"FOULEST IN HISTORY."

Otago Witness, Issue 3325, 5 December 1917, Page 29

"FOULEST IN HISTORY."

GERMAN CRUELTY IN BELGIUM. THOUSANDS DIE OF HUNGER. Mr Hughes, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, has received from the Imperial authorities a despatch relating to the deportation of Belgian workmen to Germany which was written by the United States Minister to Belgium. It is but another evidence of German cruelty. Mr Brand Whitlock, the American Ministor to Belgium, explains that fn 1914 the Commission for Relief in Belgium proposed an arrangement by which the Belgian Government should pay its own employees left in Belgium, and other unemployed men besides, the wages they had been accustomed to receive. "The Belgians," he says wished to do this, both for humanitarian and patriotic purposes. They wished to provide the unemployed with a moans of livelihood, and at ;he same time to prevent their working for the Germans. " The policy was adopted, and hundreds of thousands of idle men received this dole, which was , distributed through the Communes. The presence of these unemployed, however, was a constant temptation to German cupidity. The German Government, after trying unsuccessfully to obtain the lists of these men, served summonses on 1500 to attend at a railway station, but only 750 responded. These were examined by German physicians, and 300 were taken, ill-fed and ill-clothed, in a severe winter. " The rage, the terror Mid despair excited by this measure all over Belgium were beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans poured into Brussels." The Minister says:—"The delegates of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, on returning to Brussels, told the most distressing stories of the scenes of cruelty and sorrow attending the seizures." SIFTING THE STORIES. Almost since that time appalling stories have been related by Belgians coming to the Legation. "It is impossible," adds the Minister, " for us to verify theni. First, because it is necessary for us to exercise all possible tact in dealing with the subject at all, and, secondly, because there is no means of communication between the occupations. Transportation everywhere in Belgium is difficult. The vicinal railways are scarcely operating any more, because of the lack of oil, while all the horses have been taken. The people, who are forced to go from one village to another, must do so on foot, or in vans drawn by the few miserable horses that are left. The wagons of the breweries, the one institution that the Germans have scrupulously respected, are hauled by oxen. The well known tendency of sensational reports to exaggerate themselves, especially in time of war, and in a situation like that existing here with no newspapers 'to serve as a daily clearing house for all the rumours that are as avidly believed as they are eagerly repeated, should, of course, be considered; but even if a modicum of all that is told is true there still remains enough to stamp this deed as one of the foulest that history records. BRUTALITY AND CRUELTY. " I am constantly in receipt of reports from all over' Belgium," continues the Minister, " that tend 'to bear out the stories one constantly hears of brutality and cruelty. A number of men sent back to Mons are said to be in a dying condition. Many of them are tubercular. At Melines and at Antwerp returned men have died, their friends asserting that they have been victims of neglect and cruelty, of cold, exposure, and hunger. I have had requests from tho burgomasters of 10 communes from La Louviere asking that permission bo obtained to send to the deported men in Germany packages of food similar to those that are being sent to prisoners of war. So far the German authorities have refused to permit this, except in special instances, and returning Belgians claim that, even when such packages are received, they are used by the camp authorities only as another means of coercing them to sign the agreements to work. It is said that, in spite of the liberal salary promised to those who would sign voluntarily, no mone3' has as yet been received in Belgium from workmen in Germany. FIRE OF HATRED. " Ono interesting result of the deportations remains to be noted, a result that once K more places in relief the German capacity for blundering, which is almost as KToat as the German capacity for cruelty. This has dealt a mortal blow to any prospect that they ever have had of being tolerated bv the population of Flanders. In 'tearing away from nearlv every humble home in the land a husband, a father, or a son and a brother, they have lighted a fire of hatred that will never go out. They have brought home to every heart in the land in a way that will impress its horror indelibly on the memory of three generations : a realisation of what German methods mean, not as with the early atrocities in the heat of passion and tho first lust of war, but by one of those deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race —a deed coldly olanned, studiously matured, and deliberately and systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are said to have wept at its execution, and so monstrous that even Gorman officers are now said to bo ashamed." Summer-time has now boon introduced in Russia. It is calculated that it will mean in Petrograd alone a monthly saving of 800,000 tons of coal.