FALKENHAUSEN'S REIGN OF TERROR.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16168, 23 March 1918, Page 7

FALKENHAUSEN'S REIGN OF TERROR.

170 BELGIANS SHOT IN A YEAR.

News has reached this country lately from Belgian official sources reporting 58 more executions in that unhappy country. This brings to 170 the number of Belgians killed since January, 1917, for some patriotic "crime'*' under the rule of Governor von Falkenhausen, who succeeded von Bissing. Among them are known the names of at least 10 women, three girls of from 14 to 16, and several boys tinder 20. The two daughters of Mr Groneret, a shopkeeper of Liege, were forced to witness the death of their father and mother. Life was th«n promised to them if thev consented to speak. The eldest, aged*2o, refused, and was killed beside her parents. Pressure was then put on the younger, a girl of 14, but she remained firm in spite of all the efforts of lier tormentors, and shared the same fate. In a group of 20 prisoners shot recently at Ghent, was a yenng girl of 16, whose only crime had been to carry letters over the frontier. She begged for her life until the last moment, and was shot kneeling. Before his execution a well-known sportsman of Ghent, \an Rentegen, was dragged through tho streets of the town attached to a long chain, and subjected to the insults of tho soldiers, who pelted him with mud and spat on him. To his wife a young Fleming wrote: "My hour has come. I havo received tho last sacraments. lam going to ■rive my life gladly for God and conntry. For the last time I kiss your dear picture and those of my beloved children. Good-bye, my poor dear wife; good-byo, my little irmocrmt children. My love for you will not die with me. From Heaven I will watch over you and pray for you."