PITIFUL STORIES OF THE GERMANS LAST BRUTALITIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16498, 26 March 1917, Page 5

PITIFUL STORIES OF THE GERMANS LAST BRUTALITIES

.VILLAGERS' HOMES BURNED BEFORE THEIR EYES. ,: - , INHABITANTS ILL THROUGH LACK OF FOOD. . United Smite. received 5.5 p.m.) LONDON. March >21. Describing a visit to the reoccupied districts,, Mr. Beach Thomas, , correspondent of the Daily Mail, says:-The faces of the residents'-; : depict weakness and illness. Pitiful stories are told of i the invaders' ' last brutalities. The villagers were assembled while their homes were- '■'. burned. They were enslaved, ; and towards: the last almost -starved. There was a high mortality, owing. to lack of milk ■ and other'- neces- ■ saries. . The ;recreating. Germans indulged in a saturnalia of bestiality, \ breaking ,open coffins, J scribbling obscenities on churches, 1 and defiling"' C sacred places. , ' ' Router. 1 ■ • . : . (Received *9 p.m.) PARIS.: March 24. : - , Heartrending stories ; come from the reconquered districts. , Children were found wandering j ghost-like 'among,- the ; ruins of : their V.. homes. r The soldiers supplied the inhabitants -of -some districts with' the first food they had had for, days. , The French inhabitants had had* no meat since September and no milk for a- year. They did not receive a ■ quarter^of the rations supplied by the : American Relief ; Com- r ". mission. •'-.-'- There is appalling -,devastation everywhere on the .line of the retreat. At Chauny 1800 out of 2500 buildings were destroyed, in- ■•' cluding churches and public buildings.- All males between the- ages-of, 14 and. 50 were carried off. '. The enemy horded women' and children ... and the feeblest inhabitants from; 13 surrounding communes in ; a certain quarter of the town and then trained their guns on this ; quarter',-; killing and wounding many. . The statement ;; that 1 the - Germans:. are ~ poisoning wells with arsenic is officially confirmed.-. ■■.'. : , < ;■%.,■• * ;.•