BRUTAL BULBARS

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15340, 1 October 1917, Page 5

BRUTAL BULBARS

TERRIBLeI>UTBA©ES IN SERVIA. THE GERMANS ASSIST. Australian And N.Z. Association. Heoeived October 1, 10.5 a.m. , LONDON, September 30. A correspondent at the Servian headquarters says that the Bulgars are methodically destroying-the population of Servia. Insurgent Servians when prkonered are invariably banged unless their comrades rescue them by storming the gaote, which has often occurred. There are gibbets at every street corner, and women are hanged as well ae men. Children aged between 12 and 14 are sent to Conetantinople. Many have suicided en rout© by jumping from the train. In several towns the Servians roae, looting the shops and securing weapone. They were victorious till the Bulgars fought the ineurgents behind a rampart of the latter'e women and children. The Bulgars ordered the Servians to* be vaccinated, inoculating them with various maladies. A town clerk was hung by the tongue on Eaater Simday and tortured horribly before he expired. The insurgents camp in the mountains. The revolt is spreading froin Servia to- Macedonia, even to Bulgaria. Insurgents defeated some German battalions and fought their way out from the regulars when surrounded, preferring death-to capture, .which ends i<i a more cruel death. Their constant raids and ambushes scare off'the troops. Tho Germans are robbing in wholesale fashion, giving written promises of payment when King Peter returns. They are turning severely wounded from the hospitals and sending their beds to Austria. The Bulgars have enrolled Servian males of 17 to 65 in the Bulgarian army. Servian mothers, moved by the lamentable cries of their children, in some towns attacked the soldiery with stones until gibbets were erected to hang the mothers. The Germans ravished even Turkish women within earshot of their husbands and fathers, til' the Turks murdered several German officers. -A Bulgarian doctor bramed 24 Servians with his own hands. Servian books are being destroyed, priests and schoolmasters killed or deported, and the Servians are forcibly instructed in the Bulgarian tongue. A Servian officer prisoner was ordered to take a Servian badge from his kepi, and when he refused a Bulgarian * detniet stabbed the prisoner through the lung 4in the presence of an escort and went away unpunished. Tho Bulgars everywhere are extorting money from the Servians by threats of internment and deportation, and obtained 60,000 francs in a single village near Nish;