Hun Brutalities.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VII, Issue 292, 4 October 1917, Page 5

Hun Brutalities.

DEPORTED BELGIANS.

STORY OF HORRIBLE SUFFERING.

(Received 4, 8.45 a.m.) New York, Oct. 3. The Belgian Government has given the New York “Times” an official report on the sufferings of the Belgian deporteds. “It is no exaggeration to say they are being starved, yet despite their utter weakness they are driven like slaves to the heaviest work- The guards use clubs on the sick and exhausted. One complained and was' beaten to death with a rifle butt. This treatment has rendered many hopeless imbeciles. Hungry men were taunted and maddened by the sight of food which they were not allowed to eat.”

A TERRIBLE PICTURE.

“ENOUGH TO MAKE THE STONES WEEP.”

Reuter’s Agency last month states that a citizen of Liege who has succeeded in escaping from Belgium, draws a terrible picture of the sufferings of the repatriated deportees and of the brutality with, which the unfortunate people are still treated by the Germans. This escaped Belgian has been engaged since March at an infirmary outside Liege station; and has witnessed the arrival of train after train of repatriated deportees. Only a small proportion of the men have come back at all, and these are so broken and exhausted as to be useless for work. Describing what he had seen, Reuter’s informant said:

“Many of the men in these deportees’ trains had to be detrained at Liege, owing to their desperate condition. It was only with great difficulty that some doctors and voluntary workers obtained permission from the Germans to tend the starving.'sick, and dying. Never shall I forget the terrible scenes I have witnessed. The trains contained sometimes 500 to 900 men who had been for three days practically without food. A great many of them had their feet and legs frost-bitten or frozen off, and had to be carried on stretchers. They had been obliged to walk for hours in their stockinged feet in the snow. Often gangrene had set in, and the men died within a few days. We had an average of two deaths every day in our small infirmary. Some of them were so famished that they could not take any food, and had to be fed with a spoon. Others ate ravenously anything that they could snatch from your hand. Eighty per cent, are stricken with tuberculosis, and will never recover. Such is the result of a few months spent in the German prison camps at Kommandos. “The first time we saw them alight from the train we could not believe that these ragged ghosts, with, haggard faces and feet wrapped in muddy sackcloth, could be the same men who had passed through Liege, singing patriotic songs, on their way to Germany. According to their reports, many have died over there. Many also died on the way home, every train bringing a load of three or four dead as well as the dying. Many more died at home later, after horrible sufferings, from the incurable diseases which they have contracted. But these physical tortures are nothing beside the moral trials to which they have been subjected. Some of the men have gone quite mad. and do not realise that they have come back. One of the men I attended, in his delirium, repeated unceasingly the same cry, while making a movement as if pushing something away. ‘I will not sign, I will not sign!’ He did not, and he died for it in my arms. As an old woman said to me who was waiting for her son to be returned, ‘ls it not enough to make the stones weep?’ ”

POPE’S BELATED EFFORTS.

SILENT SPECTATOR IN 1914

PEACE PLEADER IN 1917.

(Received, 4, 10.20 a.m.) Rome, October 3.

The Giornale D’ltalia states that the Pope has issued a nova to the Entente Powers intimating he has reason to believe that’ the Central Powers replies to his note may be regarded as an intimation of Germany’s readiness to evacuate Belgium and Northern France. The Pope asks “shall he request Germany to state her precise conditions ?” AUSTRIAN PRESS ANGRY. [REUTER’S TELEGRAMS,] (Received 4, 12.45 p.m.) Amsterdam, Oct. 3. The Austrian Press is angry at the German reply to the Vatican and Dr Michaelis’ speech on the Papal suggestions. Austrian papers have denounced Dr. Michaelis as an empty pedant refusing to define German aims regarding Belgium.

FREEDOM.

NOTHING SHORT OF FREEDOM

Comment on the discussion in the House of Commons on 26th July on the Reichstag Peace Resolution discloses the absolute want of confidence the British Parliament has in any professed willingness by Germany to voluntarily evacuate Belgium and Northern France. It will be remembered (the writer of the comment says) that the new German Chancellor gave the Reichstag Peace Resolution a tepid benediction—such as Mr As„qi>ith?s description' —though Dr. Michaelis cautiously added, ‘‘so far as I understand it.” The British pacifists showed no such caution. They were quite sure that they knew perfectly what it meant. Mr Ramsay MacDonald, Mr Trevelyan, Mr Snowden, Mr Joseph King, Mr Morrell, Mr Lees Smith—all these pretend to know to a hair’s breadth exactly what the Reichstag wants and what the German people want. They are a little more modest as to. their acquaintance with the real intentions of the Kaiser, Dr. Michaelis, and Hindenburg, but during tlje debate they gave the House an astonishing exhibition of self-con-eeited vanity. They got a most patient and tolerant hearing. Interruptions were very few. But they drew no plaudits save from one ' another, and they could all have been accommodated in the inside of a ’bus. Mr Bonar Law invited them to press their motion to a division, and said that the best service they could do to the cause of peace was to disclose to the world the smallness of their numbers. They tried to talk out time, but were foiled by the closure, and in the division lobby could only muster nineteen votes. According to them, the Reichstag resolution means that Germany does not want annexations. Mr Asquith and Mr Bonar Law read the situation in an absolutely opposite sence. Mr Asquith—who spoke most eloquently— said that the out- ( come. of the recent obscure political struggle in Germany was that the military chiefs had gained the upper hand, dismissed the late Chancellor, and put in a spokesman ’ of their own. The influence of the Reichstag, such as it was, was a negligible quantity. , Mr. Bonar Law pointedly asked' Germany’s friends to tell him whether she was willing to quit Belgium and the North of France, and make full reparation for the destruction, she has wrought there. Is Germany prepared, asked Mr. Asquith, to restore to Belgium "complete and un-j fettered and absolute independence” ? He said he would like the German Chancellor’s answer to that direct question, and to half-a-seoru 1 others. Neither Mr. Asquith, nor Mr. Bonar Law, nor Mr, Wardle —

who spoke with unusual vigour amid the sneers of the Socialist “intellectuals” confronting him — believes anything of the sort. Germany never states her peace terms, observed Mr. Bonar Law. Why? Because the last tiling she means is what her never-failing apologists in this country say she means. They do not seem to care how the war' ends, as long as it does end, believing that if tney are called in to the settlement they can start the whole world on a new basis. The conceit of their pose is ineffable. Mr. W ardle saw no sign of repentance as yet on the part of the Socialist majority in Germany. The German people sided with the Government, and peace could not come until they eiiforced on that Government a respect for moral ideas. ‘ At present there is none, and the war itself was due to this very fact. Germany went to war because she was convinced that the hour had coihe when she could make it pay. It cannot end, in Mr. Bonar Law’s view, until the German people are com vinced by military disaster that war does not pay. But this means- a war of attrition, said the horrorstricken Pacifists, and they hinted as broadly as they dared that this would lead from discontent to revolution, while in Germany they foster the idea that we are faltering in our determination. Faltering ! Mr. Bonar Law repudiated the idea with scorn. Our resources, he said, were fully sufficient, if our hearts did not fail us now. The crisis was dangerous, and all the nations were staggering under the load, hut a stout courage would pull us through,. especially as the real issue was Right against Wrong and Moral Force against Wickedness. One sentence of Mr. Asquith’s struck the imagination of the House. “We are fighting,” he said, “for nothing but freedom, and for nothing short of freedom.” “We are. fighting,” said Mr. Bonar Law, “for the right of ourselves and of others to live our lives in our own way in peace and security.” There is the whole matter in a nutshell. “Peace has become the supreme interest of mankind.” But it must be a real peace, and not lie under the shadow of German militarism.