DEFIANT BELGIANS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3032, 20 March 1917, Page 5

DEFIANT BELGIANS

When the released TTrench women reached London from Holland in Janu' ary ]asfc there was a busy scene at the War Refugees' Committee's hostel, to which they were taken. It did not take the women long to pack up their luggage, which, was of the 6eantiest« In some cases, indeed, tho packages of sandwiches given to them by file manageress of the hostel were practically all that they had to carry. One of the Tvomen, a native of Douai, who had been in Brussels wily throe j months, gave some painful particulars of life in Northern Erance and Belgium to a representative of the "Daily; News." "The Germans thought they, were going to get to Calais," she said, "and even when I left they were as arrogant as ever. Wo would sorely have died of starvation; hut for the food distributed by the American Committee. There was no interference by, the Germans, vrho Beomed to hold the distributors in. great respect. But it was otherwise when tho Germans wanted work done. They used the harshest methods of compulsion in the Douai district, and ifc is no secret tbat men who refused to work for them were shot.

"According to tho news which reached us from time to time, nany made desperate efforts to escape, aud not a. few succeeded in reach Holland, end aro no douhfc in. England. Others, agairij paid the supreme penalty for resisting the slavery decree, and one heard of many who will probably rever he able to work again. Tho Germane have made that impossible. I ara a Frenchwoman with only three n;onths' experience of life in Belgium under the German yoke, but I must tell yon that I am amazed at the demeauour of the Brussels populace. I had esI pe«ted to find a cowed people, wat I was agreeably disillusioned."