The Committee find no grounds for thinking that the inhabitants fired upon the German Army on the evening of August 25th. Eye-witnesses worthy of credence detail exactly when, where and how the firing commenced. Such firing was by Germans on Germans. No impartial tribunal could, so the Committee think, come to any other conclusion. _Harried Villagers._ [Sidenote: 21] The massacre of civilians at Louvain was not confined to its citizens. Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain from the surrounding districts.... Of the hundreds of people taken from the various villages and brought to Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred there, others were forced to march along with citizens of Louvain through various places, some being ultimately sent on the 29th to the Belgian lines at Malines, others were taken in trucks to Cologne, others were released. _A Calculated Policy of Cruelty._ [Sidenote: 23] The Committee are driven to the conclusion that the harrying of the villages in the district, the burning of a large part of Louvain, the massacres there, the marching out of the prisoners, and the transport to Cologne--all done without enquiry as to whether the particular persons seized or killed had committed any wrongful act--were due to a calculated policy carried out scientifically and deliberately, not merely with the sanction but under the direction of higher military authorities, and were not due to any provocation or resistance by the civilian population. _The Tragedy of Beautiful Dinant._ [Sidenote: 13] Just outside the prison one witness saw three lines of bodies, which he recognised as being those of neighbours. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. There were about 120 bodies.... Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the prison. About 90 bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass square opposite the convent. They included many relatives of a witness.... It is stated that, beside the 90 corpses referred to above, 60 corpses of civilians were recovered from a hole in the brewery yard, and that 48 bodies of women and children were found in a garden. * * * * * The Committee have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation, or that any other defence can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.