That this killing was done as part of a deliberate plan is clear from the facts set forth regarding Louvain, Aerschot, Dinant and other towns. The killing was done under orders in each place. It began at a certain fixed date, and stopped (with some few exceptions) at another fixed date. _German Army Disciplined to Obey._ [Sidenote: 27] The discipline of the German Army is proverbially stringent, and its obedience implicit. [Sidenote: 23] It was to the discipline rather than the want of discipline in the Army that these outrages, which we are obliged to describe as systematic, were due, and the special official notices posted on certain houses that they were not to be destroyed show the fate which had been decreed for the others which were not so marked. _A few German Officers showed Feelings of Humanity._ [Sidenote: 27] The Committee gladly record the instances where the evidence shows that humanity had not wholly disappeared from some members of the German Army, and that they realised that the responsible heads of that organisation were employing them, not in war, but in butchery. "I am merely executing orders, and I should be shot if I did not execute them," said an officer to a witness at Louvain. At Brussels another officer said: "I have not done one hundredth part of what we have been ordered to do by the High German military authorities." [Sidenote: 30] A humane German officer, witnessing the ruin of Aerschot, exclaimed in disgust: "I am a father myself, and I cannot bear this. It is not war, but butchery." _Drink Responsible for many of the Worst Outrages._ [Sidenote: 25] [Sidenote: 30] Many of the worst outrages appear to have been perpetrated by men under the influence of drink. Unfortunately, little seems to have been done to repress this source of danger.... Officers as well as men succumbed to the temptation of drink. _The German Army is Responsible for Crimes which it did not Check._ [Sidenote: 27] When an army is directed or permitted to kill non-combatants on a large scale, the ferocity of the worse natures springs into fuller life, and both lust and the thirst of blood become more widespread and more formidable. Had less licence been allowed to the soldiers, and had they not been set to work to slaughter civilians, there would have been fewer of those painful cases in which a depraved and morbid cruelty appears. _The Taking and Murder of Hostages._ [Sidenote: 27]