A DELAYED MESSAGE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17311, 28 October 1916, Page 7

A DELAYED MESSAGE.

GERMANY'S CRIME. INOCULATING PRISONERS . WITH TUBERCULOSIS. A TERRIBLE INDICTMENT. j _ The following Australian and New Zealand Cable Association's message has been released for publication, dated Now York, September 23: —"The Paris correspondent of the 'Now York Times' cables a summary of remarkable documents headed 'lndisputable Proof of Germany's Latest Crime.' Publication of the documents was permitted by the French Government, which accepted the verity of the documents and prefaced them with a statement as follows: — ' This new crime of Germany differsfrom the Lusitania and all other crimes. It is dictated by the criminal idea that if Gormany falls she will drag tho whole world with her. Germany is deliberately infecting her prisoners with tuberculosis. Then sho casts them back on their own or neutral nations to breed contagion or to die.. Already 50,000 Frenchmen have been inoculated, besides thousands of men of other nations. Germany has show camps, but the tuberculosis manufacture is carried on in other camps, secretly guarded, whose existence is hardly suspected by any American investigator. At one of these secret camps a German doctor, after mixing tuberculars with convalescents of other diseases in order to spread consumption, said-: '' Thus ■"• wage war in my own fashion." Thirteen hundred French and a thousand British consumptives wero dumped into Switzerland, but the disease was so advanced that they were no longer useful as prisoners. Many are dead and thousands are in a dying condition. The French Government is treating them at a special hospital at Lyons. Swiss doctors discovered the secret camps. The majority of them are in salt, coal or iron mines, or in drainage and reclamation areas. The following report is made.by tho notablo Danish authoress, Madame Karen Bramson, who obtained information from prisoners or French ofiioiaT. sources. She says- "We found in Switzerland only the advance guard of Germany's victims of consumption, the number ot which is growing rapidly. The wholesale manufacture of consumptives is deliberate. It is an organised attempt to destroy the French race, as the French are the greatest sufferers. Germany can never defend or explain her treatment of the prisoners There are three forms of camps'. In the third the prisoners are forced to labour until thev are permanently broken and are invalids. There is no inspection in these camps. Only two doctors visited them. Thev are Dr Blancliard and Dr Speiser, of the. Geneva Red Cross. Dr Blan. chard asserts that at a certain Ivrupp factory and in coal mines 40 per cent of the prisoners aro permanently broken in health. He instances a youth of twenty who was tied to a post- in the open air until his knees wove permanently bent-' "Another form of punishment was nutting men under lighted coke ovens, where the heat and lack of air makes them quickly plead for mercy, The longest period men had withstood this torture was two hours. English prisoners were shot at point-blank range. One man who was imprisoned at Homelburg, Bavaria, stated that the mattresses were changed halt-yearly. They were full of vermin, and there was sawdust and chopped straw m the bread. Thev had a concoction of roasted acorns for 'breakfast. Tho prisoner declared that 24,000 prisoners in Munstcr tor shelter dug holes in the ground and covered themselves with turf. In the labour camps, despite icy storms the men had only tents, and were bedded in straw and mud. They were covered with vermin, tortured by hunger and dying with the cold. Men died nightly Starving men threw themselves Hi the mud and lapped up porridge that had fallen from the pot. " The worst treated were the .bngusn. It was a terrible sight to see the faces of the dving men, with coverlets ot rags. Some were so covered with vermin that one could hardly see the skin. Typhoid and pneumonia cases were all together. The general drug is a solution of chalk. At tho camp itself the odour gripped one's throat, After rain the tent floors were covered with water. The tents were too low to stand up m and too wet-to lie down in. The.men spent the nights in misery until deatu ended their suffering. "' French . prisoners who are doctors state that Russian prisoners brought typhus, and the disease was spread by vermin, from which the prisoners could not escape. Necessary remedies were not c;iven. and the demands of the French to be separated from the diseased Russians was refused 1 by the camp : commandant. The doctors assert that the criminal order to mix sick and well was given from Berlin in January. Out of 10,000 prisoners, thero wero 4000 deaths. All tho German officials and doctors left the camps. In many oases tuberculosis patients were put. m the samo barracks as men weakened by other diseases. " Dr Blanchard adds: ' Thus they were easily susceptible to this slow assassination that was being carried out. It is unquestionable that Germany acted: with a full appreciation of what she. was doing. Since July 10 new orders have been issued making it n?oro diffi- ; ,

cult to got information. This is her latest and greatest infamy, but the war is dragging slowly to an end, and beaten and convicted Germany will await her judgment.' " (This message was published in the "Lyttelton Times" of October 5, having been clipped from- an Australian newspaper.)