[The following is in regards to alleged German reprisals against the Belgians during their advance in the early stages of the First World War.]
On August 28 Hugh Gibson, First Secretary of the American Legation, accompanied by his Swedish and Mexican colleagues, went to Louvain to see for themselves [the evidence of German reprisals]. Houses with blackened walls and smoldering timbers were still burning; pavements were hot; cinders were everywhere. Dead horses and dead people lay about. One old man, a civilian with a white beard, lay on his back in the sun. Many of the bodies were swollen, evidently dead for several days. Wreckage, furniture, bottles, torn clothing, one wooden shoe were strewn among the ashes.
German soldiers of the IXth Reserve Corps, some drunk, some nervous, unhappy, and bloodshot, were routing inhabitants out of the remaining houses so that, as the soldiers told Gibson, the destruction of the city could be completed. They went from house to house, battering down doors, stuffing pockets with cigars, looting valuables, then plying the torch. As the houses were chiefly of brick and stone, the fire did not spread of itself.
An officer in charge in one street watched gloomily, smoking a cigar. He was rabid against the Belgians, and kept repeating to Gibson: “We shall wipe it out, not one stone will stand upon another! Kein stein auf einander! – not one, I tell you. We will teach them to respect Germany. For generations people will come here to see what we have done!”
[…]
In Brussels the Rector of the University, Monseigneur de Becker, whose rescue was arranged by the Americans, described the burning of the Library. Nothing was left of it; all was in ashes. When he came to the word “library” - bibliothèque - he could not say it. He stopped, tried again, uttered the first syllable, “La bib---“ and unable to go on, bowed his head on the table, and wept.
Source:
Tuchman, Barbara W. "The Flames of Louvain." The Guns of August. New York: Macmillan, 1962. 351. Print.
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