ENSLAVED PRISONERS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7717, 9 May 1916, Page 4

ENSLAVED PRISONERS.

TORTURES OF THE MIDDLE AGES REVIVED. AUSTRIAN ATROCITIES. There is evidence that the merciless treatment of prisoners goes on in many parts of Germany, though not in all (says the “Spectator”). It is stated that Russian prisoners are being put to forced labor in Belgium under the unceasing menace of the rifle and the whip. Similarly Belgians are believed to have been transported to Russian Poland, there to fulfil tasks of servile labor under conditions which their taskmasters think more favorable for suppressing outbreaks. Think of the misery of these men—Russians who cannot talk a word of Flemish or French, Belgians who cannot talk a word of Russian or Polish. They cannot converse with the people among whom they are plnced; they are indeed captives fast bound in misery and iron; they are worse off than the Jews when they were bodily removed into exile; they are not only prisoners, but slaves carrying out the most dreadful form of slave-work. If Germany had not laid a hand on Louvain or any other place, if not a single home had been burnt, if not a single hostage had been shot, if not a single woman had been violated or a single child done to death, Germans would be for ever infamous in history for having enslaved their prisoners. WHAT RUSSIAN DOCTORS FOUND.

The latest number of the “Field” contains a striking supplement full of evidence in writing, and by photographs of German brutality—brutality, which, as the editor says, is continuing. Here is an account of what Russian doctors found at Schneidemuhl:— “The Germans have made wide use of the compulsory and unpaid labor of their prisoners of war. The hardest work was given to the Russian and the English prisoners. The French were treated more considerately. The prisoners were set in parties of a hundred at a time to dig canals, hew down timber, carry logs, and dig trenches. The hardest work was that of draining swamps and tilling and harrowing the fields. From 6 0 ’clock in the morning till 8 o’clock at night prisoners had to work, standing barefooted in water up to the knees, in digging canals for the drainage of marshy soil. . . In tilling the fields they were harnessed in batches to ploughs and harrows, thus taking the place of cattle. If they sat down to rest they were driven back by a whip or the butt-end of a German soldier’s rifle. Any prisoner who refused to work was beaten senseless. “Jacob Kalichkin, 27th regiment Siberian riflemen, was a spectator of the way in which a whole party of Russian prisoners were beaten, and ten of them beaten to death, for refusing to dig trenches in front of Kaliseh. In addition to the beatings they frequently inflicted with the whips with which the German sergeants, subalterns, and soldiers holding sway in the camps were abundantly furnished, there were a number of cruel and humiliating ‘disciplinary punishments.’ Prisoners were kept on bread and water, they were made to stand with uplifted arms, they were made to kneel with bare knees ou broken bricks, to drag heavy loads round the barracks, until they were thoroughly exhausted, and so forth. HORRIBLE TORTURE. “For the most part the forms of punishment favored by the Germans remind one of the tortures of the Middle Ages. Offenders were tied up high with ropes or wire to posts, so that their feet barely touched the ground, and in this position they were left for three or four hours. In 20 to 25 minutes the blood began to rise to the head, copious hemorrhage took place from the nose, mouth, and ears, the unfortunate man gradually grew weak, lost consciousness, and was only prevented from falling down by the ropes or wires which held him to the post. According to the evidence of prisoners who underwent that kind of torture, it was frightful. The rope and wire cut into the body, causing unbearable suffering, and for a long time after being liberated the victim was ‘unable to come to himself.’ All the body ached, and a general weakness rendered any movement impossible. “Not infrequently prisoners were stretched over a barrel and beaten with sticks and whips with thongs of gut until they completely lost .consciousness. There is another form of punishment invented by cultured Germans, which does not at first sight appear to be very dreadful, but which those who had the misfortune tee experience it declare is in the highest degree painful. The men to be punished were led out on to an open space, placed back to back, and in tliis position they were tightly bound together, the rope enveloping the body from head to foot. The ' men thus lashed together were left standing until one of them fainted away and pulled down the other. These disciplinary punishments were inflicted at the discretion of German sergeantmajors, under-officers, and even private soldiers, who were apparently given uncontrolled power over the honor, health and lives of the prisoners. ’ ’

WERE THE ROMANS WORSE? One is reminded of the Roman shackles which explorers have found with bones still fastened in them in the Roman mines. There the prisoners had fallen and died where they worked, without perhaps ever seeing the daylight during their captivity. The bodies had rotted away, and pieces of bone remained in the shackles. According to their lights, were the Romans much worse than the new Caesars of to-day? The brutalities of Germany make the relations of European nations after the war seem too difficult for one to care to think about them.