CAN WE FORGIVE THEM?

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15335, 25 September 1917, Page 5

CAN WE FORGIVE THEM?

UNSPEAKABLE INFAMIES. DEPORTED FREN6H GIRL'S TERRIBLE STORY. ' • . . In the Revue des Deux Mondes for June 15th, 1917, there is an article by lime. H. Celarie entitled "Emmencees en esclavage pour cultiver la terre: Journal d'une deportee," which (says the New York Tribune) ought to be read in terms of what would certainly happen to the young girls of any American city if the Allies were to be worsted in this war. It would also happen to young New Zealand if the Germana. came here as conquerors. * The journal quoted by Mme.. Celarie is that of an unmarried/ girl, i gently nurtured, belonging £o one of the best middle-class families. The girl is described as Yvonne X . TORN FROM HER HOME. She is asleep in bed. There is a loud knock at the front door. The girl's mother answers it. German soldiers brush past her and burst into the girl's bedroom. "Get up and dress. The officer will be here in a minute. You are to leave in 20 minutes to cultivate the fields in another part of conquered France." The girl's mother protests," is roughly Silenced. The girl is marched,off under armed escort. Other German soldiers outside remark: "Aeh~!* You have caught a pretty one." Yvonne X is herded with a; number of other girls and some men. The girls are of all classes—servants, upper class', middle claBS —nearly all of them members of a particular parish in Lille. 3bme are as young as 18. Yvonne is 30. Several hundreds of them are marched through the streets. Fathers and mothers witness their departure frantic with rage or in dumb agony. The girls are pushed into cattle trucks. They travel all night, German soldiers in each truck with them. Next day they arrive in the Ardennes. They are made to pass one by one into an empty house, there to .be inspected, stripped naked, by a German medical officer. This outrage drives some of the girls to such determined, desperate protest that those later iti tine \Vne are treated less indecently. "SIX WOMEN." Assigned to different French villages in the' Ardennes, the girls find to their horror that the Germans have announced them as women of evil life, and that the inhabitants naturally are unwilling to receive them. On the door of the empty house in which the group with Yvonne X was domiciled the Germans fastened a sign: "Six women." Stray soldiers came in constantly to look them over. The sign was, of course, regarded as an official invitation. The gJrls lived at bay, terror-stricken, with their backs to the wall. Presently another "medical" examination —revolting, indecent, obscene. The victims meet again on the public square, trembling with anger, white with shame. They dare not look at one another, dare not question one another. Slowly, by unfrequented paths so as to meet no one, they return to the house w.here they live." ' Three- of the companions of Yvonne X—- . sob despairingly, "We were catalogued as 'good for anything' (bonnes a tout)." These young girls, Yvonne explains, had hear# too many stories since the invasion to be" ignorant of the meaning of these words. They knew, among other things . . . that when a woman has been possessed by a German if a child is born, a son is sent to Germany to be brought up as a soldier, while a daughter is left to its mother." CRUELTY AND LUST. They are made to labour in the fields, though they have never ddne such- work before. Each group of field workers is under the direction of a German reservist. In some cases, if the girls as much as say a word to one another while at work they are lashed on the face. In other cases, as at Anthony, the soldier is charge selects one.whom he fancies, and tries to force her to submit to his lust by giving her tasks utterly beyond her strength, by merciless blows, by every form of persecution, while pursuing her with shameful proposals. In other cases the Germans purposely mix prostitutes with honest girls. When protests are made the Germans reply: "Don't make such a fuss. You are all French, and alike." In some cases, evidently in the hope of corrupting them, the Germans place deported Frenchmen in the samey houses as these deported girls. Constantly girls living alone in a house are required to lodge German troops. Half-starved, sleeping little and badly from nervous terror, worn out by ceaseless fear and grief, the "girls soon reached a. point of utter exhaustion. Whether because they were as useless in as for immoral purposes, or whether because their friends in -Lille managed it for them, 48 out of 6000 deportees were finally sent back to Lille. Yvonne Xwas among them. These recent Lille deportations are merely an incident in an endless and still continued series of unspeakable infamies —not the acts of irresponsible individuals, but the predetermined, deliberate, and sustained policy of'agnation,'carried out by its authorised, representatives. _ 4 A QUESTION FOR ALL MEN. The New York Globe makes the following comment on this hideous story, which should be reflected upon ;by every man in all Allied countries: "Here is "a deliberate action by a responsible Government. The Kaiser, countenancing, these things, \n effect orders them' to occur,, and does * Hindenburg,- BethmannHollweg, and the whole rotten crew. Scheidemann s stands by silent. > The German people utter no rebuke. Why is the world fighting Germany? if you don't know,, if you are still uninformed as to why America is in the war. read the words of this departed French girl. If you do not from the perusal with a holy* purpose to do all in.your ability to overcome a Power responsible for such monstrous wickedness then you should look to the integrity of your own morals, and ask yourself if you are not also a deporter at heart." v