Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Statement About the Destruction of Louvain and Neighborhood
There have been many stories about the German atrocities in Belgium, and recently certain articles have appeared in the Chicago press which are of such a character that they seem to demand particular attention. Those articles come from correspondents of American papers in Germany or accompanying the German army in France and Belgium. They generally represent the treatment given by the German army to the civil population in Belgium as very kind and conclude that everywhere stories about German atrocities vanish on inquiry.
I have no desire to question the sincerity of those correspondents, but in many respects I know they are mistaken. They were always far away from the places where atrocities were committed. One of them was, between August 12 and August 18, in the neighborhood of Landen and of Namur, when atrocities were committed in the eastern part of Belgium; he was staying in Brussels on August 20 and the three following days, watching for the passing of the German troops through the city, when Aerschot and several villages between Louvain and Malines were sacked and destroyed; he was staying in the Belgian town of Binche when Louvain was burned; and he accompanied the German troops in France when the Belgian towns of Dinant, Andenne, and Tamines were destroyed and their inhabit ants killed. In that way, one may assert that he has not seen atrocities, but it seems absolutely inconsequent to say that there were not atrocities at all.
As one of those newspaper correspondents has reported the German accusations against the citizens of Louvain, and has made statements about that city which are entirely false, I think the time has come to give here my own account and to publish the truth concerning the occurrences which took place not only at Louvain but also in the villages and small towns of the neighborhood.
I myself am not an eyewitness of all the facts I shall report here, but for each case I give my evidence in such a way that every one will be able to judge of the value of the statement. I shall notgive the names of my informants in every case, for some of them have their homes still left standing in Belgium or their parents and family and relatives still living in that country. The publication of those informants' names would bring upon the heads of their relatives very disagreeable consequences - remember the arrest of Cardinal Mercier - and for themselves disaster. But the names I have, and I am the repository of their statements, giving my word of honor that those reports are authentic.
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