GERMAN ATROCITIES.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 203, 1 October 1914, Page 7

GERMAN ATROCITIES.

MALTREATMENT OF WOMEN. AMERICAN OFFICIAL CONVINCED NEW YORK, September 29. Mr Hotnro Copland, who has been ofiieiallycemployed by the American Embassy .in London to assist stranded Americans, has written to Mr Harold Sewell, cx-Vice-Consul in Liverpool, giving the results of his conversations with'hiany wounded French soldiers. He states: — \< l had set -down the reports of German atrocities as hysterical exaggerations, but oiic soldier after another told what he had seen, including cruelties on women and young •riils, and gave circumstantial details \ which could not have been invented by a man lying at-the point of death. All said that corpses of maltreated women had constantly bee*' seen when the Genuaus had evacuated towns and villages, the bodies not wounded with bullets, but by swords and bayonets. A PREY TO PASSIONS. GIVEN OVER TO MADDENED MEN. (Received October 1, 8.45 a.m.) - NEW YORK; September 30. Mr Copland asserts that after the conquest of Liege the German soldiery,who had so long been baffled, starved, but maddened witfy alcohol, fell upon Belgium in a frenzy of rapine, mutilation, ami hist. •- ' :: ' , His statements have provoked an ex : traordinary outburst of public anger, which is the greater because Mr Copland carefully distinguished between the "sadisme'' of a section of the soldiery and mere sex excesses. Mr, Copland refers to, the _'f Jack the Ripper" crimes as a parallel, and states that the whole of Belgium has been given over to the passions of maddened men.