THE GERMAN IN RETREAT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 121, 22 May 1917, Page 5

THE GERMAN IN RETREAT.

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. OBGY OF 'FILTHY BARBARISM. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LOXDON", March 22. It is a poor heart that never rejoice- 5 , and surely it must be a mean heart that can discern nothing but German cleverness in the recent happenings cm the Western front. Yet, here in Knu;land, whilst infinite, if quiet satisfaction over the German retreat is felt by tie majority, there are men who not only refuse to give our soldiers any credit for having forced the enemy to relinquish hie hold on some hundreds of square miles of French territory, but who openly hint that the enemy's retreat is really a strategic triumph for the Germans, the result of which we shall presently have grievous cauee to remember. Sooner than give countenance to the notion held by the majority of Englishmen that the Germans have yielded up Bapaume and Pcronne because the enterprise of Tommy Atkins had made those places untenable, they ask us to believe that the German tligb Command sacrificed the flower of their forces in order to hold for months and months places that were not worth holding, and are now retreating simply in order to lure the Allies into a carefully prepared trap into which they are apparently quite confident General Nivelle and Sir Douglas Haig will walk blin^y.

This habit of regarding the German as a superman, and of supposing that he is master of every situation is far commoner in the Old Country than the casual visitor would believe possible, and it is not confined to any particular class of the community. Some of our alleged "military experts," whose ellusions appear in the leading papers, set-in to be badly bitten with thU species of pro-Germanism- and make every appreciable success gained by the Allies the text for a sermon against optimism, and a warning to keep our sackcloth and ashes handy against they day when the artful German shall show his hand. Happily the British public generally has learned during the past thirty monthe to discount very liberally indeed the outpourings of the journalistic "experte." The march of events in this war has utterly ruined the reputations of ninety-five per cent of them as prophets, and their predictions as regards the limits of the present German retreat seem doomed to falsification. They were quite certain that Hindenb ;rg wonld set the limit of his withdrawal at the Arras-Cambrai St. Quentin-La Fere-Laon-Rheims line, but they are now "hedging" in favour of a German stand on the "more classic and stronger front ranging from Li lc to Verdun," the centre resting on Conde and Valenciennes. The holding of that line will, at any rate, involve the withdrawal of the enemy from nearly the whole of the area of Northern France he now occupies.

Aβ regards the territory from which the Germans have already been driven it seems pretty clear that they have no great hopes of re-occupying it, otherwise they would scarcely have laid waste the countryside as they have done. The German reports state that "whatever could be of no military advantage to the 1 enemy has been spared," but the reports of British and French eye-witnesses show that the Huns have spared nothing, and have behaved in their retreat much 03 their barbanvs ancestors did before tliem. oven to !i!>ducting women and girls. We read or tfie oflicers of distinguished regiments behaving like savages; wrecking houses, destroying furniture, inflicting every indignity upon civilians, stealing and lootin". WELLS POISONED. Writing from the British Headquarters on Sunday last, Mr. H. M. TomHnscn said: — "The German, all along that front, is in-retreat, looting villages and bunting them, blowing up national landmarks j and monuments, and poisoning welU. The latter accusation needs to b" pointed. The first ca.se was found at Bordeaux. Water tested there was ; .found to be arsenical. Many other in- j stances have been discovered since. There , has been an accepted theory that the \ Prussian, when b<:aten, would show a j contrite spirit. He has been well beaten i for the best part of a year. But not into good behaviour. " He i.3 demonstrating again all those peculiar characteristics of his which nmde good-natured neutrals, and many cool critics at Home, declare that the reports of his malicious behaviour were exaggerated. Well, he is committing again those acts which m-ake some of us, who are willing to give him all the credit possible, wonder whether he is not curiously aberrant from the normal human." HOUSES WRECKED. Mr. Percival Phillips, writing of the British advance in the neighbourhood of Roye, says: — " Everywhere they found the path of the Hun strewn with wanton wreckage, and the civilians newly released from bondage told some pitiful stories of the farewell acts of vandalism perpetrated by officers and men of the elite regiment? of the German army during the laet hours of their occupation. •• \t Roye. for example, officers deliberately wrecked the houses in which they had" been billeted while the inmates looked on helplessly. A numhei- of Getman doctors who lodged for months in one of the largest and finest mansions i,, Rove summoned the age,! mfatrese of the house on Friday morning, nhen It was no longer possible to conceal from the' inhabitants that they would evacuate the town that day and said:- ---•• We are "-oing to give Roye back to I (the French. We hope they will like it." "They then went through the house, firing revolvers at the mirror*, and smashing the furniture in the drawingroom and bedroom, ftmilur scenes wenenacted in many other houses, where officers ransacked family papers and i looted portable articles of valui, including clocks and pictures. They chalked on" fragments of mirrors, and even on the sides of buildings: ' We present Roye to the French people, and hope they will like it.'

" The prevalence of >mes«vger; of this character and the nature of the pillagß indicate that it Tvas officially inspired, and r.ot wholly the outburst of personal spite. . .

" Official orders for the systematic destruction of property include the cutting down or mutilation of all fruit trees. I walked for some miles to-day throug-li the country behind the German lines at Chaulnes, and everywhere the orchards had been levelled or the trees stripped and -the wells filled with rubbish from the latrines. More attention was paid to vandalism of this kind than to the mere obstruction of the British troops, for I passed along many roads which were unbarred and unbroken, wliilo the orchards on either side wore hacked a-way.