THROUGH GERMAN EYES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144713, 23 June 1915, Page 6

THROUGH GERMAN EYES.

WHY BRITISH PRISONERS COMPLAIN. Under headings such ns “Kitchener's Calumnies” and “Asquith and Kitchener—the Liars,” the Gorman newspapers .publish long reports of tho dona to in Parliament upon tho treatment of British prisoners in Germany. Tho Cologne Gazette complains that tho British soldiers who conic to Germany have been spoiled by the luxury that prevails on tho British front. Tho journal writes;— “Let us refer to a fact which perhaps explains tho shrieks about bad treatment of English prisoners in Germany. These prisoners are torn away from material surroundings such as have hardly over boon tho lot of an army in tho field. The English Army in Franco and Belgium wallows in luxury—u phenomenon which is fairly iqvtural in the case of a mercenary army. When they have boon captured, tho English make the same claims_ to comfort and good living as behind their front in France, where their treatment has excited the jealousy and the astonishment of their allies. What is more, they try to make their claims good with the impudence which people on the Continent before tho war so often noticed among tho English lower classes. They do this with open contempt for tho Germans, whom they value according to what they have learned from their anti-German press. Neither their habits, nor their ways of making demands, are justified in prisoners of war. Over-cxcitcmont, which invokes a misunderstanding of the realities and bitter disappointment, then gives rise to lying reports about tbo treatment of English prisoners—reports which are road and believed not only by ordinary people, but by a British Minister of War. ’ ATTACKS ON MR. ASQUITH. The German press, which has carefully avoided publication of tho details in tho British White Paper, tries to make capital out of tho supposed difference between the statements' in Parliament and the reports of the Amorical Embassy in Berlin. The Frankfurter Zcitnng makes tho following attack on the Prime Minister

“The contemptuous tone in which. Asquith spoke of Gertnau methods of war is n shamelessness which doubtless in great part arises from impudent rage at the fact that tho German armies do not lot themselves be defeated bv the Allies, and that the unfavourable course of the war for England will put an end to the glory of the pitiful Asquith Cabinet. The lying charges against Germany arc for tho desperate Ministers of his Majesty of Great Britain merely a means-to whip up against Germany' tho English population, which is becoming more and more inditferont, and to try to produce a change in the course of the war. This British Government of adventurers is learning, more and more clearly that the swindles by which it made this war will soon be disclosed. That will he the end of the Government. It is playing ‘va banque,’ and is staking everything it can collect. ■ Asquith may* talk as much as ho likes, but so far' from calling anybody to account, it is he who at the end of the war will liiraself have to appear in the dock.”