with greater intensity, and directly the roofs broke in one after the other with a crash. Many of our people did not see the burning, because they stayed in the cellars, lying hidden there, frightened, under the rubbish. In one of the burning houses a woman was living in her room on the first floor. Two Germans came to our house and said: "My sister, come quick and look for a woman who is in the fire." The woman was Madame Zinius. It is our sisters who went there at their risk and peril. The Germans had their destruction organized. In all the well-to-do houses they began by plundering. They did not burn these as they passed. A few minutes later we saw five or six vehicles draw up, the "Guimbardes," vans, for plundering and carrying away the linen and the clothing. Women came with these vans, young women, well dressed, rich enough. They were not "bad." [When the Germans captured a town, their organization of loot was sometimes carried out by women, who brought up motor lorries, which the soldiers filled with the plunder from the larger houses, and which the women then drove away. Sometimes these women were dressed as Red Cross nurses. I can continue the proof by other witnesses elsewhere than in Gerbéviller. The organization of murder, arson and pillage is participated in by German men and women.] Monsieur Martin had at his place many sewing-machines, with the trade-mark _Victoria_. The Germans carried them away. I have told you that they threw persons into the fire. Monsieur Pottier was forced back into the fire. His wife moaned and called for help. "Help me get my husband out of the fire," she cried. "Go die with him," they answered her, and she, too, was pushed into the flames. "They" kept coming on, playing the fife. We awaited them at the door. Only thirteen wounded French soldiers had stayed with us. They had been scattered through the different rooms. But we put them up in one room in order to simplify the service and give them a bit of "coddling." We saw four officers on horseback approach. They dismounted in front of our town-hall, twenty meters away. They entered the building, and there they put everything upside down. They tumbled out all the waste paper, the entire office desk, determined to find the records. They remounted and rode up in front of our house. They sat there looking at us for a moment. They had the manner guttural and hard, which is the German way. They began speaking German. When they showed signs of listening to my reply, I said to them: "Speak French. That is the least courtesy you can show me. Speak French, I beg of you, and I will answer you." "You have French soldiers hidden in your house with their arms," said one of them. And he tramped hither and thither like a madman, and he sputtered and clattered. (Et il se promenait de long en large comme un fou, et il bavait et degoisait.) I answered: "We have no French soldiers here------" The German: "You have French soldiers."