At Champguyon, on the 6th September, a man named Louvet was arrested for having fired under conditions forbidden by the laws of war. He was liable to the penalty of death. Accordingly, ten German soldiers fell on the wretched man, beat him unmercifully with sticks in the presence of his wife, dragged him away covered with blood, broke his wrist, shattered his skull, and dragged him to the end of the village, where at length they gave him the finishing stroke. The same rule would apply to the cases of André Willen (twenty-three years of age), Gustave Lodts (forty) and Jean Marken (forty), all inhabitants of Aerschot, in Belgium, if they had been guilty. The Germans, instead of shooting them, bound them to a tree and beat them, before burning the first alive and burying the other two alive. In the province of Namur a young man whom some Uhlans had arrested was bound to two horses, who dragged him along, then tied to a tree, and finally shot. Under the same conditions M. Cognon, of Visé, was thrown into the water with his abdomen torn open. Holding in his entrails with one hand, he clung with the other to a boat, until he grew weak and died. The innumerable mutilations inflicted on Serbian peasants at Chabatz and elsewhere show on this side of the area of war the same barbarism in the carrying out of reprisals. Some who were hardly wounded were buried alive, for they had been shot in the lump, and every one who fell was thrown into the common ditch which had been dug out beforehand. MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS FOR PALTRY REASONS No less criminal are the attacks made by the Germans on the lives of civilians, for paltry reasons, for slight insubordination to unimportant orders, or even for acts that were quite blameless. The following are some examples of these crimes. In the government of Warsaw the Germans killed a Polish magnate, Count Thomas Potocki, for merely protesting against a requisition. At Dartainitza, near Semlin, on the frontier of Austria and Serbia, the whole of the inhabitants were led by the Austrians to Petenwarden, where a quarter of them were shot. The accusation alleged against these peasants was that they had given expression to their joy when the Serbians had entered Semlin. It was the same with the villages of Bejania, Sourtchine, Beclika and Pancsova. At Vingias, in the department of the Aisne, the owner of a farm was thrown into the flames because he had harboured the French headquarters staff on his farm. At Mauperthuis four Germans who had previously come in the morning to the house of a man named Roger presented themselves again the afternoon. “There were three of you this morning; there are now but two! Get out!” said one of them. Immediately Roger and an immigrant named Denet, to whom he had been giving hospitality, were seized, carried off and shot.