A VILE RECORD

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 3012, 5 August 1916, Page 2

A VILE RECORD

GERMAN FLAG'S FOULEST STAIN

THE SLAVE. RAID IN LILLE DESCRIBED.

A HORRIBLE STORY.

(BY EIjKOTRIO telegraph—-copyright] [Australiau-N.Z. Cablo Association.]

Londion, August 3

A Yellow Book dealing with the slavo raid in North France, discloses that the German authorities, in April, issued an appeal for agricultural labour. A meagre response resulted in an order for wholesale deportation, excepting young children, mothers, and old men. Ono and a-lialf hour's warning was given. A clerical and civil protest was disregarded, A bishop wont to the General, who told him "to be quiet and get out."

The labouring classes mostly suffered, 20 to 30 per cent, of tho women being taken. Somo parents lost their reason when they saw their daughters taken away.

German officers admitted that nothing could cleanse the flag from this latest foul stain.

The splendid spirit of the victims was an outstanding feature. They defiantly shouted "Viva la France!" and sang "The Marseillaise." The deportees are employed digging roads, mending trenches, and making munitions. ~ The worst feature is where women are employed as cooks for the German troops and as servants for officers. Other deportees are working on railways and in factories and mines. The hours aro inhuman, the workers are unpaid, and they aro liable to flogging. Some have been sent to the mines and factories iv Rhineland and Westphalia, while a large number of civilians interned sinco tho outbreak of the war are working immediately behind the German lines in France.