IN THE WAKE OF THE HUN.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16228, 26 March 1917, Page 7

IN THE WAKE OF THE HUN.

' SCENES IN RTDCOVERED DISTRICTS. GERMANS' LAST BRUTALITIES; - (United Service.) . Received 5.5 p.m., March. 25th. LONDON, March 23. Mr Beach Thomas, correspondent, describing the reoccupied districts states that their residents' faces and gestures depict weakness and illness. Pitiful stories are told of the invaders'' last brutalities. The villagers were assembled while their homes were burned. They were enslaved and latterly almost starved. There was high mortality owing to the lack of milk and other necessities. ■ The. retreating. Germans indulged in a saturnalia of bestiality, breaking open coffins,'■; scribbling ' obscenities -in the Churches, and defiling sacred places. (Reuter's Telesrams.Y v .. PARIS', March 23:' ' Newspapers , relate.- heartrending stories of 'the famished children' found | wandering ghostlike among the ruins of their homes. Soldiers supplied the inhabitants of some districts with their [ first food for days. They had had no !.,meat' since September, and no milk for a . year. They had never received a I quarter of'the rations supplied by the American Relief Fund. ; Appalling devastation was /found everywhere on the line of retreat; At Chauny 1800 out of 2500 houses wero destroyed, including . churches , and public- buildings.' All males between the ages 'of 14 and 60 had been carried off. : The enemy herded women and chi'dren, and the .feeblesb inhabitants of thirteen surrounding communes in a certain quarter of the town. They' 'then trained guns on this quarter, killing and wounding many. .It is officially, confirmed that the Germans poisoned wells with arsenic.

. GERMAN APPREHENSIONS. ANOTHER SOMME NOT WANTED. A Headquarters correspondent reports that the inhabitants left behind state that the Bosches had been talking a ,pood deal They knew more of the true situation than 'was generally believed, and did not conceal their apprehension of another great offensive. Indeed one possible reason for the retreat may well have been the dubiety of their higli command "whether the men would face another Somme. GERMAN ROBBERS. (United Service.) : Received .11.15 p.m., March 25th'."' - X/ONDON, March 24. The "Daily Mail's" Paris correspondent states that on the eve of their departure German officers robbed the N T oyon _ banks of #.700,000 sterling and securities in jewellery and cash.'