Termonde, with 10,000 inhabitants, was utterly destroyed. On
the 15th of September, there only remained in that town 282 houses out
of 1,400. The town of Aerschot, with 8,000 inhabitants, is now nothing
but a mass of ruins and more than 150 of its inhabitants have been shot.
Dirigible balloons have thrown bombs at night upon Antwerp. It cannot be
maintained by those who were in the balloons that they were trying to
hit the forts, as the forts are outside the boundaries of the town, and
a good distance outside them as well. Nor could the bombs thrown have
had any effect upon the forts, which are even stronger than those of
Liege. There was no warning of this bombardment, a fact which
constitutes a violation of Article 26 of the Fourth Convention of The
Hague, and more than a dozen people were killed, all of them
non-combatants and several of them women and children.
The town of Louvain, with its 42,000 inhabitants, was one of the centres
of Belgian culture. It had no mercy shown to it and has been nearly
obliterated. Several quarters of the town were set on fire, the Church
of St. Pierre, a marvelous example of Gothic art; the buildings of the
University, including the Library with more than 70,000 volumes, of
which a large number were ancient manuscripts, the collections belonging
to the University; nearly all the scientific institutions, and nearly
all the houses of the town were _deliberately_ burned.
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