village are overthrown. At Bueken,
out of 100 houses 20 are standing. At Schaffen, 189 houses out of 200
are destroyed; 11 still stand. At Louvain the third part of the
buildings are down; 1,074 dwellings have disappeared. On the town land
and in the suburbs 1,823 houses have been burned.

[Footnote 5: Haekendover, Roosbeek, Bautersem, Budingen, Neerlinder,
Ottignies, Mousty, Wavre, Beyghem, Capelle-au-Bois, Humbeek,
Nieuwenrode, Liezelo, Londerzeel, Heyndonck, Mariekerke, Weert,
Blaesvelt.]

In this dear City of Louvain, perpetually in my thoughts, the
magnificent Church of St. Peter will never recover its former splendor.
The ancient College of St. Ives, the art schools, the consular and
commercial schools of the university, the old markets, our rich library
with its collections, its unique and unpublished manuscripts, its
archives, its gallery of great portraits of illustrious rectors,
chancellors, professors, dating from the time of its foundation, which
preserved for masters and students alike a noble tradition, and were an
incitement in their studies, all this accumulation of intellectual, of
historic, and of artistic riches, the fruit of the labors of five
centuries--all is in the dust.

Many a parish lost its pastor. There is now sounding in my ears the
sorrowful voice of an old man, of whom I asked whether he had had mass
on Sunday in his battered church. "It is two months," he said, "since we
had a church." The parish priest and the curate had been interned in a
concentration camp.

Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the
prisons of Germany, to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At
Munsterlagen alone, 3,100 civil prisoners were numbered. History will
tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom.

Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess no complete necrology; but
I know that there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot and that there, under
pain of death, their fellow-citizens were compelled to dig their graves.
In the Louvain group of communes 176 persons, men and women, old men and
sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burned.

In my diocese alone I know that thirteen priests or religious were put
to death.[6]

[Footnote 6: Their brothers in religion or in the priesthood will wish
to know their names. Here they are: Dupierreux of the Society of Jesus,
Brothers Sebastian and Allard of the Congregation of the Josephites,
Bro