SLAVE LABOURERS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 154, 12 April 1945, Page 5

SLAVE LABOURERS.

FOURTEEN MILLION IN GERMANY MANY IN OCCUPIED AREA. LONDON, April 10. Nearly 14,000,000 slave labourers will be released by the Allied advance through Germany, according to correspondents on the Western Front. Many of them are already beginning to wander at large through territory occupied by the Allies. Their control will soon present, an insuperable problem for the. Allied military leaders. Thousands of them are pouring from factories, farms, and homes in the occupied areas, and are showing signs of turning on the hated Germans. Trekking westward in mass migrations, they are forced to live off the land until they reach Allied camps. Even in these camps there is food for only a limited number of them. The Allies cannot feed more than a fraction of the total which ultimately will be liberated.

Many former slaves are helping themselves to chickens, eggs, and vegetables from the farms they pass on their homeward journey. One correspondent says he has seen them carving steaks from dead horses along the roadside. Sometimes the liberated labourers travel in parties large enough to walk into German farms and demand food. In one Allied-controlled town, a German factory owner complained that Russian war prisoners had broken into tis store and stolen 1500 pairs cn shoes. Some German towns are begging the Allies to take over the administration, to save them from the freed slaves.