after which the two officers exchanged their respective rôles.[91] The officers and soldiers usually hunted in couples, either entering the houses under pretence of seeking billets, or forcing the doors by open violence. Frequently the victims were beaten and kicked, and invariably threatened with a loaded revolver if they resisted. The husband or father of the women and girls was usually absent on military service; if one was present he was first ordered away under some pretext; and disobedience of civilians to German orders, however improper, is always punished with instant death. In several cases little children heard the cries and struggles of their mother in the adjoining room to which she had been carried by a brutal exercise of force. No attempt was made to keep discipline, and the officers, when appealed to for protection, simply shrugged their shoulders. Horses were stabled in saloons; shops and private houses were looted (there are nine hundred authenticated cases of pillage). Some civilians were shot and many others carried off into captivity. Of the fate of the latter nothing is known, but the worst may be suspected. The German troops were often drunk and always insolent. But significantly enough, the bonds of discipline thus relaxed were tightened at will and hardly a single straggler was left behind. Inquiries in other places, in the villages of Meteren, Oultersteen, and Nieppe, for example, establish the occurrence of similar outrages upon defenceless women, accompanied by every circumstance of disgusting barbarity. No civilian dare attempt to protect his wife or daughter from outrage. To be in possession of weapons of defence is to be condemned to instant execution, and even a village constable found in possession of a revolver (which he was required to carry in virtue of his office) was instantly shot at Westoutre. Roving patrols burnt farm-houses and turned the women and children out into the wintry and sodden fields with capricious cruelty and in pursuance of no intelligible military purpose. Private Property.