LEAKAGE OF PRISONERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 47, 19 November 1917, Page 7

LEAKAGE OF PRISONERS

ESCAPES FROM RUSSIA. "it?? Petrograd etjrrespondenfc of the Telegraph wrote on September suffirhlT 1 - of^ the , °J her ills ie Bttftenng from, the leakage of her prison. er<> camps was not caused, but merely accentuated, by the revolution. A report recently submitted to the chief of the General Staff states that up to that event no fewer than 5350 of her military captives had already succeeded in making their escape. Since then, however, the prevailing disorder has naturally made it much more difficult to keep a close watch on war prisoners, and the numbers who .have managed to make off hare very greatly increased. Thus, in the three months following the revolution, the escapes numbered, respectively 1 35, 2515, and 3000. That is to Pay, that up to the middle of June as many as 11-603 of.the enemy's soldiers had shaken off Russian captivity, and were for tho .most part wandering at large in our Ally's country, the proportion who have contrived to cross the frontier probably being comparatively small. Later figures I are not available, but there is unfortunately little likelihood that this danger [ is on the decrease. It is not 60 long ago that the Russian papers reported the escape of 500 war prisoners in a body. Unhappily there is no mystery as to the manner in which some of these escaped prisoners have been spending their time since they got free. They have, overtly or covertly, been doing everything in their power to augment the confusion to which they owed their lib-! erty. Quite a number of them are re- ! ported to have become members of Coun- J cils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Dele-1 gates, and some are even said to have got themselves elected to the "Executive Committees" of thoso bodies. At ore time German and Austrian soldiers swaggering about with perfect unconcern in the streets of large towns, or 6ipping beverages in cafes, constituted such a scandal that the commander-in-chief of the Moscow garrison made a special appeal to his troops to put a stop to it. Prisoners who were prevented from escaping considered themselves hardly treated, and a large number of them sent to the Provisional Government from Siberia a memorial in which tbey urged that ■ they should he allowed complete liberty of movement within, tlio confines of Russia. . "

t A special danger threatened "by Russia's war prisoners was indicated the Assistant Minister for Commerce, I'alchinski, in a statement on the situation in the Donetz coalfield. He said that the productivity-of the mines declined steadily, in spite of an increase in the number of men employed. Attempts had keen made to set the pitheads on fire, and there had been unmistakable sabottigo and destruction of property. In Lis" opinion, all that was the work of th 6 German General Stall'. War prisoners "enjoyed a great influence" in the Donetz basin, and were agitating among the workmen, not without success against the ventilation of the galleries' Consequently "the Donetz basin was faced with a catatropho through explosive gas."