Imagine also the tortures suffered by the civil prisoners who, in defiance of all justice, were sent to Germany. Hunger, thirst, threats, and insults; packed into cattle-trucks, they had no room to lie down, or even to sit. Above all, they had no news of their families. On the 4th September, 1914, more than 100 inhabitants of Lebbeke, near Termonde, were placed as a screen in front of the German troops marching against Termonde. In the evening, those who had not been shot were added to others just captured, and all together, in all some 300, were sent into Germany. At the moment when these unhappy folk were leaving Lebbeke the Germans set fire to some of the houses, and kindly informed the prisoners that the whole village was about to be burned. Moreover, they said, the women and children would in part be killed, and the rest driven off in the direction of Termonde and Gand. Imagine, if you can, the sufferings endured by these unfortunate people for the two months during which they remained without news of their homes, in the conviction that their families were massacred or wandering wretchedly across the devastated country. While by means of these cruel lies, whose horrible effect was systematically calculated, they filled with despair the hearts of those who were departing, the soldiers amused themselves also by wringing the hearts of the poor women--mothers, wives, sisters, daughters--who remained in the village. For they, too, were for long weeks without news from the prisoners, and the abominable manner in which the German troops, drunk with carnage, had assassinated, on the day of exodus, twelve of their fellow-citizens (_9th Report_), permitted them to entertain the most frightful suppositions. Make no mistake: the case of Lebbeke is far from being exceptional. All the civil prisoners were treated with the same barbarity, a barbarity utterly unjustified, since, in the judgment of Baron von Bissing, no complaint had been formulated against the civil prisoners who have been sent back to their homes. But all have not returned. In June 1915, for example, most of the prisoners from Visé were still in Germany. As for those taken from Rossignol and so many other localities in Luxemburg, they will never return, alas! They have been shot without pretext. Another horrible torture consists in the suppression of communications between the Belgian soldiers and their parents. Since mid-October 1914 all connections have been severed between the Belgian army which is fighting on the Yser and the Belgians remaining in Belgium. Those who seek to establish communication between the Belgian soldiers and their relatives are spied out and sentenced.