"The Germans made the usual claim that the civil population had fired upon them and that it was necessary to take these measures, i. e., burn the churches, the library and other public monuments, burn and pillage houses, driving out and murdering the inhabitants, sacking the city in order to punish and to spread terror among the people, and General von Luttwitz had told me that it was reported that the son of the burgomaster had shot one of their generals. But the burgomaster of Louvain had no son and no officer was shot at Louvain. The story of a general shot by the son of a burgomaster was a repetition of a tragedy that had occurred at Aerschot, on the 19th, where the fifteen-year-old son of the burgomaster had been killed by a firing squad, not because he had shot a general, but because an officer had been shot, probably by Belgian soldiers retreating through the town. The story of this tragedy is told by the boy's mother, under oath, before the Belgian Commission, and is so simple, so touching, so convincing in its verisimilitude, that I attach a copy of it in extenso to this report. It seems to afford an altogether typical example of what went on all over the stricken land during those days of terror. (In other places it was the daughter of the burgomaster who was said to have shot a general.) "The following facts may be noted: From the avowal of Prussian officers themselves, there was not one single victim, among their men at the barracks of St. Martin, Louvain, where it was claimed that the first shot had been fired from a house situated in front of the Caserne. This would appear to be impossible had the civilians fired upon them point blank from across the street. It was said that when certain houses near the barracks were burning, numerous explosions occurred, revealing the presence of cartridges; but these houses were drinking houses much frequented by German soldiers. It was said that Spanish students shot from the schools in the Rue de la Station, but Father Catala, rector of the school, affirms that the schools were empty. . . .