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'On Deeds Like This the Kaiser Asks God's Blessings'
After the sack of Louvain the German soldiers found a party of fugitives, tied their hands behind them and forced them to march towards Malines. "At Herent," says one of the victims,"another group of prisoners, including half a dozen priests, joined us. Suddenly, evidently as the result of some false alarm, we were ordered to kneel down, and the soldiers stood behind us with their rifles ready to fire, using us as a shield. Fortunately for us nothing happened. The priests were afterwards shot. Numerous witnesses state that the Germans place civilians in their front ranks.
'Coward Work of Germany's Military Murderers'
In his dispatch of september 18th, Sir John French reported : "At Senlis a preacher shot one German soldier and wounded another. The German commander then assembled the mayor of the town and five other leading citizens and forced them to kneel down before graves that had already been dug. Requisition was made for various supplies and the six citizens were then taken to a neighbouring field and shot. According to the corroborative evidence of several independant persons, some twenty-four people including women and children were also shot. The town was then pillaged and was fired in several places before it was evacuated. It is believed that the cathedral was not damaged, but many houses were destroyed.
'German Inhumanity to British Prisoners'
The sickening inhumanity with which British prisoners are being treated in Germany has no parallel. It is amazing that a Power, boasting all that is enlightenment and cultured, can mete out such barbarious treatment to war prisoners as is described by Sir Edward Grey. An officer, detailing the horrors of his journey to Germany, described the grossest brutality. Officers and men were driven into foul waggons from which horses had just been removed. A British officer was dragged out in front of a waggon by order of a German officer, who, after cursing him in a vile language, ordered him to be kicked again.
'The Torment of a Captured British Officer'
A British officer wounded in the advance was taken into a German trench while our bombardment was raging. The men wanted to kill him out of hand, but two German officers conceived a brilliant idea and ordered him to be bound to a stake on the top of a parapet. "Now you will see what your cursed bombardment is like," they jeered savagely and withdrew to the depths of their dug-out. Our men stormed the trench and carried back the wounded officer, no further injured during the hostile ordeal, while the cowardly Germans who devised his agony were bombed to extinction when the trench was cleared.