M. Orts, Adviser to the Legation, Secretary of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, stated that the town of Aerschot was partially destroyed by fire, but that so far as the rest was concerned, he could affirm that it had been completely sacked. “I went into several houses,” he said, “and passed through the different storeys. Everywhere the furniture had been thrown about, gutted, polluted in a disgraceful manner. Paper-hangings fell in strips from the walls, the doors of the cellars were burst in, the locks of the chests, drawers, and all the cupboards had been picked and their contents taken. Linen, articles of the most different kinds, and an incredible number of empty bottles covered the ground. “In the middle-class houses, pictures were slashed and works of art broken. On the door of one, a huge, fine-looking building belonging to Dr. X, the following inscription, half rubbed out, might still be read in chalk: ‘Please spare this house, as the people in it are really peaceable, decent folks. Signed, Bannach, Orderly.’ I went into this building, in which I was told some officers had been billeted, and which the kindness of one of them appeared to have saved from the general destruction. On the threshold a faint smell of spilt wine called attention to hundreds of empty or broken bottles, which were heaped up in the porch or the staircase and in the court leading into the garden. Unspeakable disorder reigned throughout the rooms; I walked on a layer of torn clothing and tufts of wool which had fallen out of the gutted mattresses. Everywhere furniture smashed open, and in all the rooms within reach of the bed more empty bottles. The dining-room was heaped with them, dozens of wine-glasses covered the large table and the smaller ones which pressed against the slashed armchairs and sofas, while in the corner a piano with dirty keys seemed to have been smashed with kicks of a jackboot. Everything showed that these places had been for many days and nights the scene of shameless debauchery and drinking-bouts. On the Place du Marché the interior of the house of M. X, a solicitor, presented a similar appearance, and, according to the statement made to me by a quartermaster of gendarmerie, who, with his men, tried to restore a little order into all the chaos, it was the same with the majority of houses belonging to prominent families in which the German officers had chosen to take up their quarters. “All valuables which their owners had not had time to put in a place of safety—silver, family jewels, loose money—disappeared, and the inhabitants declare that arson _frequently had no other purpose_ than to _destroy the proofs of unusually serious thefts_. Wagons, packed full with loads of booty, left Aerschot in the direction of the Meuse.” LOOTING AT DINANT The Dutch journalist whom we have quoted writes in the _Telegraaf_ with regard to this town—