FORCED LABOR.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 24 May 1915, Page 2

FORCED LABOR.

Germany has consented to send back a certain number of these captives Co France. The impression they made as they passed through SwitzeVland was pitiable. She does not repatriate all the captives that she took from the North of France. Those who can still hew stones and carry water are retained in captvity. They are to be used to help Germany out of her industrial and agricultural difficulties. read a notice in yesterday's papers printed in Basle to the effect that the German authorities are reserving ; certain military grounds, near Mulhausen and Colmar, for the cultivation of potatoes, to be carried on by military "captives," under the supervision of Landsturm men with rifles and bayonets. Germany cannot excuse herself by pointing out that France also is using some of her prisoners of war to make roads in Morocco, and exploying them in similar labors in the South of France. These are real nrisoners of war, that is to say, soldiers who were captured or surrendered with arms in their hands. But they are not civilians dragged^ away from their villages and homes, husbands separated from their wives, fathers and mothers torn away from their children. Besides, the prij soners so used -by the French fully i realise their condition as prisoners of j war. Theey know that, according to all the rules of modern warfare, France has a right to treat them as I prisoners of war, and in most cases i they even ask to be allowed to work, I and are happy when they get the peri mission, for the work assigned to them jis only what they ai-e accustomed to. !It permits them, moreover, to earn j trifling sums with which to improve their lot as prisoners, and also helps to make their captivity less tedious. Their lot is far different from that of the civilian, who bore no arms, who met the invader without offering resistance, and who was ruthlessly torn away from his home and his family.