GERMAN CHILDREN'S WAR TOYS.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14656, 9 March 1918, Page 2

GERMAN CHILDREN'S WAR TOYS.

RUINS OF FRENCH AND BELGIAN

TILLAGES,

French Headquarters

The Christmas gifts to the German children this year do not bring any suggestion of love and good-will forwards others.; On the contrary, they jtend to augment the sentiment of hatred towards children of other nations, and to teach the German little ones to gloat over the miseries and hardships of the small folk of tho enemies of the German Fatherland.

I was privileged to have a private view of a collection of toys intended for distribution in Germany at Christmas and the New Year, specimens of which have just reached France by a roundabout route. Most prominent among the "playthings" for the entertainment and amusement of the rising generation of Germans were models in lead of the ruins of French and Belgian villages ravaged and laid to waste by the German troops.

Every detail of the heaps of bricks and mortar and stones, which are all that remain of hundreds of small hamlets and villages and towns in. the north of France and in Belgium, is reproduced in miniature., for the delectation of the1 German children. In addition to these are pictfure-books filled with illustrations of military operations, in which, .of 'course, the German troops always have the upper hand and their enemies are without exception anni hilated

There "documents of the great war' form but a small part of the collection now being gathered in the Library and Museum of the War founded under the auspices of tie French ..Ministry of Public Instruction and the Fine Arts. Among the most interesting features of the library museum are the medals struck by order of the German Emperor in honour of German "victories," such as the sinking of the Lusitania and-the Sussex. These are surrounded by articles of jewellery and 4ilce adornment for German women and girls, consisting of brooches', earrings, and scarf-pins in the shape and colours of the iron cross and regimental insignia, such as that of the Death's Head Hussars.—lleuter.