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Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 155, 26 March 1919, Page 8

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THE INDICTMENT OF HUN WAR CRIMINALS. (By Francis Gribble, a Former Prisoner lit Ruhleben, in the "Daily Mail.") About' General von Hauisch and the brothers Niemeycr enough Ims now been published to make their ultimate faio tolerably certain. Is it not time to turn the limelight on to Major Bach, of ■Sennelager? Sennelager was n military prison camp with a- civilian wing, and it was there that the Hermans interned the civilians whom they arrested at the beginning of the war. The brutality with which Major Bach ruled it was notorious even in Germany—and that in spite of the fact that when men were released from his charge ho hifcd to intimidate them with tho threat that anyone who, complnined of the treatment he had received would be returned to him for a second dose of the same mixture. Prisoners were starved at Sennelager at a time when thero was no scarcity of food in the country. Sennelager was the first prison camp at which forced labour was exacted from civilians, and the civilians there were also, at one time, compelled to spend tho night in an open field in a torrential downpour of ruin. For all these things Major Bach can and should be held directly and personally responsible. The worst feature of his rule, however, was the ingenious and implacable cruelty of his punishments for trivial or imaginary breaches of discipline. It was' lie who. not only had men tied to posts in their camps, but also invited women to come over from Pardcborn and enjoy the spectacle, It was lie, finally, whu inflicted intolerable and unpardonable outrages on captured fishermen, denouncing' them without a particle of evidence, as "minelayers, telling them that he would "feed them from the pig-tub," and making them objects of derision to the world liv causing them to be shaved on one sido of the head and face. These are abominations which call aloud for condign punishment. The sifting of all the evidence of all tho outrages in all tho prison camps may take months or oven yenrs, but there is no need to wait for the completion of that process. Where wo have a clear cs>se. as wo liave at Sennelager, the offender can perfectly well be put in the dock .at once. It is Major Bach's turn next.