SLAVE RAID IN NORTH FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2842, 5 August 1916, Page 9

SLAVE RAID IN NORTH FRANCE

FOUL STAIN ON GERMAN FLAG Australian-New Zealand Cable Association. (Rec. August 4, 7.10 p.m.) • /' London, August 3. A Yellow Book on the slave' raid in the North of France discloses that the German' authorities in April issued an appeal for .agricultural labour. There was a meagre response, which resulted iu an order being issued for wholesale deportation, excepting young children, mothers, and old men. Only an hour and a half's warning was given. Clerical and civil pretest was disregarded. Abishqp went to the General, who told him to bo quiet, anil get out. The labouring ■ classes mostly suffered. Twenty to thirty per coiit. of the women were taken. Some parents lost their reason' when they saw their daughters taken. German officers admitted that nothing could cleanse tho- German flag of the' latest foul stain. The splendid spirit of the victims was an outstanding feature. They defiantly shouted "Vive la France," and sang tho "Marseillaise." The deportees are employed digging roads, mending trenches, and making munitions. The worst feature is that the women are employed as cooks to the German troops and as servants of officers. Other deportees are working in faibvays, factories, and mine's for inhuman hours; they .are not paid, and are liable to a flogging. Some have been «ont to the mines and factories in Rhine-, land and Westphalia, while a large numr ber of civilians interned since the outbreak of war are working immediately, behind the. German lines in France.