In the same town a woman aged ninety-eight years was killed in her bed and thrown into the flames; at Triaucourt, Mme. Maupoix, aged seventy-five years, was so violently kicked that she died some days afterwards. Two other old women of the same place were shot dead. During the following night the Germans played the piano near the corpses. At Nomény several women were forced to make a long march on foot; an old woman, who was just on the verge of a hundred years, fell down in a state of exhaustion and died. At Hofstade, another old woman was found dead by the Belgian soldiers. She had been bayoneted several times as she sat down to sew. At Gerbeviller, widow Guillaume, aged sixty-eight years, was killed by a shot fired point-blank. WHOLESALE MURDER In many cases the Germans went as far as general massacres. The excuse invoked by them was a pretended right of reprisals. The most appalling of these butcheries seems to have been that of Dinant, which took place on the 22nd August and following days. “In these terrible days,” writes a Dutchman, M. Staller, on this topic, in the _Telegraaf_ (translated in the _Temps_, 19th December, 1914), “at Dinant and also in the neighbouring villages of Anseremme, Leffe and Neffe, more than eight hundred persons were killed, amongst whom there were many women and children.” The _XX Siècle_ published the names of about sixty women, several of whom were octogenarians, and of about forty children. The excuse put forward was that three German soldiers had been killed by the civilians (see further on). “At Anseremme,” continues the _Telegraaf_, “eighteen women and two children were concealed under a bridge; the soldiers caught sight of them and fired with a machine-gun until there was no more sign of life; on the following morning they burnt the corpses, probably that they might not be accused of having killed defenceless people. I saw the horrible remains of the fire.” Another massacre was that witnessed at Louvain. On the 27th August, at 8 o’clock, the order was given to the inhabitants of Louvain to leave the town, as it was going to be bombarded. Amongst these thousands of wretched people, pursued by the brutal soldiers, were large numbers of women, and some, who had not the strength to follow the procession, were shot. TORTURED WOMEN A humane reader cannot repress a tremor as he learns the story of the tortures inflicted on women by the Germans on several occasions. We should have spared our readers these stories, were it not necessary to pay special attention to them for the purpose of showing how far German barbarism can go.