POLISH CHILDREN FLOGGED.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9336, 28 December 1901, Page 3

POLISH CHILDREN FLOGGED.

CRUEL GERMAN SENTENCES ON PROTESTING PARENTS.

CRACOW, Nov. 20. Shocking accounts arrive here of the flogging of Polish children by Prussian schoolmasters for refusing to learn the catechism and say their prayers m the German language, which they do not understand. These floggings have recently been frequent m the Government schools of Prussian Poland, and the other day there was a general flogging of nearly all the' pupils of the school at Wrzesnia, which nearly produced a riot. « The market-place m front of the school was crowded with weeping mothers and sympathising husbands and brothers, some of whom used very strong language on the conduct of! the school authorities. For this they were arrested on the charge of insulting Government officials. The sentences passed on the paretits are very severe. One mother was sentenced to two and a half years' imprisonment, others, for periods varying from one month to two years, but all were condemned to be pub m chains. The Polish newspapers are indignant at the outrageous sentences. Some of the German papers point out that even m Russia ' Polish children are not forced to learn the catechism m a foreign language, and' that no such, compulsion is practised on. Boer children m English schools.