Taking up conditions at Liège at the outset of the war, the report gives a harrowing recital of occurrences at various points in the devastated territory. At Herve on August 4, 1914, the report says, “the murder of an innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage of the town and of other villages in the neighborhood; to the indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes and to the organized military execution of batches of selected males. Thus some fifty men escaping from burning houses were seized, taken outside the town and shot. At Melen, in one household alone the father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly attacked and the son was wounded. “In Soumagne and Micheroux very many civilians were summarily shot. In a field belonging to a man named E----, fifty-six or fifty-seven were put to death. A German officer said, ‘You have shot at us.’ One of the villagers asked to be allowed to speak, and said, ‘If you think these people fired, kill me, but let them go.’ The answer was three volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. Their corpses were seen in the field that night by another witness. One at least had been mutilated. These were not the only victims in Soumagne. The eye-witness of the massacre saw, on his way home, twenty bodies, one that of a girl of thirteen. Another witness saw nineteen corpses in a meadow. “At Heure le Romain all the male inhabitants, including some bed-ridden old men, were imprisoned in the church. The burgomaster’s brother and the priest were bayoneted. The village of Visé was completely destroyed. Officers directed the incendiaries. Antiques and china were removed from the houses before their destruction, by officers, who guarded the plunder, revolver in hand. TELLS OF MASSACRES “Entries in a German diary show that on August 10 the German soldiers gave themselves up to debauchery in the streets of Liège, and on the night of the 20th a massacre took place in the streets. . . . Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known with certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de l’Université and the Quai des Pêcheurs were systematically fired with benzine; and many inhabitants were burned alive in their houses, their efforts to escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were shot while trying to escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses. The Liège Fire Brigade turned out, but was not allowed to extinguish the fire. Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of civilian corpses to the Town Hall.” Taking up the Valleys of the Meuse and Sambre, the report gives lengthy details of terrible conditions described by witnesses at Andenne, and says: