No serious attempt was made to prevent the fire from spreading. At its commencement some of the townspeople came out at the appeal of the Fire-Bell, but they were forbidden to stir from their houses. The Chief of the Fire Brigade, though the balls were whistling round him, got as far as the site of the disaster; but an officer arrested him in the Place d’Armes, and then, acting under the orders of his superior, sent him away under an escort. The Germans, with the object of justifying their proceedings, alleged that shots had been fired against their troops on the Monday evening. Every circumstance demonstrates the absurdity of this statement. The juxtaposition of observed facts and the sequence of concordant evidence lead to the conclusion that the incidents at Namur were deliberately prepared, and merely formed part of the general system of terrorism which was habitually practised by the German Army in Belgium. Fifteen days back the people of Namur had given over to the Belgian Authorities all the firearms that they possessed. They had been informed by Official Notices as to the tenor of the Laws of War, and had been invited by the Civil and Military Authorities, by the Clergy and the Press, to take no part with the belligerents. The Belgian troops had evacuated the town 36 hours before the conflagration. The people, even if they had possessed weapons, would not have been so insane as to rise and assail the masses of German troops who crowded the town and occupied all its approaches. And how can anyone account for the strange fact that, at all the five points at which the alleged rising was supposed to have broken out, the Germans were found in possession of the incendiary substances which were required for the prompt burning of the place? The disorder which followed helped the pillage in which the German Army habitually engages. In the Place d’Armes houses were thoroughly sacked before they were set on fire. In the quarter by the Gate of St. Nicolas the inhabitants, when they returned to their homes, found that everything had been plundered; in one case a safe had been broken up and 17,000 francs worth of securities had disappeared. On the subsequent days, though things were comparatively quiet, pillage continued. In several houses where German officers were quartered, the furniture was broken up, and wine and underclothing (even female underclothing) was stolen. Our witnesses have detailed to us several outrages on women. In one case we have evidence concerning the rape of a girl by four soldiers. A Belgian quartermaster of Gendarmes saw the daughter of the proprietor of the hotel in which he was staying outraged by two German soldiers, without being able to intervene for her protection, at four o’clock in the morning.