see, come out of a house. The child was about two years of
age. The child came into the middle of the street so as to be
in the way of the soldiers. The soldiers were walking in twos.
The first line of two passed the child. One of the second
line, the man on the left, stepped aside and drove his bayonet
with both hands into the child's stomach, lifting the child
into the air on his bayonet and carrying it away on his
bayonet, he and his comrades still singing. The child screamed
when the soldier struck it with his bayonet but not
afterward."

These, no doubt, were for the most part the acts of drunken soldiers,
but an incident has been recorded which discloses the fact that even
sober and highly placed officers were not always disposed to place a
high value on child life. Thus the General, wishing to be conducted to
the Town Hall at Lebbeke, remarked in French to his guide, who was
accompanied by a small boy: "If you do not show me the right way I will
shoot you and your boy." There was no need to carry the threat into
execution, but that the threat should have been made is significant.

We cannot tell whether these acts of cruelty to children were part of
the scheme for inducing submission by inspiring terror. In Louvain,
where the system of terrorizing was carried to the furthest limit,
outrages on children were uncommon. The same, however, cannot be said of
some of the smaller villages which were subjected to the system. In
Hofstade and Sempst, in Haecht, Rotselaer, and Wespelaer, many children
were murdered. Nor can it be said of the village of Tamines, where three
small children (whose names are given by an eye witness of the crime)
were slaughtered on the green for no apparent motive. It is difficult
to imagine the motives which may have prompted such acts. Whether or no
Belgian civilians fired on German soldiers, young children at any rate
did not fire. The number and character of these murder