[9] In this case, and many of the following ones, the reader is requested to note, and remember, the _motive_ for the murders. [10] This cruel treatment of the Abbé Dergent, priest of Gelrode, near Louvain, is reported by a neutral witness, Father G., a student at Louvain. The German soldiers accused the Belgian priests of every conceivable crime; the Assistant-Priest of Sainte-Gertrude (Louvain), who was remonstrating with a soldier, received this reply: "We are Catholics too, but you are pigs and black devils." In Belgium about one hundred of the clergy were massacred. Note further that in this unfortunate country _doctors_ were particularly ill-treated; thirty-seven being shot in the small parishes, while more than one hundred and fifty disappeared altogether from large towns. [11] To whom did it belong, and where was it? Telephones exist in every district of Meurthe-et-Moselle. Besides, our army installed field telephones which were not all destroyed at the time of their retreat. It is a most foolish pretext, yet where can one find a more stupid one than this? A German official communiqué, in order to prove that the general rising of the people had been organized for a long time, declares, "that depôts of arms were installed, where each rifle bore the name of the man for whom it was intended." It is absolutely clear that this applies to arms taken from civilians by order of the local authorities in Belgium and France, and deposited at the Town Hall, every weapon bearing the name of its owner. Would they have taken that for an arsenal? No, stupid as they may be, they are not so foolish as that. They feign stupidity simply because they know very well that the conscience of the civilized world is beginning to be moved. OUTRAGES ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN We might write a long and heartbreaking chapter on this pitiful subject, but let the following suffice. The Report of the French Commission of Enquiry concludes with these words, "Outrages upon women and young girls have been common _to an unheard-of extent_." No doubt the bulk of these crimes will never come to light, for it needs a concatenation of special circumstances for such acts to be committed in public. Unfortunately and only too often these circumstances have existed, _e.g._, at Beton-Bazoches and Sancy-les-Provins, a young girl, and at St. Denis-les-Rebaix, a mother-in-law and a little boy of eight years old, and at Coulommiers a husband and two children, were witnesses to outrages committed on the mother of the family. Sometimes the attacks were individual and sometimes committed by bodies of men, _e.g._, at Melen-Labouxhe, Margaret W. was violated by twenty German soldiers, and then shot by the side of her father and mother. They did not even respect nuns.[12] They did not even spare grandmothers (Louppy-le-Château, Vitry-en-Perthois ...).