GERMAN ATROCITIES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2300, 6 November 1914, Page 6

GERMAN ATROCITIES

AN AMERICAN WITNESS ORGIES OF CRUELTY . The "New York Sun", of September gives prominence to a letter written from .London under date of September 15 by Mr. Howard Copland to Mr. Harold M. Sewall, of Maine, and by him forwarded to the "Sun." In: its leading article the "Sun" says that after serious consideration it has decided to print, and print conspicuously, tho revolting story related by Mr. Copland to "'his friend,; Mr.- Sewall; tvho, the "Sun" informs its readers, is "a man not only of honourable reputation, but also of keen intelligence, and large worldly experience." • Mr. Sewall was Consul-General ' in Samoa and Minister to Hawaii. He is, the "Sun" adds, "a lawyer and diplomat, about the last person either to be deceived as to the veracity of a friend or to be moved in his own person to unnecessary excitement over a doubtful tale." In - sending' Mr. Copland's' letter to the "Sun" Mr. Sewall says that he knows of no man. whoso testimony is worthy of greater credenco, and describes his friend as a graduate of l'ale, a linguist, traveller, and cosmopolite, and one whoi ' 'from the vantage ground of his Swiss home, has been for years -. an unprejudiced student of international politics."' . Scepticism and Conviction.. Mr. Copland writes- that he was living in .Switzerland at the 'time war broke out,. and three weeks later waß delegated by the American Ambassador in 'Paris to.take charge of a special train to bring Americans from Switzerland to Paris. On the journey, which took twenty-eight hours, they frequently had to. stop to allow trains carrying wounded _to pass, and on such occasions owing to his official position ho was permitted by the French authorities to talk to the wounded.

•Mr. Copland continues: "The reports in the newspapers about German atrocities I had previously set down to hysterical exaggerations, such as characteristic the 1 beginnings of so many wars, and it was with a sort of amused tolerance that I first listened to it all in my talks with those soldiers. . But, by Heavens, neither you nor anybody else woijld have-talked with them long without realising that all we bave been .reading in the papers about these innuman barbarities does not'even give a faint idea of the actual horrible truth. One 6oldior after another I questioned, always asking for exactly what he had seen with his own eyes, and not picked up by mere hearsay. I tell you that the things I learned all through that long-day and night in regard to the -mutilations of women and young girls were beyond description in their inconceivable' norror. No such mass of circumstantial details related to me by actual witnesses lying so near to death in those bare cars, and next day in tho long rows;of cots in the hospitals that I visited in Dieppe, could have been collaborated nor invented. Each simple, straightforward narration stood clear - as but another fact of a great ccntral mass that could not but bo the truth. If the Germans had acted but half so madly they would now stand Worse condemned in the eyes of the world. It is tho very enormity of the acts that defeats their gaining credence. That women and young girls should have been ravished, mutdated, and disfigured for life, not in rare instances, but literally in hundreds ■ of cases, appears too improbable to the average person to be aught but exaggeration." Cerman Frenzy. Mr. Copland says that, all the wounded came from the campaign in Belgium and on the Meuse, having frequently entered towns and villages which the Germans had just left in ruins, and where the corpses of ravished women and children were a constant feature. At first tho soldiers thought they were casualties from bullets, but the wounds were too frequently those of tho bayonet and sword. After the final conquest of Liege "the German soldiers, so long baffled and starved and maddened, tlieii fell upon Belgium in frenzy, famished as they were and road witli thirst for *>obol." Victims of mutilation, ho

says, cannot hope to hush their stories, although tho victims of mere rape naturally would.

"As you read this letter of mine," Mr. Copland concludes, "I suppose you mil already have ceased giving credence to any such enormous scalo of orgy in this Twentieth Century as I liavo outlined. I should have certainly done the same had I not talked with all these soldiers fresh from the scene. Becoming convinced of its truth, and quite counter to my first conviction, I hope you will pardon mo if I seem incapable of thinking or writing of aught else."