GERMAN EXTORTION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 82, 31 December 1917, Page 3

GERMAN EXTORTION

LETTER FROM MAYOR OF LILLE TO GERMAN GENERAL.

The dignity and nobility with which officials of the stricken city_ of Lille, France, hare met the extortionate demands of their German masters is revealed in a letter from Charles do la Salle, mayor of that city, to, the German general-in-ehief, Gravenitz, a copy of which has reached here.

The major wrote: —"Your letter is at hand. It causes me very _ great surprise. Hardly had wo repaid the balance of the imposed tax of 24,000,000 v/hen you asked for a new payment of 33,000,000. During the first vear of your occupancy, when Lille was still in possession of the greater part of its resources, you claimed the sum of 28,000,000; during the second year the sum of 30,000,000, and during the third year, when the city was in dire distress, you doubled tho tribute and raised it to sixty millions.

. ,"Such heavy demands are as extortionate as tliey are unjustified. They, r.re contrary to the spirit and letter of the Hague Conventions. They are m absolute contradiction with the commentary that the German General Staff made in this Convention, as 1 pointed out in my last year's correspondence. 1

"Thesis contributions, established without justification, rest on the most absolute basis. Instead of decreasing, they increased in proportion as requisitioned ruin and devastation are piled upon this unfortunate city. In fact, you threatened us with the most severe punishment in case of resistance to your will, and especially with a fine of a million per day for delay. Under these conditions, if only my perEonal safety and that of a few officials were imperilled, I would not hesitate emphatically to refuse demands which seemed to me to be an abuse by force and violence of right. But the fate of a, population weakened by three years of privation is at stake, and I have not the courage to expose it to new cruelties.

"In consequent I beg to state, in the name of the municipal council which I represent, that the city of Lille, curbed under the yoke, isolated from the world, unable to appeal to any Court against the arbitrary power of which she is the victim, will pay the new contributions on the dates indicated, but she will pay them under duress."