The Work of the Beast.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 268, 28 October 1916, Page 5

The Work of the Beast.

New Teuton Crimes.

Manufacture of Tuberculosis.

Scheme to Wipe Out Nations.

[PRESS ASSOCIATION COPYRIGHT.]

f AUSTHAI JAN AND N.Z. CABLE ABBW. ] New York, Oct. 27. The following message has been released for publication dated New York September 23rd : — The Paris correspondent of the ‘‘New York Times” cables a summary of some remarkable documents headed, “Indisputable Proof of Germany’s Latest Crime.” The publication of the documents is permitted by the French Government which has accepted the verity of the documents and prefaced them with a statement as follows: — : This new crime of Germany s differs from the Lusitania and all other crimes. It is dictated by the criminal idea that if Germany falls she will drag the whole world with her. Germany is deliberately infecting her prisoners with tuberculosis and then casts them back on their own or neutral countries to breed contagion or die. Already 50,000 Frenchman have been inoculated besides thousands of men of other nations. Germany has show camps, but the tuberculosis manufacture is carried on in other camps secretly guarded the existence, whereof is hardly, suspected by any American investigator. In one of the secret camps a German doctor, after mixing tuberculars with convalescents from other diseases in order to spread consumption, said: “Thus 1 wage war in my own fashion.” Thirteen hundred French and a thousand British consumptives were dumped into Switzerland, the disease being so advanced that they were no longer useful as prisoners. Many are dead and thousands in a dying condition. The French Government is treating them in a special hospital at Lyons. Swiss doctors discovered the secret camps. The majority are in salt, coal or iron mines or in drainage reclamation areas. The following report is made by a notable Danish authoress, Madame Karen Branson, who obtained information from prisoners or from French official circles. She says: “We found in Switzerland only the advance guard of Germany’s vic ; tims of consumption, the number of which is growing rapidly. The wholesale manufacture of consumptives is deliberate. It is an organised attempt to destroy the French race as the French are the greatest sufferers. Germany can never defend or explain her treatment of prisoners. There are three forms of camps. In the third prisoners are forced to labour until permanently broken invalids. There is no inspection of these camps, only two doctors having visited them. They are Drs. Blauchod and Speiser, of the Geneva Red Cross.” Dr Blanched asserts that at a certain Krupp factory and coal mines 40 per cent of the prisoners are permanently broken in health. He instances a youth of twenty tied to a post in the open air until his knees were permanently bent. Another form of punishment consists of putting men under light coke ovens, where the heat ana lack of air makes them quickly plead for mercy. The longest period for which men have withstood the torture is two hours. English prisoners are shot at point blank range. I One man imprisoned at Homelburg, Bavarin, stated that mattresses are changed half yearly and are full of vermin. They got sawdust

and chopped straw in their bread, and had a concoction of roastea acorns for breakfast. The prisoner declared that 24,000 prisoners in Munster for shelter dug holes in the ground and covered themselves with turf. In the labour camps despite the icy storms the men only had tents bedded so ill with straw in the mud, covered with vermin, tortured with hunger and dying with cold. Men died nightly. The starving men threw themselves in the mud and lapped up porridge fallen from the pot. The worst treated are the English. A terrible sight are the faces of the dying men with coverlets of rags, some so covered with vermin that one could hardly see the skin. Tvphoid and pneumonia cases are all together. The general drug is a solution of chalk. At the camp itself, the odour gripped one’s throat. After rain the tent floors were covered with water. The tents were too low to stand up in and too wet to lie down. The men spent the nights in misery until death ended it. To the French prisoners, the doctors state Russian prisoners brought the typhus contagion. The disease was spread by vermin, wherefrom the prisoners could not escape. The necessary remedies were not given. The demands of the French to be separated from the diseased Russians were refused by the camp commandant. The doctors assert that the criminal order to mix the sick and the well was given from Berlin in January. Out of 10,000 prisoners there were 4000 deaths. All German officials and doctors left the camps. In many cases tubercular patients were put in the same barracks with men weakened by other diseases. Dr. Blanched adds: “Thus they were easily susceptible to this slow assassination being carried out. It is unquestionable that Germany acted with full apprehension of what she was doing. Since July 10th new orders have been issued, making it more difficult to get information of this, her latest great infamy, but the war is dragging slowly to an end, when beaten and convicted Germany will await her judgment.” FURTHER HORRIFYING REVELATIONS. BRITISH OFFICIAL REPORT. [AUBTOALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSN I London, Oct. 27. The British official report on the epidemic at Gardelegen (in the Province of Saxony), in the spring and summer of 1915 reveals horrifying German mismanagement and callous cruelty equalling that at Wittenburg. The area of the camp was 550 by 550 yards and prisoners were not allowed to leave except on fatigue duties. There was a single bathhouse for 11,000, whereof 4000 were Russians, 6000 French, 700 Belgians and 320 British. The overcrowding was most terrible. The huts were devoid of tables and stools. The men sat on their beds and eat their meals where lay the sick and even the dead. The atI mosphere by day and night was indescribably foetid. The food was bad in quality and the prisoners constantly suffered the pangs of thunger.

J The Russians who had few private parcels were seen on their hands and knees crowding the pit where potato peelings were thrown, struggling to find the rind. Few of the prisoners had boots and overcoats and their sufferings were intensified by the extreme cold and ' absence of proper fires.

The sanitary conditions were horrible. Twelve hundred had to congregate at a single standpipe for personal washing and cleaning utensils and clothes. All were without soap. Some men went for thref months without a bath. The result was that lice swarmed in every garment and blanket. The commandant and guards established a reign of terror and brutality in the camps. Soon there was a state of utter misery and isolation Everyone of them was anaemic and listless.

The authorities early in February fearing an epidemic, chose seven British, French and Russian doctor? and brought them to Gardelegen. The doctors found the smallest quantities of drugs, including four ounces of epsom salts and three or four dozen tablets of quinine, as perin and calomel, and a few lint dressings. The sick cases were now fifty daily. A commissio of German doctor. 1 arrived and spent an hour in th< camp, and half an hour later thf German guards packed up. SOOl not a German was left inside tht camp. The sick were left utterly unattended, the kitchens wer< empty. Brunner, the commandant of the camp, summoned the seven doctors to the edge of the barbed wire and told them that the sentries would shoot anyone attempting to leave. He added he would return to the spot daily to receive reports. The doctors were faced with an appalling situation. There were no beds for the sick men. The state of the patients on the floors was indescribable. There was no milk or eggs. The sick were fed on black bread and raw herrings like the rest of the prisoners. The doctors commenced to sort the cases and isolate the convalescents. The epidemic lasted four months and totalled 2000 cases, whereof 14 per cent died. Brunner and the other camp authorities were actively hostile throughout. The doctors encouraged games of football, but Brunner ordered the games to be stopped on pain of severe punishment.

STILL FURTHER EVIDENCE.

LADY NOVELIST'S TESTIMONY

(AUBT»«I.I*N «ND N.Z HABT.K assn. I (Received 23, 8.50 a.m.) New York, Oct. 27. A message dated September 24th has now been released by the censor. It states that Gertrude Atherton, novelist, who recently spent four months in France in a letter to the “New York Times,” con firms the French charges that the Germans deliberately infect prisoners with tuberculosis.