GERMAN 'OCCUPATION'

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2303, 10 November 1914, Page 6

GERMAN 'OCCUPATION'

WHAT IT MEANS WAR PINES AND LOOT (By G. Ward Price in the "Daily Mail.") This is what a German occupation means: it is the story of what happened at Epernay and Reims while the enemy was there. The history of the German occupation of the isolated villages round about lies written in blackened 'heaps of ruins, but every witness of the Germans cruelty whom they did not kill has fled and the story of their wanton destruction will only gradually bo pieced together. The Germans came to Epernay on September 4; they left. it on their retreat on September 12. At Reims they spent about ten days, but arriving two days before they entered Epernay. To make a comparison for English purposes one might take the towns of Leamington and Coventry—for Epernay, whith is chiefly made up of the beautiful villiia of champagne merchants, has rather more than 20,000 inhabitants, while R-eimSj which is more of an industrial town, has about 105,000, and corresponds to Coventry in size and character. The facts wero given me at Epernay by the Deputy-Mayor, Maitre Perault, and at Reims by the priests of the cathedral and by a lawyer of the town, They are significant because they show that if the local authorities of a district about to be entered by the German troops stand their ground. and assert their, influence, the invaders liold their hands in that district from the atrocities and the devastation that they practise in lonely villages where they have no one but the defenceless inhabitants to reckon with.

It is. a great pity that in a large number of tho districts which have had to suffer Gorman occupation, the looal authorities had. not the firmness to' remain. Several prefects and sub-pre-fects and mayors have, in fact, been relieved of their office by the Minister of the Interior for failing in their duty at this crisis, and the debt which is owed to their civic authorities by those towns where the mayors did stay is a largo one. The Germans regard constituted authority as a savage regards his fetish. If. they find a projjerly recognised municipal body exercising power in the districts which they enter they treat with it, brutally, it is true, but .still logically. "When, on the other hand, they a town without a properly constituted body to represent it; they seem to' regard its inhabitants as being by that fact alone outside the law of nations and deliver them over to tho worst excesses and the most arbitrary exactions. They have, in fact, all a bully's dread for moral power, and fear to flaiunt it openly wheire it exists.

The Bully's Way. At Epernay the Mayor is M. PolRoger, the champagne merchant. Directly the' Germans entered the town : on the 4th—after bombarding it to the extent of about fifty shells, which caused some damage aud set several parts of the town alight—they, went straight to the Town Hall and arrested him, togetherjvith Maitre Perault, his deptuy, land two municipal councillors. .They were all confined in the Town Hall, ,un-. der the close guard l of armed Bentries, for thirty-six hours, as hostages, while the Germans were billeting their troops in the town. '• It was the Prussian Guard that occupied Epernay, under General Baron; von ■Plettenberg. There were infantry, cavalry, artillery, and pioneers,, but since a number of the troops were spread about in the villages all round Epernay it is difficult to come hy any estimate of their, total number. *. The position of the two Mayors and their councillors at the Town Hall was not a pleasant one. They had hardly been there an hour when a German colonel arrived—"furious, very haughty, and not polite at all," as Maitre Perault describes him. He accused the' Mayor of having cut of? the water, and the gas supply. His men, it appeared', had taken up their quarters in a house where neither gas nor water taps yielded anything. "If the supply is not restored within an hour. Monsieur le Maire," shouted the colonel, thrusting his insolent'face into that of M. PolRoger, "you and your colleagues here will be hanged—hanged, you understand, not shot —and Epernay will -be burnt and pillaged completely—completely." - ■

The four aldermen did, pot lose their heads. They took the vociferating colonel into the.kitchenof .the Town Hall and turned oil both gas and water taps before his eyes' .to ishowv Mm that themunicipal supply had not been tampered with., The house 7 where his men were quartered had had its service cut off long before the Germans entored Epornay. ~ "Spare the Champagne." Meanwhile the Germans established themselves in'the town. They paid for nothing. They simply demanded what 'they wanted—food, wine, tobacco; and if payment ; were mentioned they refused brutally. When they came in the troops Were very hungry. "They were smearing wagon grease on bits of dry biscuit and eating it," the waiter at the hotel told me.. But .their first thought, was for the famous champagne of the Eperna;y district. The general issued a strict order that neither the vines nor the cellars where the wine is stored Were to b'e, injured—for the invaders at that time regarded lilpornay as a permanent, conquest and were determined not to damage what they considered 'as henceforth their own. property. Tlie Btaff of the general on its sole account .requisitioned 300 bottles, and paid for them in notes redeemable— perhaps—after the war. . But. the private soldiers and -junior officers dispensed even with this formality. They had all the champagne brought up from the oellars of the houses. where tliey were quartered; and they would drink nothing els©, carried off quantities of it, and after the battle of the Vesle, the engagement fought before the Germans abandoned Eeims and withdrew to the Kills east of. the town, dozens of empty champagne - bottles were found in the trenches in which tlioy had been fighting.; The staff exacted' from the town as a war contribution:. 120 tons of oats. 210 tons of bread. 10 tons of roa6t coffee. , 10 tons of preserved vegetables. 12 toils of salt bacon and lard. .It was only with groat difficulty that, these supplies could bo produced by a little town of Just over'2o,ooo inhabitants, and while I was thero on Wednesday night, four days after tho Germans had gone,. there was still 'a most serious dearth of provisions. It was hard enough for the ordinary person to get a meal; the sick and children who need' special food must have suffered greatly. :' . One Cood Act. In addition to this food levy, General von Plottenborg imposed a fine of £7000 on the town, which had to be paid in cash. The German general did, however, show one sign of decency during his stay. As his.troops were retiring he sent for the mayor and handed back to him tho £7000 in the same money in which it was paid over. "I do this," ho said, "in consideration of the caro that has been shown-for German wounded in the hospitals at Epernay." Most of the inhabitants remained indoors as far as possible while the Germans wore quartered upon them. The children especially were kept . closely locked up for tho eight days of the -eaenjy.'a stai, Their behaviour in the

houses and hotels where they wer< quartered varied considerably. Some Ji'ere brutal and insulting; others behaved themselves reasonably. In the Hotel Terminus, whore I slept, the names of the officers quartered there were still marked on the doors, written up in' red chalk by their soldier servants. "Oberleunaut Hamberger" had been living in my room four nights previously ; "Oberarzt Reiner" was at No. next door. , It was after live days' fighting round the town that the Germans retired on Kenns and through that town on to the wood hills beyond. At Reims, a' much larger town than Epernay,' they' uaa earned out their policy ,of intimidation on a moro methodical plan. They, arrested 100 _ of the most prominent people of the town to hold as hostages. Jhere wero live priests among them, and representatives of all classes and:, many occupations. Thero was oven an englishman, a Jlr. Lewentliwaite, connected with the English combing mills there. One of the hostages taken was an old man ot eighty-two. I found the green proclamation which announces; with brutal directness the German general s intention to hang all these perfectly innocent pereons if it seemed good to him, still posted oii the street Walls.

The "protection" afforded to the hostages by the Gorman Army was of a characteristic kind. For when the Germans had to retreat from Reims with the French hard on their heels they formed up their 100 prisoners into a compact little body ana' forced them to 1 march at the very end of the retiring column for three miles beyond tie town so as to cover it from any rifle bullets which the infuriated inhabitants ,of Reims' might otherwise have been tempted to send after them. They also carried off with them £60,000 in cash—; £40,000 of it a war iine and £20,000 "borrowed until September 20." But a week before September 20 the French; | Arm'y had driven the enemy out of \Reims and the town has accordingly, lost the whole 6um.

Such wa6 the passage through the historic town of Reims of this the invad,ing horde, accompanied in this section of it by two Princes of the Prussian. Royal Family, August Wilhelm and! Adalbert, the Kaifeer's sons, the latter of whom came as a messenger 1o fetch away the town's war levy .fine of. £40,000. If' tljese towns fared better than the. lonely villages scattered round them- — now no more than heaps of ruins without a soul left to tell how the Germans set about their, work of criminal de-, etruction—it is because even Germans are ashamed to carry out their ravages , before the eyes of responsible authori-, ties who could testify to their deeds.