“About four hundred people lost their lives in this massacre, some on the banks of the Meuse, where they were shot according to orders given, and some in the cellars of the houses where they had taken refuge. Eight men belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close to a machine gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body home on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked it. “A hair-dresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was sitting with a child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. After this came the general sack of the town. Many of the inhabitants who escaped the massacre were kept as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of corpses and bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the Germans had built across the river and were so used to prevent the Belgian forts from firing upon it. “A few days later the Germans celebrated a ‘fête nocturne’ in the square. Hot wine, located in the town, was drunk, and the women were compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing ‘Deutschland über Alles.’” “KILLED IN MASSES” Similar details are recited at much length in reference to the districts of Namur, Charleroi and the town of Dinant. At the latter point, the report says, “Unarmed civilians were killed in masses. We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation or that any other defense can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.” The commission stated that it had received a great mass of evidence on “scenes of chronic outrage” in the territory bounded by the towns Aerschot, Malines, Vilvorde and Louvain. It stated that the total number of outrages was so great that the commission could not refer to them all. “The commission is specially impressed by the character of the outrages committed in the smaller villages. Many of these are exceptionally shocking and cannot be regarded as contemplated or prescribed by responsible commanders of the troops by whom they were commanded. Evidence goes to show that deaths in these villages were due not to accident but to deliberate purpose. The wounds were generally stabs or cuts, and for the most part appear to have been inflicted with a bayonet. “In Sempst the corpse of a man with his legs cut off, who was partly bound, was seen by a witness, who also saw a girl of seventeen in great distress dressed only in a chemise. She alleged that she herself and other girls had been dragged into a field, stripped naked and attacked, and that some of them had been killed with a bayonet.” Taking up conditions at Aerschot and the surrounding district during September, the report says: