BELGIAN COMMISSION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16793, 22 February 1915, Page 8

BELGIAN COMMISSION.

REPORT OF INQUIRY RECEIVED IN CHRISTCHURCH. ENTER ESTING PROCLAMATIONS. Mr Cyril Ward, the Belgian Consul in Christchurch, has received a translation of the sixth report from the Belgian Commission of Inquiry into the German . atrocities in Belgium. The report deals with tho proclamations made by the German commanders in various town in stricken Belgium, warning the inhabitants to be quiet, and not to attempt reprisals. Tho following item is interesting, in that it confesses to tho deliberate burning of the village of Andenne: — Abstract from proclamation to the municipal authorities of the city of Liege (August 22, 1914):

" The inhabitants of Andenne, after their protestation of their peaceful feelings, have made a treacherous surprise on the German troops. "With my approval the general in chief has ordered the whole place to be set on fire, and that one hundred persons be shot. "I bring this fact under notice of the city of Liege, in order that its inhabitants may have present in their minds the lot threatened to them should they assume a similar attitude.

(Signed) General-in-Chief. VON BULOW." The first statement in the proclamation is contradicted by the inhabitants of Andenne.

Then follows a series of military notices from Brussels, Wavre, Termonde and Namur, regulating the hours in which inhabitants may be abroad, and in one case ordering that each house is to have unlocked doors and three windows illuminated at night. The order at Wavre calls for monetary donations, and at Namur the inhabitants are commanded, under the pain of execution, to give up Belgian, French or British soldiers, and to give information as to any soldiers in hiding. The Commission of Inquiry adds the following:— "Who can feel astonished after such publications of murder, incendiarism, pillages and destruction committed' everywhere where the German army meets with resistance, that a German corps, and that the patrols, may have been, received at the entrance of a village by a shock

of fire fired by soldiers belonging to the regular troops, who were afterwards forced to reinforce the population, who were declared responsible. Civilians were accused of having fired where there was co-operation to the defence, and without inquiry the locality was delivered to pillage and incendiarism, and part of the inhabitants were massacred."

[ INTERN ALL GERMANS.

A MASTERTON SUGGESTION.

"MAY ACT DANGEROUSLY." [From Our Cobjiespondknt.] MASTERTON, February 20. Following on the pronounced antiBritish views expressed by certain Germans in Masterton, the following petition is being circulated and signed in Masterton:— "We, the undersigned, loyal BHtish subjects of the Masterton. district, knowing that there are many enemy subjects living in our midst, and also that several of them have been expressing their opinions freely against the Allies, and, fearing "that when the enemy meets with a crushing blow, which will assuredly happen before long, that some of the above enemy subjects will be acting dangerously towards lis,- request that all enemy subjects now at liberty in this district should have their liberty curtailed until the end of the war and be interned in a place of safety. Tt is also suggested that those Germans who are possessed of wealth .should lie made to assist in keeping the poorer ones, so that there should be no expense whatever to the country."