THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF BELGIUM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16238, 23 November 1914, Page 6

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION OF BELGIUM.

The commands given by the Kaiser to his troops when they 6ot out some years ago for Peking and when they sut out for Belgium in 1314 are now widely known. How tho Germans in 1870 punished the Frano-tiieurs ie aleo known; but in those days tho Germans had strong men in their lead Bismarck and Moltke, though stern in war ajid. unscrupulous in taking any military advantage, would net have countenanced such shocking deeds and libertine acts as have been perpetrated by the Germans in tho present war. and actually eanctioned by the egoist who to-day is head of the great German war machine. The principle, of subduing by terror, so horribly carried out, shows that from a time before tho war broke out Germany had decided to make Belgium a German province, and that she intended to people the deserted towns, villages, and plains with plantations of settlers from' the congested areas of Saxony or some other thickly populated provinoe. The Germans have had their troubles with tho disaffected Poles and Alsatians, and they want no disaffected population in the new dominions which they apparently think they now possess in perpetuity. They are appointing governors to the separate provinces of Belgium, and they have already sent professors and schoolmasters to reorganise the schools, and if they had the men to spare they would be sending immigrants to fill the towne that are now deserted. When the Belgians get their country back it will be quite within tho bounds of possibilities that they will pass a law forbidding the entrance into tTTeir country of undesirables, and it requires no comment to say who will be the undesirables