From the archives | 4 September 2014

From ‘The giving up of Louvain to “Military Execution”,’ The Spectator, 5 September 1914: Germany has dealt herself the hardest blow which she has yet suffered in the war. By burning Louvain, killing we know not how many of its inhabitants, and turning the rest (say nearly 40,000 men, women, and children) adrift in the fields and on the pillaged countryside, she has forfeited the consideration of decent men. She has committed a deed which two centuries of exemplary conduct could scarcely efface… Germany must henceforth occupy a place with the Vandals and the Huns.