At the end of January 1915 about 2,500 inhabitants of Brabant were sent back in a body. They had left the camps on Sunday, the 24th January, and they reached Louvain on Friday the 29th, and Brussels and Vilvorde on Saturday the 30th. During this five days' journey they had not been allowed to leave the trucks into which they were crammed; for all nourishment they received some black bread and water, and on occasion a turnip or a beet. The Louvain prisoners had the greatest trouble in the world to walk as far as the ruins of their houses. Those from beyond Assche were set down at the Gare du Nord in Brussels; they had to be carried as far as the tram for Berchem; their swollen feet refused all service. These unhappy people were still wearing the light clothes which they were wearing in August, when they were dragged from their villages, and since then they had never had a fire. Those from Tervueren were taken from the trucks at Schaerbeek; they were driven home in carts. _German Admission of the Innocence of the Civil Prisoners._ What crime had these unhappy folk committed to be treated in so terrible a fashion? None. The Germans themselves admit it; none (2nd _Grey Book_, No. 87). The German authorities communicated the following note to the Belgian newspapers--we copy it from the _Écho de la presse internationale_ of the 30th January, 1915:-- The Commander-in-Chief of the German Army has authorized the return to Belgium of the Belgian civilian prisoners: (1) against whom no inquiry of any military tribunal is in progress; (2) who have not to undergo any penalty of any kind. Consequently all the women (17) and 2,577 men will be able to re-enter the country. The Commander-in-Chief of the German Army is the Emperor. It was he, then, who recognized the innocence of the civil prisoners. No charge, therefore, could be brought against them; these prisoners were recognized as being completely innocent; the authorities admitted that it was without any motive that they were kept five months in Germany, without care, without fire, almost without food, herded together like beasts, in perpetual fear of being shot, knowing nothing of their families--for they were unable for many weeks either to write or receive news. Some of them succumbed under their privations; others were shot; many have become insane; all were so aged and enfeebled by ill-treatment, methodically applied, that their neighbours hesitated to recognize them. Will they ever recover from such an experience?