AMERICA'S STRAIGHT TALK

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 102, 27 October 1914, Page 3

AMERICA'S STRAIGHT TALK

GERMAN GENERAL CORNERED. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.; LONDON 15th September. Mr. Alexander Powell, the representative of the New York World in Belgium, has interviewed General yon Boehn, commanding the Ninth Imperial Field Army, and records a very straight talk he had with that officer. The general began by asserting that the accounts of atrocities perpetrated on Belgian non-combatants were lies. "Three days ago," Mr. Powell remon» strated, " I was in Aerschofc. The whole town now is bub a ghastly, blackened ruin.',' "When we entered Aerschot," was the reply, " the son of the Burgomaster came into a room, drew a revolver, and assassinated my Chief of Staff. What followed was only retribution. The townspeople got only what they deserved." -^ " Put why wreak your vengeance on women f*nd children?" Mr. Powell asked. "None have been killed," the general asserted, positively. "I am sorry to contradict you," Mr. Powell asserted, with equal positiveness, " but T have myself seen their mutilated bodies, and so has Mr. Gibson, the Secretary of the American Legation at Brussels, who was present during the destruction of Lou vain." "Of course," he replied, "there always is the danger of women and children being killed during street fighting if they insist on coming into the street. It is unfortunate, but it is war." " How about the woman's body I saw with the hands and feet cut off?" retorted Mr. Powell. "How about the white-haired man and his son, whom I helped to bury outside Sempstad, who had bfeen killed merely because a retreating Belgian had shot a German soldier outside their house? There were twenty-two bayonet wounds in the old man's face. I counted them. How about the little girl, two rears old, who was shot while in her mother's arms by a Uhlan, and whose funeral 1 attended at Heystopdenberg? How about the old man hung from the rafters of his house by his hands, and roasted to death by a bonfire being built under him?" The German general seemed taken aback by the exactness of the American's data, and he could only insist that he did everything possible to protect noncombatants, mentioning that quite recently he had sent two soldiers to gaol for twelve years for attacking a woman. He declared that Zeppelins have orders only to drop their bombs on fortifications and soldiers. General yon Boehn received the New York World's representative because, to quote his own words, he was "anxious to win the good will of Americans, and show them most conclusively that the tales of German brutality were unfounded."