ence of the deliberate destruction
of private property by the German soldiers. The destruction in most
cases was effected by fire, and the German troops, as will be seen from
earlier passages in the report, had been provided beforehand with
appliances for rapidly setting fire to houses. Among the appliances
enumerated by witnesses are syringes for squirting petrol, guns for
throwing small inflammable bombs, and small pellets made of inflammable
material. Specimens of the last mentioned have been shown to members of
the committee. Besides burning houses, the Germans frequently smashed
furniture and pictures; they also broke in doors and windows.
Frequently, too, they defiled houses by relieving the wants of nature
upon the floor. They also appear to have perpetrated the same vileness
upon piled up heaps of provisions so as to destroy what they could not
themselves consume. They also on numerous occasions threw corpses into
wells, or left in them the bodies of persons murdered by drowning.

In addition to these acts of destruction the German troops, both in
Belgium and France, are proved to have been guilty of persistent
looting. In the majority of cases the looting took place from houses,
but there is also evidence that German soldiers and even officers robbed
their prisoners, both civil and military, of sums of money and other
portable possessions. It was apparently well known throughout the German
Army that towns and villages would be burned whenever it appeared that
any civilians had fired upon the German troops, and there is reason to
suspect that this known intention of the German military authorities in
some cases explains the sequence of events which led up to the burning
and sacking of a town or village. The soldiers, knowing that they would
have an opportunity of plunder if the place was condemned, had a motive
for arranging some incident which would provide the necessary excuse for
condemnation. More than one witness alleges that shots coming from the
window of a house were fired by German soldiers who had forced their way
into the house for the purpose of thus creating an alarm. It is also
alleged that German soldiers on some occasions merely fired their rifles
in the air in a side street and then reported to their officers that
they had been fired at. On the report that firing had taken place orders
were given for wholesale destruction, and houses were destroyed in
streets and districts where there was no alle