BLEEDING BELGIUM

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3004, 15 February 1917, Page 6

BLEEDING BELGIUM

WORKERS , 'MOVING APPEAL TO ALL THE WORLD GERMANY'S BASE LIES

The following moving appeal in the name of the working-classes of Belgium has been published through the Belgian Ministry of Justice: "In the name of the international solidarity of workmen, tho workingclasses in Belgium, menaced by slavery, deportation, and forced labour for the enemy, now address their supreme appeal for energetio and efficacious assistance to tho working-classes of the world. We do not ask for words of sympathy, but for deeds. You arcmen, you will understand us. Our position is desperate. "Germany, as you know, attacked and terrorised Belgium in 1914, because she defended the rights of her neutrality, her oath, and her honour. Since then, Germany has made Belgium suffer martyrdom. She has mado Belgium a prison; the frontier is armed against tho Belgians as if it were a. battle front; there are trenches, barbed wire with electric currents, machine-guns-, and points d'appui. All our constitutional liberties are abolished. There is no safety to be found anywhere; the lives of the citizens are ruled by a most arbitrary policy, without-limit and without pity. These acts have been committed against persons, the following will show you those that have been committed against the riches of the country:

Germany has condemned her victim to pay an immense war levy'which al-

ready amounts to mors than'a thousand million francs (40 millions sterling). and which is augmenting at the rate of fifty million francs a month (two million sterling). She has carried off' and transported into Germany, by pillage, confiscation, requisition, and forced sales, foodstuffs and merchandise, consisting of both agricultural and industrial produce, to the value of more than five thousand million francs (2flO million pounds sterling). At the same time, she has .seized and sent into Germany the greater part of the raw products in our factories, the machinery, and all accessories; she has thus stopped our industry and caused an almost general and enforced state of idleness of the working classes. For nearly two years the Germans hare kept up this 'plague of idleness,' up till day— October, 1916—when Germany, lacking labour, has drawn on Belgium for the necessary forces of which she has such pressing need. Yes, the Germans, have caused the enforced idleness in Belgium, and have maintained it at their own. profit by refusing to allow England, who had agreed .to send raw material into the country, the proper diplomatic control to prevent the products being seized by Germany, by preventing, by terrible edicts, the Bol■gian Communal Councils, the Belgian workmen's associations, and Belgian authorities from giving work to the men in need of it, or from attending to their professional education, by employing them in works of public utility.

Enforced Idleness. "To the 501),UU0 involuntary idlers, which they themselves have forced into that position and kept there, they say: "Either you muse sign a contract tor work in Germany or you will bo taken as slaves. "In cither case it is exile, deportation, and forced labour in the enemy's interest and against their own country; terrible punishments—the cruellest, that have over been inflicted to punish crime are carried out—and what are these 'crimes' ? —involuntary idleness which the tyrant has himself enforced and maintained.

"And as, in spito of the most odious pressure, iha Germans cannot obtain signatures—wliich they dare to designate as voluntary in their official communiques to neutral countries —they seize our workmen bx force, your brothers and ours; they arrest them by thousands every day, tho tear them away from their wives and their children; surrounded by bayonets, they drag them to cattle-trucks, and in these the take them away, to the front and to Germany.

' "On the Western, front, they forco them, by tho most brutal means, to dig trenches, construct military aviation grounds, make strategical roads, and fortify the German lines. And when their vctims, in spite of all, refuse to work on these defences, according to their rights laid down in. the rights of nations, they, starve them, they ill-treat them, they beat them, they cause them to contract illnesses, they wound and sometimes even kill them.

"In Germany, they are taken forcibly to the mines, quarries, and lime-kilns, whatever their age, profession, or tradb may be. They aro deported pell-mell, young men of seventeen and old men of sixty and more. Is not this ancient slavery in all its horror?

"There are already more than fifty thousand workmen, whether out of work or not, who have been deported as convicts or slaves. Eevry day they make a clean sweep of a fresh district ; formidable weapons are set up —ma-chine-guns—and innumerable soldiers are called out, and all these military measures are taken' against these poor unarmecl people, who are terrorised and conscious of their violated rights."

Slavery, Starvation, and Death. "Do not forget that the soldiers who are tho executioners of our Belgian workmen are German workmen, and in this way five hundred thousand, perhaps eight hundred thousand, men will be deported if you do not do anything to uiiKfer it? After the men', tho women will doubtless be taken. Five hundred thousand more. . . . The whole of the working classes in Belgium are threatened with slaevry, starvation, and death. Do you know, brethren, what the Germans give their victims as 'wages'*? Thirty pfennigs per working day! In a few months' time our working population, the pride of our free country, will bo 'innihilated by forced labour. On tho day when peace will be restored there will be scarcely any .Belgian workmen left wln> will be capable of taking up the great work «f the economic reconstruction of what was once prosperous Belgium, wTTose only crime has been to defend her right as a neutral, her l ; fe, SLd her honour.

"We have done all wo can to spare this great slavery. Our highest authorities have shown the occupj-ing Power the great injustice and the iniquity of these measures. The High Court of Appeal in Belgium has asked Germany to withdraw her edicts which were contrary to the "natural rights— tho positive rights—the rights of nations. The Episcopate, with tho. cninent Cardinal Mercier at its hcaS, has demanded the withdrawal of these edicts which are contrary to. Morality and to their pledged word. Yc«, their oath pledged' solemnly in 191.4 by the first , Governor-General of Beljiium,. Field-Marshal vom der Goltz, rv.n proclaimed: ''That tho young men of Belgium would, never !#o Mnt into Germany, either to be emolifd in the arniv or for purposes of forced labour. "Tt is becaus" they believed in the pledged word of tho Emperor/s direct ropi'eseut.itire, tfiat our Belgian workmen returned from Holland, after the siege of Antwerp, and why others staved in Belgium. And it is for this reason that the Germans are now able to fake them, deport them, and force tlio.m to be slaves. Brethren of all countries, will yon allow this? ' "The Belgian working-classes now

look to the neutral Powers for help. They ask whether, this time, they will not revolt at such a crime against humanity, and whether their conscience will not urge them to protest energetically. Will neutrals and the upper classes allow this to go on ? Will they allow civiisation to go back to the customs of barborous times, when the conQuerors carried off the conquered popuation as slaves? Will they allow the working classes to he annihilated by a civilised people? If others act thus, even if the world looks on once more at such a haso spectacle, will you not at least be our friends and our saviours? Brethren, we seem to licr.r the words announcing our salvation, loii nre numerous, you are powerful, and you are energetic. You are the sole persons in the world who pan provent the whole of the working classes of one civilised country from filling into a condition of slavery. In the depth of °"r<» r rPSS ' we relv nn >' ml - t! ■ As for us—even if force should sncjpwj for a moment in rednoi"" our, bodies to slavery, our souls will never be crushed. We swld this: 'Whatever our tortures mnv he. we do not want nonce without the indenendence of our country and the truimnli of instice ' " Les Oiivriers Belo;es<en Belgique.