BELGIUM.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 20 May 1915, Page 2

BELGIUM.

r^n —rr • v> UNDER WJt&&&MTJE& * , . J— '' :'V ' The Paris correspondent of the Morning Jt*ost writes. "Whue I am pbVAOUsly not in a position to confirm all the countlei>afttioeities attributed to the Germans, 'the knowledge I have forces me to regard any t or all of them as probable, liere, tor instance, are some ot the, things that they have done w-hich I c^n voucn tor:'Wnen the Germans came to they insisted that the banker should hand over to them the key ot the sate. He was still m bed, and retused, and was shot dead. The othcer in charge then made the same demand of his \\ ile, threaten ng that if she did not hand over the key he would kill her daughter befoie her eyes. The woman bravely retused, and &aw her daughter shot m front ot her. The sight sent the unhappy - woman >ma<J >T ! ' "Arrests are being made wholesale. 4 boy was brought in one <lay from the country, having been made to walk twenty-rive or thirty miles, ■ his crime being tnat he had oeen fdurid selling calendars, the string' of which was :n strands of blackj yellow and red —the Belgian colors. Another boy "was arrested and kept, in prison because his dog had caught a hare.. Even .though the country is "badly devastated, no Belgian may have anything in his possession, even that his dbg catches. An old man, who limned so badly that any idea of his I)eirig" fit for niilitary service was impossible; was lakeri prisoner with his son of fourteen,: and has been carried from prison to prison without knowing of what" he is accused. He has now been a prisoner for three months. Anybody, whether man or woman, who tries to cross' the Dutch frontier, is ■shot *t: hy the sentries bh sight; ana1 oo fciie vii ermun (jrovernmeht arid'^ask for a passport is arrested and kept in prison for a month or two without trial. Whenever a Belgian- is allowed to cross the frontier, all gold is taker from him and German paper money is given in exchange, a fact that §h6ulcl be remembered vi view of the ultimate settlement, when Germany should be forced to redeem all German paper money held outside Germany at par. "To have a newspaper in one's possession is a. very.. serious offence, sis months' imprisonment for the person who provides it and a month for the person who reads it. Despite this, papers still come in. *A singfe copy oi one London paper fetched 250 francs and- I myself used to pay four francs for the privilege •" of reading a Londor daily for half an hour. In Liege it is against the law for a light to be usec at night, and it the sentries ever sec a; light they shoot through the windows, one man whom I knew, who was ill, being killed in bed as he turnec on a light. "The mentality of the Germans i: scarcely intelligible. One of their soldiers came up to me and said that h« could not understand why they were being' called barbarians^ and asked me for an explanation. I refused to explain, telling him that if I did I shoulc undoubtedly be shot. It is perhaps hardly necessary to confirm the, trutl of the statement that when1 the Germans came in all sorts of Germar 'civilians' resident in our towns blossomed out into uniforms. The preseni ,head of the passport office at Brussels for instance, was one of the big shipping agents at Antwerp, and his business now is so to administer his office as to prevent all trade between Belgium and Holland. All sorts of pillage has been indulged in—much of ii senseless and wanton. Of pillage there 13 abundant evidence. Some friends oi mine near Waterloo were offered trinkets worth perhaps twenty or thirtj francs for fifty centimes." At manj places I can confirm the fact that the handles have been pulled off the doors. At the Ministry in" Brussels I saw all the beautiful old office furniture being taken out and burnt for firewood, aftei all the metal handles had been removed. Another fact, which seems to indicate a shortage of material in Germany, is that at Berlin the police have ■stopped wearing their helmets and are using caps instead, because the helmets are wanted for the army. The soldiers in the German army have been told the most extraordinary stories with a view to increasing their hatred. Some of them definitely believed that civilians had thrown vitriol at them, and the officers repeatedly told them that that was so, though obviously there is no foundation for the statement."