WAR TIME STORY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 277, 27 October 1925, Page 8

WAR TIME STORY

WAS IT AN INVENTION? CONTROVERSY IN BRITAIN. Received October 26, 11.30 a.m. LONDON, Oct. 25. Mr Baldwin is intervening in the General Charteris controversy, but nothing will be done until General Charteris’s return. The official viewpoint is that no Government could do other than disavow the responsibility for the invention of the story. It is pointed out that the report that the Germans were utilising human corpses arose from statements in Germany’s own newspapers. The Lokal Anzeiger’s war correspondent on October 10, 1917, referred to the great corpse conversion establishment at Evergincourt. The word used lY as “kadavorverwertungsaustalt.’ (similar statements appeared in other German newspapers. The British captuied a photographically reproduced order ot the Sixth German Army dated December 21, 1916, reading: “It is necessary to again draw attention to tne fact that whan corpses are delivered to corpso utilisation establishments details are to accompany them, showing which troops’ units they are from, the date of death, and the illness, and also information regarding epidemics. A search of the War Museum failed to reveal tho forged diary to which General Charteris’s speech referred in the newspaper despatch. Sir Sydney Low, an ex-member ot Lord Northcliffe’s propaganda committee, states: “Our main guiding rule was to tell the truth, not the whole truth; which was impracticable duniig war time. We did not invent or knowingly circulate falsehoods. Accordingly I am utterly confounded at General Charteris’s stunning declaration that he, when one of the heads ot the Intelligence Department, deliberately forged one of the most terrible indictments of German brutality and callousness. When the Germans explained that the corpse factory disposed of animals, not human beings, I accepted the denial. The question was never settled because tho Germans refused to allow neutrals to examine a vat of corpses. If General Charteris’s version is correct, we owe Germany an apology, which should be fully and frankly given.” A tank corps officer, in a letter to the Dispatch, recalls that during tho battle of St. Quentin in 1918 he found an underground tunnel near St. Quentin canal containing huge vats, of which one contained three naked German corpses bound with wire. Another was three-quarters full of an unspeakably horrid liquid, wherein was a body stripped to the waist. He says he firmly believes it was a corpso conversion factory, although the Germans stated that it was a kitchen which a shell had destroyed.—Sydney .Sun cable.

General Charteris. in a speech in America, recently stated that the story of the German corpse boiling down establishment was circulated for prouatranda purposes-