GERMAN ATROCITY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 3 May 1932, Page 5

GERMAN ATROCITY

VON BULOW CONDEMNS EXECU. TION OF NURSE CAVELL 1 BITTER WAR BOOK LONDON, 11th April. ■ Commenting, in the latest published volume of his memoirs on the shooting of Nurse Cavelf and Captain Fryatt, the late Prince von Bulow, at one time Chancellor, declares that the usefulness of such punishments was incommensurate with the moral obloquy incurrod, and that therefore they could not be justified. “Frightfulness,” he says, “is a bad method of waging war.” The latest volume of tho memoirs is' likely to arouse greater controversy than the earlier volumes. The most startling charge in a book filled with bitter-', pass is that the Belgians officially manufactured stories of German atrocities. ’ When seeking to persuade Italy toy enter the war, lie says, tho Belgians arranged for the sale of little statues of the Madonna gazing pityingly, and a kneeling child raising its bleeding wrists and praying the Holy Mother to make whole again'the hands which the barbarous Germans had hacked off. - Von Bulow asserts that no German soldier ever mutilated a French or a Belgian child. BAD EFFECT “I do not think,” he says, “there ever ■ has been an army bettor disciplined, stricter, or more essentially humane,” and adds, “our neglect of the signed obligation with respect to Belgium—the bad effect of which was aggravated by the clumsy Reichstag speech of. the, Chancellor. (Bethmann-IIollweg), and made still worse by his wretched descrip- ' tion of international treaties as ‘scraps of paper’—definitely harmed us in Italy . and elsewhere, and the Belgian propaganda easily aroused sympathy for a Belgium traitorously assailed.” Von Bulow reveals how Emperor Francis Joseph flew into a rage when the Pope’s emissary attempted to convey the Pope’s appeal to stop hostilities. He refused to allow the Cardinal to finish, seized him by an arm, and thrust him from the room.