TREATMENT OF BRITISH PRISONERS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2466, 20 May 1915, Page 9

TREATMENT OF BRITISH PRISONERS

DEATH AND CUNNING TORTURE. Madame Boeufvre, of Wellington, has received an interesting letter from a relative who is engaged in defence matters in England:— "The slaughter on both sides," tho letter runs, 'is the most desperate ever known. A fortnight .ago at Neuve Chapelle St. Eloi. though we beat the Germans out of their positions, we lost over 700 officers and between 7000 and 8000 men in the British Army alone. When tlio real advance takes place and battles begin in earnest, the losses will be greater than ever before in the history, of the world. Already hundreds of our best and bravest have fallen, and thousands will follow, but we have got to see the war through The marine blockade of the Germans is a farce, and they can do nothing effective. Their Zeppelins have proved useless for all practical purposes. Most of them have been wrecked. At sea we hold them easily, but on land they are a very redoubtable foe."

Writing of an experience of a male cousin of Madame's, the letter states: "Captain C— is a prisoner at Crcfeld. He managed to smuggle his diary home to his wife by an exchanged prisoner. She says the accounts ho gives of the way the Germans treat the British prisoners and the '-ad food they aro givon is perfectly awful. C. says on the smallest excuse tney beat out a prisoner's brains with the butt end of a rifle, and put them to all sorts of cunning tortures. . . . Lieut. Rupert Murray, of the Seafortlis, who married Miss Dering (daughter of Sir Henry Doring, of Kent), has been killed. Captain Charles Sinclair and a host of other friends have been killed and wounded. . • . General Gough was killed by a bullet from a sniper. He was hit m the stomach just as ho was going home to take up a new command." A mutual friend wrote from Hanover recently to other friends in England stating that they heard that people in England were starving as the result of the blockade, and: asked if they could send them some luxuries by any mealis. This extract indicates to what extent tlia Gorman Vress goes in misleading the public as to England's position.