THE MODERN HUNS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7914, 4 August 1917, Page 1

THE MODERN HUNS.

ATROCITIES IN FRANCE. After the report of the commission of which Lord Bryce was the chairman, the world hardly needs any further proof of the atrocities committed by the Germans in this war; but the report, dated April 12th, 1917, of the French Commission appointed to inquire into the acts committed by the enemy in violation of the law of nations shows that the atrocities still go on. The commissioners were MM. Georges Payelle, Armand Mollard, Georges Maringer, and Edmond Paillot.

The report deals with the liberated regions of the Oise, the Aisne, and the Somme, which, -after having suffered tlie domination of the Germans for more than thirty months, have recently been delivered from this “most heavy and most odious yoke,.” The commissioners state that the spectacle of devasfation that they have seen has disclosed a method so implacable and so uniform that it is impossible not to see in it the execution of a plan that has been rigorously established. ‘‘ The reduction of the citizens to servitude, the carrying off of married women and young daughters, the pillaging of homes, the destruction of the towns and villages,- the ruin of industry by the destruction of factories, the desolation of the fields by the breaking up of agricultural machinery, the burning of farmhouses, and the felling of trees—it is all part of the work, and is all done with the same ferocity, in order to cause misery, to inspire terror, and to create despair. The commissioners proceed to furnish particular instances of German “ frightfulness.'' It is the Bryce Commission's report over again—the same story of murder, rapine, and outrage. Never, it is stated, has occupation of conquered territory been accompanied by such barbarities, never have retrictions on inhabitants of such territory and demands made upon them been enforced more rigorously. Day after day new demands have been made, new restrictions enforced, new outrages upon the people's dignity committed. At times the Germans have pretended that the vile treatment to which certain of the citizens, men, women, and children, have been subjected was due to the imprudence of one or two me|a only; but the commissioners remark that this is not to be taken seriously. The system of pillage and devastation *is an organised thing; the violation of the holy places is part of a- plan. Churches are deliberately destroyed, cemeteries and tombs are profaned. And the writers of the report are not content with asserting a fact; they give place and date, with all the attendant and revolting circumstances. “But nothing,’’ they say, “has been known to equal in abomination that which has taken place in certain communes, such as Freniches, where, one day in the month of May, 1915, all the young women of the village, brought into the house appropriated for the use of the military doctor, had to suffer the most brutal and revolting examination, in spite of their*protestations and their cries."

It is not pleasant reading, this document. It is a document of war, the most ‘•frightful" of all wars. But it is well that we should know of all these things. While such things are done, how can we pass peace resolutions, how can we talk of laying down our arms until the perpetrators of these crimes—“acts of savagery which, known to-day to the whole world, revolt the universal conscience," as this report says—are “beaten down and out"?

After giving details of outrage after outrage, the commissioners conclude: “It is sufficient to know of these things to be able to say that they have not only been done in the military interest, but that the design to and destroy has been the essential cause. The military doctor, Professor Benneke, said one day to Sister SaintRomuald, the superior of the Noyon Hospice, ‘ You have not desired peace; now we have orders to make war on the civil population.' And an officer who appeared intelligent and educated issued the following words at Guiscard: ‘The offer of a German peace having been declined, the war enters upon a new phase. Henceforth we will respect nothing.’ Such words reveal a miserable mind. But in no part, among those of our people who had come forward in support of the proofs that have been furnished us, have we remarked an indication of weariness or discouragement. We have encountered no other sentiment than that of patriotic exaltation, and the indomitable will to obtain, by victory, reparation for so many crimes."

Can we wonder that the French people do not desire a German peace? Can we wonder that one of the great leaders of France, in a speech of impassioned eloquence two years ago, declared, “France did desire peace, but now we desire war? ? ’