GERMAN SLAVE TIRADE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3278, 10 January 1917, Page 16

GERMAN SLAVE TIRADE.

Repatriated Belgians narrate that the Germans punish slave-raid victims who refupe to work. They are placed in a longbox like an upstanding coffin, where it is impossible to more for several hours. The victims are afterwards put into a cell for a time, and then returned to the box, the alternation continuing until they are willing to obey. The Germans have fined the Burgomaster of Antwerp 10,000 marks because he refused to supply a list of unemployed preparatory to their deportation. The Echo do Beige says that 304 deported people are at Quaregnon (five miles west of Mons), including among them being 227 employed. Seventy per cent, of the staffs of the blast furnaces and factories at La Louviere- (10 miles- east of Mens] have been deported, their summonses arriving while thev were working at their trade.

Four hundred Belgians, deported from Cainbrai. were forced to fell trees in Avicourt Forest under the Allies' bombardment. They were badly fed and' exposed to the weather. Many of them contracted pneumonia, but were forced to leave the hospital before recovery. Those refusing to sign working contracts were ordered to stand in the open air naked to the waist, and otherwise ill-treated. The plight of 3000 others from Cassel is no better. Tho New York Times learns that the Germans arc forcing the civilian population in the occupied portions of Belgium and France to do distinctly military work, such as digging and preparing trenches, laying

electrio wires for military purposes, and preparing ground for wire entanglements.