NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16113, 18 January 1918, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

WIPING OUT THE SERBS. The Serbian manifesto protesting against the annihilation of the nation, which was briefly summarised in yesterday's cables, recounted some of the details of a policy of "frightfulness" which suggests that in this respect the Austrians are imitating the worst - leatures of the German regime in Belgium and Northern Franco. Its statements are, unfortunately, only too likely to he terribly true, for the same policy has been carried out against the whole race of Jugoslavs, of whom the Serbians are a part. The horrors perpetrated on these people -were lately revealed in a speech delivered in the Austrian Parliament by a Jugoslav deputy, who had recently finished a term of three years' imprisonment, and who evidently feared that his speech might cost him his life, for at the outset he said: "If by any means I should disappear,_ the reason for it must not be sought in that I am weary of life, although for three years death, has often appeared to me as a thing verv desirable." I'he policy pursued, he asserted, had been one of systematic extermination of the Jugoslavs by halter, bullet and bayonet, dungeon, famine, and intentionally induced diseases. A few extracts from his revelations will suffice to show the dreadful sufferings of his race. A WAR OF EXTERMINATION. In one district the entire male population from 14 to 50 years of age, was cut to pieces by the soldiery without anv form of trial." The priest was hangea beforehand as a hostage. "In the concentration camps the evacuated Istriajis died off like flies of hunger. A Catholio priest of Istria declared that he alone blessed the corpses of more than 2000 Croats. The Montenegrin medical student Bajea Martinic says that he saw more than 8000 evacuated Serbs from Istria die in Styria. The autocrat of Bosnia, General Petiorek, {rave orders to # Temove all Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina from the frontier. Anyone venturing to oppose them was killed on the spot. The inhabitants of the village of Svice were all Temoved. At Mount Rado they were halted and compelled to dig their own graves and li© down in them. Many women lav down in their graves with their children in their arms. Then the soldiers shot them one by one. The survivors had to shovel the earth upon the dead until it came to their turn, and these graves were filled in by the soldiers. At Mostar there was a wholesale murder of the best' educated and most notable of the population who had been arrested as hostages. EIGHT THOUSAND VICTIMS. Describing the fiendish cruelties practised in some of the prisons, in which thousands died of starvation, smallpox, typhus, and cholera, the deputy said that, in accordance with instructions, the warders did their best to send their unfortunate charges into the next world. "The most convenient, and profitable method was to starve them." In Doboj alone "more than 8000 innocents were done to death." The entire population of one village was arrested in September, 1914, and the notabilities were taken to a cemetery and bayoneted, their homes having previously been set on fire. In the neighbourhood of Zabace 82 persons were hanged at once, without trial: in another place 103, for thq> conclusive reason that they were notabilities. Seventy-one were hanged in a third town for the same reason. In. another district 300 Serbian corpses were seen hanging from the branches. The entire Serbo-Montenegrin frontier has been almost denuded of its popula-* tion, and, like the Palatinate in the

time of Louis XIV., it has been turned into a desert. »It is said that General Potiorsk signed 3500 death-warrants with his own hands. The restoration of Serbia is one of the conditions of peace to which the Allies, including America, have s&t their hands. But unless it is dcue soon there wil] be few Serbs left to re-enter into possession of their devastated and depopulated land. ENEMY STRENGTH IN THE "WEST. A- striking graph was published at Home not long ago showing the strength of the enemy in .the various parts oi' the Western front as recently as the end of last October. It indicated that the British hold about 110 miles of that front, and the French about 275 miles, and it showed that whereas in Alsace and Lorraine the Germans ht'cl only one man to about two and a half yards of front, and, roughly, two men to a yard throughout the greater part of the 150 miles from the Aisne to the Woevre. against the British front from pres to Arras they had massed between three and four nse n to the yard, and on part of the Flanders front'mere than four men to the yard. In round numbers German rifles ouposite British troops averaged 4603 "per mile,"and opposite French troops 1900 per mile. Since then, of course, the position has somewhat changed. The Russian collapsp has certainly permitted the transfer from the Eastern to the Western front of a. certain number of German troops, though owing to the uncertainty of the Russian situation the number is probably much smalW than wa s at one time feared. And it is now said that) most of the German divisions on the Italian front have been sent to the W T est. The German line all along has l>een strongly reinforced, but if the report Vie true that the enemy mean totrv to break through to Calais', the British front will still probably have to bear the heaviest assault. Heuce, no doubt, the demand at Home for nearly half a million more men.