A young druggist who lived in a village near Étain was shot for having gone to Étain with the sub-prefect of Briey, who had carried letters there for his fellow-citizens. As for non-combatants who were found carrying arms, they were consistently massacred. MASSACRE OF CIVILIANS WITHOUT ANY PRETEXT Other executions took place without any pretext. Sometimes the Germans gathered together, without rhyme or reason, all the male inhabitants of a village, and chose at haphazard a certain number, whom they shot without any form of trial and simply with the object of terrorising the population. Sometimes their fury was directed against peasants who were already struck with terror, and then whoever showed any signs of wanting to avoid meeting the enemy was shot for the mere reason that he had tried to flee before the invader. Sometimes they took vengeance on the inhabitants of a village where one of their number had been killed by some enemy soldier in retreat. Sometimes they forced their way into houses, bent on pillage, and as they thought the presence of the inhabitants seemed inconvenient, they made haste to assassinate them. Sometimes the fusillade was merely an amusement or recreation for the Germans. This took place sometimes during their marches from village to village. The peasant who had the misfortune to find himself in their path at once had a taste of their cruelty. Sometimes the execution of peaceable, quiet people served the Germans as a consolation for checks which the enemy had inflicted upon them. Sometimes, in their desire to offer some excuse for massacre, they have been seen to make a show of evacuating a village which it was said had been threatened, and then to fire some shots, which they then blamed the inhabitants for doing. Reprisals thereupon followed. Sometimes they attacked peaceable peasants because the latter opposed some offence which they wanted to commit. The following are some accounts of acts of this kind. They took place at Dinant, at Louvain, at Nomény, at Lunéville, where, perhaps to a greater extent than elsewhere, the fury of the invader was let loose upon inoffensive persons. AT DINANT A Dutchman, M. Staller, has told as follows in the _Telegraaf_ (quoted above, see Chap. XI) the story of the massacre of the people of Dinant. “On Friday, the 21st August, about a dozen Germans ventured as far as the middle of the town in an armoured motor, a regular moving fortress. They had machine-guns with them, and whilst the motor rolled along they fired to right and left at the houses, aiming chiefly, I maintain, at the upper storeys. It was already late, and, as the majority of the people had retired, many of them were killed or wounded in their beds.