The inhabitants were allowed two hours to clear out. Then the soldiers went to work. Their apparatus is in the best tradition of German science--patented, for all I know, from Charlottenburg. It consists of a small portable pressure-caisson filled with benzine and fitted with a spray. Other witnesses said that there was also a great caisson on wheels. With this they sprinkled the doors, the ground storeys of the houses--as doorposts were once fatally sprinkled with blood in Egypt--and set fire to the buildings. Others used a sort of phosphorus-paste with which they smeared the object to be destroyed. They completed the work by flinging hand-grenades and prepared fuses into the infant flames. The selective power of this apparatus was remarkable. Remembering Louvain, and how the burning of the University had destroyed German prestige for a century, General Sommerfeld had evidently given directions that public monumental buildings were to be spared. Thus the Museum and the Hôtel de Ville both stand; but right between them his petroleurs picked out and destroyed a hotel as neatly as you pick a winkle out of a shell. Similarly they cut the avocat’s house, of which I have spoken, out of their sea of destruction. General Sommerfeld’s soldiery stole, pillaged, and drank everything on which they could lay hands. Witnesses on this point are many, and unshakable. Their moderation must impress anybody who talks to them. A citizen of Termonde who had himself been held as a hostage said to me, standing amid the ruins of his town-- “Monsieur! there is human nature also among the Germans. I saw many officers in tears. A lieutenant came and shook me by the hand, crying: ‘It is not our fault! It is a shame!’” “HE MUST BE HANGED” Do not think that the evil, written here in the debris of Belgium, will be cancelled and blotted out by subscriptions and indemnities. It calls also for that holy vengeance without which all public law is a nullity. Sommerfeld has got to be hanged. When are the Allies going to issue a proclamation placing definitely outside the privilege of military law Sommerfeld and his kind? The more one sees of Belgium the more deeply her magnificent courage pierces into the soul. I saw women weeping amid the ruins of Termonde. But I also saw builders’ men stolidly smoking their pipes as they shovelled out the bricks and rubble to make room for new foundations. I talked with the pioupious. They had torn up half the pavement on the southern road and stretched barbed wire and brambles over the loose stones... to encourage the Uhlans. As you approached from without you saw the wicked eyes of the street trenches, and the grass-grown mounds of the old fortifications, winking down at you. The town was held by an outpost of three or four companies.