SIR KENELM E. DIGBY, K.C., G.C.B. (Permanent Under-Secretary of State at Home Office, 1895-1903). This eminent and impartial Tribunal, after carefully weighing the evidence (Cd. 7894 and Cd. 7895) came to the following grave conclusions:-- "(i) That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organised massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages. "(ii) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered. "(iii) That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate provision had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being indeed part of a system of general terrorisation. "(iv) That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White Flag. "Sensible as they are of the gravity of these conclusions, the Committee conceive that they would be doing less than their duty if they failed to record them as fully established by the evidence. Murder, lust, and pillage prevailed over many parts of Belgium on a scale unparalleled in any war between civilised nations during the last three centuries." The Report makes it plain that apart from the first outbreak of outrages intended to cow the Belgians into submission, fresh bursts of plunder and rapine took place on specific occasions when the Germans suffered defeat. Cowardly vengeance was thus wreaked on the innocent Belgian civilians for the defeat of German arms. For example, on August 25, 1914, the Belgian Army, sallying out from Antwerp, drove the enemy from Malines. The Germans promptly massacred and burnt at Louvain, "the signal for which was provided by shots exchanged between the German Army retreating after its repulse at Malines and some members of the German garrison of Louvain, who mistook their fellow-countrymen for Belgians."[109] Similarly when a successful sortie from Antwerp drove the Germans from Aerschot, they retaliated by a blood-vendetta upon the civil population.