NAMELESS ATROCITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15767, 16 November 1914, Page 4

NAMELESS ATROCITIES.

WOUNDED MEN MUTILATED.

EYES PUT OUT.

I Atrocities that would have shamed the most savage of Red Indians have been committed by the Germans, writes the London correspondent of a Yorkshire newspaper. The Kaiser's protests that his soldiers have been innocent of warton brutality deceive nobody in Europe. Every country is harbouring refugees driven, from their homes by the ravaging Huns, and the wounded back from the front give us the testimony of eye-witnesses. Godly men are so shocked by what they have heard that they catch themselves hoping that the Cossacks have not outlived their ancient reputation. It is impossible to describe some of these atrocities in print. Just as m the Indian Mutiny the Sepoys were guilty of unmentionable offences, so the cultured Germans of to-day have perpetrated crimes which put them right beyond the pale of civilisation. Muruer and rapine, destruction and death mark their path everywhere, and our hospitals contain living evidence of a revolting system of torture which makes the blood run cold. At Folkestone are little children with their hands liacked off at the wrists to prevent them ever carrying a rifle. In the hospitals of France are young girls and women; who have been mutilated by the sword to stop them ever suckling a baby. In the London Hospital at this moment is the wreck of a magnificent young man who was j dropped on the battiehdd by a piece of a shell penetrating his abdomen. Hid fiancee was not permitted to see him when his return to London was notified to his parents. Her brother said that he would go, but when he reached the hospital the officials tried to dissuade him from seeing his sister's future husband because he was "rather a sight.""" He persisted. When he got to the inert form on the bed he discovered that while the British soldier lay stricken on the field the German soldiers had put out both his eyes, and also cut off hi hands. Horrified and angered, the visitor returned to his sister, told her part of what he had seen, and though he had not previously contemplated such a course, went straight to the nearest recruiting depot and enlisted. When in the future you hear well-meaning people pleading for mercy for the blackguardly German soldier, confront them with these abominable and authenticated facts. The corrupting legions of Germany are slowly being driven from the neutral soil of Belgium, and they have not taken away with them even a moiety of the taxes which they levied upon the citizen towns that they occupied. When they demanded a tribute of £10,000,000 from Brussels there were many who feared that the British loan to Belgium would go toward the liquidating of this iniquitous impost. The Belgians had, however, too much sense to hand any of this gift to the invader, and the rich men of Brussels who were supposed to have undertaken to satisfy the German exaction omitted to produce the coin.. Belgium is not, therefore, anything like as poor as the Kaiser and his generals intended. As a looter of a fallen foe's property the Chief War Lord piously tried to follow in the footsteps of his Napoleonic ideal. The Little Corporal levied upon the defeated nations and cities contributions which made the progress of his arms productive. The financial situation of France was kept buoyant by the process. The occupation of Rome enabled General Berthier to send a considerable sum to Paris. So pleased was he with this thieving that he styled himself " Treasurer of the War Chest of the Army of England," in allusion to the projected invasion of the British Isles for which this cash was to be employed. When the allied armies drove the Borers away from Pekin the Germans returned to the Fatherland laden with priceless loot and the present generation of Uhlans will also go down to history as amongst the most expert of light-fingered robbers. In trying to squeeze £28,000,000 from the Belgians the Kaiser has only been modelling himself on Napoleon, but whereas Napoleon trot the money, the Kaiser's armies are being harried beyond the frontiers of Belgium without their war-chests being heavy with Belgian coin.