GERMAN "PILLAGE EXPERTS."

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15170, 7 January 1915, Page 2

GERMAN "PILLAGE EXPERTS."

EVIDENCE.OF METHOD IN LOOTING.

. Grudgingly enough French chatelains when they returned to their ravaged homes, when the flood of invasion ebbed, had to acknowledge that the Huns had shown a eurprising knowledge not only of commercial but of artistic values. Collectors noticed that invariably tho artistic objects on which tbey had set most store had disappeared, while what Avas more shoAvy and less valuable had been contemptuously left. And now Aye know the reason. It was all a question of method. No less as pillagers than as incendiaries the German troops are methodical. Each General has attached to his staff a pillage expert, whose duty it is to make a skilful professional inventory of the objects of art iv the chateaux and houses of invaded territory. No doubt such an expert or expert- were with that Royal robber tho Crown Prince when the priceless collection of the Chateau de Raye was carefully packed up in motor-vans and transferred to Germany. Thero must have been an army of them Avith the German troops at liouA-ain, for there is now little doubt that the invaders, before they set fire to the library there, had first looted it of its more valuable volumes and manuscripts, and that they wero burglars first, incendiaries only afterwards, to cover the tracks of their contemptible crime. The existence of these pillage experts was discovered in quite a curious way. Towards the beginning of the German occupation" of -Brussels a Parisian art dealer, who had been on business in tho city and had been surprised by the invasion, met in the Boulevard Auspach a fellow-dealer from Munich who was known to him. "What in the world are you doing here?'' he asked. "You are over the campaigning age." "That is the truth," said the German; "but I am here in mv professional capacity, attached to the staff of General X—," and hero he named a famous Bavarian ; General. "There are oro-sioris "when he finds my advice valuable." Robbery, like murder and incendiarism, the ; Germans have methodised.