ENALTY OF DEFEAT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20678, 31 January 1942, Page 2

ENALTY OF DEFEAT

_—; . —» - OCCUPIED COUNTRIES BARE NECESSITIES TAKEN The spectacular crimes of Nazis are notorious all over the world. The destruction of towns and villages, the massacre of political hostages, the brutal suppression of trade unions, wholesale looting—these have had full publicity. But the fact that ordinary men and women in occupied territories are deprived of even the bare necessities for existence is less well known. Food was short from the beginning. Despite German declarations to the contrary, the occupying forces were fed on the products not of the Reich, but of the invaded country. Nor did the Germans stop there. In order that their own people should keep a better table they shamelessly robbed Holland of her cheese, Denmark ol her butter, Norway of her fish, France of her grapes, the Balkan countries of their wheat. Women in these countries to-day stand in long queues waiting for rations that are totally inadequate for their proper nourishment and often are not there at all. Imagine the feelings of the Norwegian mother with a delicate child, for whom she cannot get sufficient milk, when she learns “milk and cream are to be frozen and sent in blocks to Germany.” (“Sjandinaver,” Free Norwegian paper, September 9, 1941). Imagine the feelings of the French or Czech worker in heavy industry who goes for weeks without meat when he sees month after month train-loads of this precious food rolling off to Germany. This is happening to-day in Czechoslovakia and France.

Imagine the feelings of the Dutch housewife when she is asked to give her family as dinner in winter-time a meal consisting of red cabbage, hotpot and oatmeal stewed in skimmed milk. This v;as one of the specimen menus recommended to the Dutch by the Germans on the Dutch radio on October 29, 1941. Sickness and Disease

Shortage of food has caused sickness and disease in these countries. The ordinary person's dread of illhealth has been doubled in occupied countries by his knowledge that medicine is scarce —sometimes even unobtainable. The i French paper Le Temps announced recently that a crisis in medicants had arisen such as never had been seen within living memory. , “Insulin, morphia, gauze, cotton and all products based on fat or alcohol are no longer available to French people. Frenchmen‘may run the risk of bloodpoisoning through lack of disinfectant; they may die of cancer without the consolation of drugs, so long as the German hospitals on the Eastern Front are fully stocked.” To suffering from hunger and sickness, suffering from the cold must be added. In all occupied countries coal is strictly rationed. The great stoves that warmed rooms in Holland, Belgium, and Norway can never be lit 'this winter. In addition, the consumption of gas and electricity is drastically controlled, ».

“Anyone using gas or electricity for heating immediately exceeds his ration,” states Nieusblad Von Hot Noorder (September 9, 1941). “Coal is needed to heat the barrack rooms of our troops in Russia,” says the German wireless. These German troops in Russia have needed blankets, too — and to meet the need every person in Norway has been forced to hand in one blanket. No one has been exempted, not even peasants living in the far north, where the winter is very bitter, and where there were no blankets to spare. No milk is the German answer to the mothers ci Europe. No foGd is their answer to the hungry; no medicine is their answer to the sick; no warmth is their answer to men and and women faced with the prospect of the European Winter. No boots or shoes or clothes for comforts. Germans are the master race. They must be sferved first—that is what the Nazis preach, that is what they practise in occupied countries to-day. It is no wonder that the smouldering anger and despair of ordinary men and women flares up into violent resistance. It is no wonder that they risk all to strike and kill thei Truthless oppressors.