THE WAR BILL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VIII, Issue 52, 13 February 1918, Page 6

THE WAR BILL.

INDEMNITIES OR RUIN. [AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASS’N.] Amsterdam, Feb. 12. Count von Preysing in the Bavarian Upper House interpellated the Government on Germany's war bill. He said that taxation after the war would be 9.000,000,000 marks, or fourfold of that before the war. necessitating an average taxation of from 50 to 60 per cent of all incomes or the confiscation of capital to a minimum of forty* to fifty milliards of marks. The F inance Minister admitted that ten milliards would be required to meet interest. Other speakers deplored the statement as creating an impression that Germany was faced with financial ruin unless she got indemnities.

Count Terring, the Crown Prince’s brother-in-law, declared that the Imperial Government would not insist on indemnities. They should strive for an honourable peace, not a pan-Gertnan peace.

SLAVE-DRIVING HUN.

STARVATION AND BRUTALITY

BELGIAN ESCAPEE S STORY

London, Feb. 3.

Beuter has received from a trustworthy* Belgian citizen who has escaped from Valenciennes an account of the appalling conditions of the occupied districts of Belgium and France, of which little news ever reaches England. He confirms the reports that a highly-organised system of slavery exists. Ail civilians are compelled to work for the Germans. Even little girls of from twelve to fourteen cannot go to school because they must collect nettles and acorns. Everyone wears a brassard showing to which town he belongs, and some wear a stripp round the leg, denoting that they have attempted to escape. Reuter’s information says that he saw an old man with a large, cross painted on his back, but he did not know w’hat this signified. The life of these civilians is ! dreadful, but is nothing as compared with that of the war prisoners, especially the English and Russian. It was while this informant was endeavouring to give a starving Russian a little of his own small supply* of food that a guard knocked out his teeth with the butt-end of his rifle. The escapee took a handful of teeth out of his pocket and showed his disfigured jaw in eloquent, proof. | He explained what “requisitioning” really means. For example, [ domestic clocks and lamps were; broken for copper, mattresses were ripped for wool, all sacks and spare clothes were seized. Everyone must declare every possession. People were dragged to prison for hiding a poun<L#f potatoes or a single egg. As instances of brutality he told how an Alsatian absentee was murdered by a non-com., who struck a woman who remonstrated with such force that she became deaf. A little girl of thirteen was shot dead for attempting to cross the Franco-Belgian frontier for bread. The informant, who possesses dates and names in every case cited, concluded. “Wherever yon turn your eyes it is the same tragedy of starvation and slavery and untold brutality.”