About Aug. 9 a powerful screen of cavalry masking the general advance of the First and Second German Armies was thrown forward into the provinces of Brabant and Limburg. The progress of the invaders was contested at several points, probably near Tirlemont on the Louvain road, and at Diest, Haelen, and Schaffen, on the Aerschot road, by detachments of the main Belgian Army, which was drawn up upon the line of the Dyle. In their preliminary skirmishes the Belgians more than once gained advantages, but after the fall on Aug. 15 of the last of the Liege forts the great line of railway which runs through Liege toward Brussels and Antwerp in one direction and toward Namur and the French frontier in another fell into the hands of the Germans. From this moment the advance of the main army was swift and irresistible. On Aug. 19 Louvain and Aerschot were occupied by the Germans, the former without resistance, the latter after a struggle which resulted early in the day in the retirement of the Belgian Army upon Antwerp. On Aug. 20 the invaders made their entry into Brussels. The quadrangle of territory bounded by the towns of Aerschot, Malines, Vilvorde, and Louvain is a rich agricultural tract, studded with small villages and comprising two considerable cities, Louvain and Malines. This district on Aug. 19 passed into the hands of the Germans, and owing perhaps to its proximity to Antwerp, then the seat of the Belgian Government and headquarters of the Belgian Army, it became from that date a scene of chronic outrage, with respect to which the committee has received a great mass of evidence. The witnesses to these occurrences are for the most part imperfectly educated persons who cannot give accurate dates, so it is impossible in some cases to fix the dates of particular crimes; and the total number of outrages is so great that we cannot refer to all of them in the body of the report or give all the depositions relating to them in the appendix. The main events, however, are abundantly clear, and group themselves naturally around three dates--Aug. 19, Aug. 25, and Sept. 11. The arrival of the Germans in the district on Aug. 19 was marked by systematic massacres and other outrages at Aerschot itself, Gelrode, and some other villages.