Under the pretext that her troops were attacked by civilians, and even under no pretext at all, whole villages have been razed to the ground. Important towns whose boast it was to represent part of the common inheritance of civilization were not spared. Their monuments, which have been respected during the centuries in all of the constant wars of which Belgium has been the theatre, were deliberately destroyed. Open cities were bombarded. Exorbitant taxation was imposed upon conquered towns, and when the inhabitants were unable to pay the taxes, a large number of their houses were set on fire. That is what happened to Wavre, among other cities, whose 8,500 inhabitants were unable to pay a tax of $600,000. Termonde, with 10,000 inhabitants, was utterly destroyed. On the 15th of September, there only remained in that town 282 houses out of 1,400. The town of Aerschot, with 8,000 inhabitants, is now nothing but a mass of ruins and more than 150 of its inhabitants have been shot. Dirigible balloons have thrown bombs at night upon Antwerp. It cannot be maintained by those who were in the balloons that they were trying to hit the forts, as the forts are outside the boundaries of the town, and a good distance outside them as well. Nor could the bombs thrown have had any effect upon the forts, which are even stronger than those of Liege. There was no warning of this bombardment, a fact which constitutes a violation of Article 26 of the Fourth Convention of The Hague, and more than a dozen people were killed, all of them non-combatants and several of them women and children. The town of Louvain, with its 42,000 inhabitants, was one of the centres of Belgian culture. It had no mercy shown to it and has been nearly obliterated. Several quarters of the town were set on fire, the Church of St. Pierre, a marvelous example of Gothic art; the buildings of the University, including the Library with more than 70,000 volumes, of which a large number were ancient manuscripts, the collections belonging to the University; nearly all the scientific institutions, and nearly all the houses of the town were _deliberately_ burned. They are now nothing more than heaps of ashes. Their destruction has been a loss to the whole civilized world. Numbers of absolutely innocent women and children lost their lives in the fire which was started by order of the German military officials. Of those who were saved, several thousand, including women enfeebled by age, and children in arms, are today wandering homeless over the roads, without food or clothing. They are not to blame for anything, unless it is because they belong to a nation which has refused to purchase peace at the price of dishonor. That can be the only crime accounted to them and it is for that they have lost all their possessions upon the earth.