DEUTSCHER VEREIN GERMANIA.

Evening Star, Issue 10341, 15 June 1897, Page 2

DEUTSCHER VEREIN GERMANIA.

The announcement that Mr £. Oaten would deliver a lecture on ‘The FrancoGerman War ’ was the means of drawing a large number of friends and members of the above club to their rooms in Maolaggan street last evening. After explaining to hie audience the means adopted for initiating recruits in the German army, the lecturer proceeded to relate how in 1869 he was officially summoned to take part in what afterwards proved to be the greatest war of the century. Careful account had been taken of the victories and losses both armies had met with during the progress of the campaign, and Mr Oaten graphically described the many hardships that were passed through—his own experiences and those of his comrades—while fighting. On one or two occasions lie narrowly escaped with his life—not only from the enemy’s fire, but from the effects of longcontinued marches and hunger. He told how on one occasion the German army resorted to piling up the bodies of their dead with the French one on top of another to form a sort of barricade from the French cannon, and peacefully slept alongside these bodies. But this was nothing compared with the feelings of the men who witnessed the survivors of Metz, who had almost surrendered themselves, after being held prisoners for some two months in that city. The waist belts would no longer remain in their places around the bodies of their wearers, who now had placed them over their shoulders. The ribs of the horses could be counted fully a quarter of a mile distant, and they appeared with their tails and manes eaten off, done by the horses themselves. One personal experience is worth relating. Private Osten had received a wound on the top of his head, and in falling from a height received a fracture of the shoulder bone. While lying thus disabled he noticed a Turko—a member of a very vicious race, opposed to both German and French—approaching him on hands and knees, with a dagger in his mouth. This Turko himself had been shot in the breast, and as be each time rose to kill the wounded soldier the blood from his own wound gushed out; but his efforts proved futile, as the soldier had the presence of mind to lift his hand and ward off the blows, till the knife eventually dropped from the assassin’s hand, and he fell dead across the body of his would-be victim. Mr Osten, however, recovered from his wounds, and finally reached his home again in Germany, where his services were duly recognised ; and the lecturer showed to bis audience a diploma he had received, entitling him to wear a medal presented by the Government of the country. At the conclusion of the lecture, Mr H. Schlaadt (president of the clnb) proposed a hearty vote of thanks to (he lecturer for his interesting and instructive address, fully endorsing all Mr Oaten had said, as he himself had served a short period in the German army.