SHAMEFUL ATROCITIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 279, 23 November 1914, Page 4

SHAMEFUL ATROCITIES.

Atrocities that would have shamed the' most savage of Red Indians have been committed by the Germans, writes the London correspondent of a Yorkshire newspaper. The Kaiser’s protests that his soldiers have been innocent of wan-1 ton brutality deceive nobody in Europe. Every country is harbouring re-, fugees driven from their homes by the ■ ravaging Huns, and the wounded back! from the front give us the testimony j of eye-witnesses. Godly men are so shocked by what they have heard that they catch themselves hoping that the Cossacks have not outlived their ancient reputation. It is impossible to describe some of these atrocities in print. Just as in the Indian Mutiny the Sepoys were of unmentionable offences, so the cultured Germans of to-day have perpetrated crimes which put them right beyond the pale of civilisation. Murder and rapine, destruction and death mark their path everywhere, and our hospitals contain living evidence of a revolting system of torture which makes the blood run cold. At Folkestone are little children with their hands hacked off at the wrist to prevent them ever carrying a rifle. In the hospitals of Franc© are young girls and women who have been mutilated by the sword to stop them ever suckling a baby. In the London Hospital at this, momept is the wreck of a magnificent young man who was dropped on the battlefield by a piece of shell penetrating his abdomen. His fiancee was not permitted to see him when his return to London was notified to his parents. Her brother said that he would go, but when he reached the hospital the officials tried to dissuade him from seeing his sister’s future husband because he was “rather a sight.” He persisted. When he got to the inert form in the bed he discovered that while the British soldier lay stricken on the field, the German soldiers had put out both his eyes, and also cut off his hands. Horrified and angered, the visitor returned to his sister, told her part of what he had seen, and though he had not previously contemplated such a course, went straight to the nearest recruiting depot and enlisted.