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New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9174, 14 October 1915, Page 4

“Don’t you think ’ the_ chamber should take steps in the direction of inducing employers to taka joint action towards refusing to employ single men eligible to go to the front?” remarked Mr C. L. Innes at a meeting of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce last Monday night. He considered, he added, that an employer who retained a man in his service who could not give satisfactory reasons for not offering his services to the Empire was an abettor to the deliquency. Several members considered the matter out of the province of the chamber, and that to follow the course suggested would mean the introduction of a mild form of conscription. , A pathetic instance of the extent to which the German barbarities in Belgium were carried during the earlier months of the war, was related by Major de Mart’n, an officer of the Belgian army, at a patriotic meeting at Mount Albert, Auckland. Major de Martin said that when he was in London, before coming out to New Zealand, he was summoned to the Charing Cross Hospital, where, ho was told, a Flemish boy, speaking the dialect of the south of Belgium, was unable to make himself understood. Lying in a bed at the hospital he found a lad of about fourteen years of age. Both his hands had been cut o'ff at the Wrists. Encouraged to explain for what reason he had suffered this great misfortune, the hoy said that when he was out scouting he was caught by a German officer, who asked him all sorts of questions, but was unable to extract an answer. After receiving a number of kicks and blows, he was handed over to a surgeon, who, failing to gain any information, sent him to the provost marshal. He was then given into the charge of a butcher, who took him behind the lines. His hands were cut off. and he was unmercifully thrown into at ditch, where he lay until picked up hy a Bavarian officer, who took compassion on and gave the boy assistance.