SENSATIONAL REPORT OF GERMANY'S NEW CRIME

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2914, 28 October 1916, Page 9

SENSATIONAL REPORT OF GERMANY'S NEW CRIME

DELIBERATELY INFECTING PRISONERS WITH TUBERCULOUS ...■•..-■•• v ■ (Rec. October 27, 7.5 p.m.) j ' London, Octouer 26. !' The following message has been released for publication: — 1.. " . : . New York, September 23. : The Paris correspondent of the "New York Times" cables the summary of remarkable documents headed "Indisputable proof of Germany's latest crime." The publication of the documents has been permitted by the French Government, which has accepted the verity of the documents and prefaced them with a statement as follows :•— "This new crime of Germany differs from the Lusitania and all other crimes. It is dictated by the criminal idea that if Germany falls she will drag the whole world with her." . • Germany is deliberately infecting her prisoners with tuberculosis, then casts them back on their own or neutral nations to breed contagion or die. Already 50,000 Frenchmen'have been inoculated, besides a thousand men of other nations. Germany has show camps, but tuberculosis manufacture is earned on at other camps, secretly guarded, and its' existence is hardly suspected by any American investigator. In one of the secret canvps, a German doctor, after mixing tuherculars with convstlescents of other diseases, in order to spread consumption, said: "Thus I wage war in my own fashion." \ Thirteen hundred Erench and a thousand British consumptives.have been dumped in Switzerland, with the disease so advanced that they were no longer useful as prisoners. Many are dead and thousands are in a dying condition, and the French Government are treating them at a special hospital at Lyons. Swiss doctors have discovered the secret camps, the majority bomg in the salt, coal, and iron mines or drainage reclamation areas. The following report has been made by a notable Danish authoress, STadame Karen Branson, who obtained her information from prisoners or from Fronch official sources. Sho s»ys: "Wo fo'nnd in Switzerland only the advance guard of Germany's victims of consumption, a number which is growing rapidly. The wholesale manufacture of consumptives is deliberate. It was., an organised attempt to destroy tho Fronch race, as tho French are , the greatest sufferers. Germany can never defond or explain, her treatment of prisoners. There are three forms of camps. In the third prisoners are' forced w labour until they become permanently broken invalids. There is no inspection, of theso camps, which have only two doctors. They wore visited by M. Blanchod, of the Geneva Rod Cross. M. Blanchod asserts that at a certain Krupp factory and coal mines forty per cent, of the prisoners have boen permanently broken in health, and instances a youth of twenty who was tied to a post in the open air until his kneos were permanently .bent. Another form of punishment is that of putting men under lighted coke ovens, where- the heat and lack of air makes them quickly plead for mercy. Tbe longest period that mon have withstood this torture was two hours. Euglish prisoners have been shot at point-blank range. One ntvn, w|io was imprisoned at Homclburg, in Bavaria, stated that the mattresses were changed half-yearly, and that they were- full of vermin, -sawdust, and chopped straw. In bread they had a.".concoction of roasted acorns for breakfast. Another prisoner declared that 24,000 prisoners at Munster for shelter dug holes in the ground a''nd covered themselves with turf.. In the labour camps, despite tho icy storms, the men, only a* tenth of whom were bedded, and were so ill, had to lie on straw and mud. They were covered with vermin, tortured with hunger, and -were dying of cold. Men died nightly. Starving men threw themselves.in the mud and lapped'up tho porridge that had fallen from tho pot. ' '■ '■-.':""' The- worst treated are the English. It was a terrible eight-to see the faces of the dying men with their coverlets of rags.■• Some were so covered with vermin that ono could hardly sco their skin. Typhoid and pneumonia cases were all together, and the general- drug-administered.-is a solution of chalk. At the camp itself the odour gripped one's throat. After rain the tent floors were covered with water. The tents were to low to stand up in and too wet to lie. down in. The men spent the nights in misery, until death ended their troubles. ... ~-_:. ■ . , , French prisoners, who are doctors, state that Russian, prisoners, brought typhus, and the contagion of the" disease was spread by vcrmm, from which the prisoners could not escape. The necessary remedies were not give*, and the demands of the French to be separated- from the diseased Russians was rofused. Tho camp commandant, the doctors assort, gave' a criminal order to mix the sick and tho well. It was given from Berlin in January. Out'of ten thousand prisoners there were four thousand deaths. AU the German officials and doctors left the camps. _ In many cases tubercular patients are put into the same barracks with men weakened by other diseases, and M. Blanchod adds: "Thus easily suscoptible. this slow assassination is being carried out." _ _ It is unquestionable that Germany acted with a full appreciation of what she is doing. Sinco July 10 new orders have been issued making it more difficult to got information.' This is her latest and greatest infamy, but the war si dragging slowly to an end,-and a beaten' and convicted. Germany, will await her judgment. ' ..-.-".-

BRITISH OFFICIAL REPORT OF THE TYPHUS EPIDEMIC (Rec. October 28, 0.35 a.m.), London, October 24. A' British official report of the typhus epidemic- at Gardelegen in the. spring and summer of 1915 repeals horrifying German mismanagement and callous cruelty equalling Wittenberg.' The area of the camp' was 550 by 550 yards. The prisoners were not allowed to'leave except- on fatigue duties. There was a single bath-house for 11,000 men, of whom 4000' were Russians, 6000 French 700 Belgians, and 230 British, overcrowding the most -terriblehuts devoid of tables and stools. The men sat:on their beds to eat their meals. Here lay the'sick, and even the dead. The atmosphere day.and night ' was indescribably foetid. The food was of bad quality, the prisoners constantly suffering the pangs of hunger. The Russians, who had few private parcels, were seen on their hands and knoes croivdirig the pit whero tho potato peelings were thrown, struggling to find the rind. A few prisoners without boots and overcoats had their suffering intonsitied by tho extreme cold and the absence of proper fires. The sanitary conditions were horrible. Twelve hundreds-had to congregate at a single standpipe for personal washing, the cleaning of eating utensils and clothes, and all without soap. Some men wero three months without a bath, with the result that. lice swarmed in every garment and blanket. ' The commandant and guards established a reign o'f terror and brutality. Tho camp was soon in a state of utter misery and desolation, everyone of the men being anaemic and listless. The authorities, early in February, fearing an epidemic,- seven' British, French, and Russian doctors and brought thein to Gardclegen. The doctors found the smallest quantities of drugs, including four ounces of Epsom salts, three or four, dozen tablets of quinine, asperin,calomel, and a few lint dressfngs. Sicknesses now amounted to fifty daily. A commission of German doctors arrived and spent an hour in camp, and a half-hour later the. German guards packed upland soon not. a German was, inside the camp. The sick were left utferly unattended, and.the kitchens wero ■empty. Brunner, the commandant of tho" camp, summoned seven doctors to the edgo of the harbed wire and told thorn the sentries would shoot anyone attempting to leave, and added that he would return to the spot daily to receive their reports. • . _. The doctors faced the appalling situation. There wero no beds. Sick men i state that the patients on the floors were in an indescribable condition. There was no milk nor eggs, and tho siqk were fed with black bread and raw herrings, like the rest of the prisoners. The doctors commenced to sort the cases and isolate the convalescents. The epidemic lasted four months, and totalled 2000 cases, of whom 14 per cent. died. ... Brunner and the other camp authorities were actively hostile throughout. The doctors encouraged games and football, and Brunner ordered the games to be stopped, under pain of severe punishment.