“The fire started a little beyond the American College, and the town is _entirely_ destroyed, except for the town hall and the station. Furthermore, the fire was still burning to-day, and the Germans, far from taking any steps to stop it, seemed to feed it with straw, an instance of which I observed in the street adjoining the town hall. “The cathedral and the theatre are destroyed and have fallen in, as also the library; in short, the town has the appearance of an ancient ruined city, in the midst of which only a few drunken soldiers move about, carrying bottles of wine and liqueurs, while the officers themselves, seated in arm-chairs round the tables, drink like their men.” The Commission has not yet been able to obtain information about the fate of the Mayor of Louvain and of the other notables who were taken as hostages. The Commission is able to draw the following conclusions from the facts which have so far been brought to its notice:-- In this war, the occupation of any place is systematically accompanied and followed, sometimes even preceded, by acts of violence towards the civil population, which acts are contrary both to the usages of war and to the most elementary principles of humanity. Brutality Everywhere. The German procedure is everywhere the same. They advance along a road, shooting inoffensive passers-by--particularly bicyclists--as well as peasants working in the fields. In the towns or villages where they stop they begin by requisitioning food and drink, which they consume till intoxicated. Sometimes from the interior of deserted houses they let off their rifles at random and declare that it was the inhabitants who fired. Then the scenes of fire, murder, and especially pillage begin, accompanied by acts of deliberate cruelty, without respect to sex or age. Even where they pretend to know the actual person guilty of the acts they allege, they do not content themselves with executing him summarily, but they seize the opportunity to decimate the population, pillage the houses, and then set them on fire. After a preliminary attack and massacre they shut up the men in the church, and then order the women to return to their houses and to leave their doors open all night. From several places the male population has been sent to Germany, there to be forced, it appears, to work at the harvest, as in the old days of slavery. There are many cases of the inhabitants being forced to act as guides and to dig trenches and entrenchments for the Germans. Numerous witnesses assert that during their marches, and even when attacking, the Germans place civilians, men and women, in their front ranks, in order to prevent our soldiers firing.