HOW SERBIA WAS LOOTED.

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 3337, 5 September 1917, Page 2

HOW SERBIA WAS LOOTED.

CLAIM MADE FOR DAMAGES. Seirvia, in a formal Note made public at the State Department at Washi"tfto». in J«iy, charges Austria and BuJgana with an illegal economic exploitation of occupied provinces and gives notice that " she reserves the ■right of claiming, at the time of the peace negotiations, an indemnity corresponding to the damage inflicted, both on the Servian State and its subjects, by these flagrant violations of public international law."

lho. Note giving the first official glimpse behind the scenes in occupied Servia claims that over 100,000,000 crowns, have been illegally extorted, as well as 6.000,000 crowns in the form of forced subscriptions to Austrian war loans and the Austrian and Bulgarian Red Cross.

The Servian trade is stated to have been ruined by the abolition of the •Servian moratorium for the purpose of allowing merchants to collect immediately, with 6 per cent, interest, debts estimated at 120,000,000 crowns. Failure to pay is stated to be penalised by sale of property at ridiculous auction figures, which allows the invaders to make immensely profitable purchases of large stocks of goods, la addition, many shops have been pillaged and trade has fallen off at least one-half.

" By such arbitrary measures toward our merchants and by means of this legalised pillage, the military authorities have attempted to ruin our trade." the Note says. "Austrian and German firms will take the places of the ruined Servians, and will so brills about the denationalisation of Servian commerce."

All private houses abandoned by their owners, including the royal palaces, are stated to have been plundered under the theory that they were "unowned property," because the owner was absent. The national and tho ethnological museums are reported to have been completely ransacked by the Austr.ians, the national library, the university library of Nis'h, and the library of the school of theology at Prlzzen by the Bulgarians. Books, manuscripts, and art worsk were stated to have been carried away a§ booty. " The Bulgarians," it is stated, "have plundered to an extent and with effrontery unexampled in modern warfare. Austria also has placed the assessment of all taxation in the hands of a military committee. In the provinces occupied by Bulgaria, the whole Servian taxation system has been swept away.

" Similarly the Austrian authorities have ordained that Servian money shall be accepted at 50 per cent, of its normal value. Servian money was taken by force from private persons and Austrian money given in exchange at a rate less than half its value. The Austrians collected our fiank notei at : a very lavf price with the intention of ; 'changing them abroad at' a higher rate., , !