We have reason to believe that the parish priest
of Herent, van Bladel, an old man of 71, was also killed. Until now,
however, his body has not been found.]
One of these, the parish priest of Gelrode, suffered, I believe, a
veritable martyrdom. I made a pilgrimage to his grave, and amid the
little flock which so lately he had been feeding with the zeal of an
apostle, there did I pray to him that from the height of Heaven he would
guard his parish, his diocese, his country.
We can neither number our dead nor compute the measure of our ruins. And
what would it be if we turned our sad steps toward Liege, Namur,
Audenne, Dinant, Tamines, Charleroi, and elsewhere?[7] And there, where
lives were not taken, and there, where the stones of buildings were not
thrown down, what anguish unrevealed! Families hitherto living at ease
now in bitter want; all commerce at an end, all careers ruined, industry
at a standstill, thousands upon thousands of workingmen without
employment, working women, shopgirls, humble servant girls without the
means of earning their bread, and poor souls forlorn on the bed of
sickness and fever, crying, "O Lord, how long, how long?"
[Footnote 7: I have said that thirteen ecclesiastics had been shot
within the Diocese of Malines. There were, to my own actual personal
knowledge, more than thirty in the Dioceses of Namur, Tournai, and
Liege--Schlogel, parish priest of Hastiere; Gille, parish priest of
Couvin; Pieret, curate at Etalle; Alexandre, curate at Mussy-la-Ville;
Marechal, seminarist at Maissin; the Rev.
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