In the "summarizing report by the General War Staff," published December 31, 1914, the German chief says in explanation of the Belgian campaign: "The need of the German army to push through Belgium was imperative. Our starting point was that the tactical object of the Twelfth Corps was to cross the Meuse with speed. To at once overcome the opposition of the inhabitants was a military necessity, and something to be striven for in every way." And what does "every way" mean? Let the German Staff themselves answer. "The flourishing town of Dinant with its suburbs was burnt, and made a heap of ruins, and a large number of Belgian lives lost." "About 220 inhabitants were then shot, and the village was burned. Just now, six o'clock in the afternoon, the crossing of the Meuse begins near Dinant; all the suburbs, chateaux and houses were burned down during this night. It was a beautiful sight to see the villages burning all around us in the distance." "The town appeared to be perfectly peaceful, nevertheless, for the sake of security, a number of the inhabitants were made prisoners by the grenadiers." "Later, we decided to assemble all the male hostages against the garden wall, where we shot them." Hundreds of witnesses called in one town, after the Germans had passed on, show that the German officers and soldiers were engaged in one horrible orgy of pillage, drunkenness, lust and murder. They began by breaking open all wine cellars and soon the officers went reeling and staggering through the streets, firing their revolvers into the windows of houses and stores. They blasted the safes open with dynamite. They carried goods from the shelves to the freight trains, and as fast as the town was pillaged, burned the houses. During four days they looted and burned twelve hundred houses, stores, factories, schools and churches. They left lying on the ground seven hundred dead bodies, chiefly women and children. Two trains laden with the men and women who were strong enough to work were carried off to Germany. All the manufactories where the artisan class were wont to work were systematically destroyed. Marching away from towns that were blazing furnaces, the German soldiers drove in advance a long line of women and children, with a few aged men, and used them as screens behind which they could march into the next town that was to be looted. THE LOOTING OF LOUVAIN