"We keep Belgium only as a pawn." - Count Hertling

Category

Library Item

Item no

33470

Title

"We keep Belgium only as a pawn." - Count Hertling

Description

"It is essential that we keep Liege and thus ensure our economic suzerainty and dominance. - Hindenburg, in a report to the Crown Council, when considering retreat."

"It is not true that our troops treated Louvain brutally. Furious inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our troops, with aching hearts, were obliged to fire a part of the town as a punishment. The greatest part of Louvain has been preserved. The famous Town Hall stands quite intact, for at great sacrifice our soldiers saved it from destruction by the flames. - Manifesto of the Intellectuals of Germany to the Civilised World."

"At Louvain I have seen the damage done by the Germans, who on 25th August 1914 deliberately set fire to twelve hundred houses, the Cathedral, and the Library with blocks of solidified petroleum. They have wholly destroyed the Library and its two hundred thousand books, and the nave of the Cathedral, only the choir remaining. They unsuccessfully attempted to burn the Town Hall. On the 25th at 8 p.m., they place machine-guns in the streets and square and fired on all persons, and on that and the following day they shot, without trial, in La Place de la Gare one hundred and sixty men, women, and children., There was no foundation for the charge that hey had fired on the troops, as the Burgomaster had called in all arms in private possession as a precautionary measure. The Governor at this time was General von Manteufel, who deliberately terrorsied the people. - Cecil Roberts, in a Reuter dispatch, 15th November 1918."

Artist / maker

Raemaekers, Louis

Date

1919

Size

33.2 x 24.7 cm

Type

Chromolithograph

Location

Art and Design Library

Copyright

Louis Raemaekaers' drawings are reproduced by kind permission of the Louis Raemaekers Foundation.