GERMAN CRUELTY

Hokitika Guardian, 12 February 1918, Page 3

GERMAN CRUELTY

i DOINGS OF -A PUNITIVE EXPEDI- , tiOx

After a laps of more than sevenI teen years the story of the atrocities involving life or property, committed in China in 1900 by the German troops under Field Marshal Count von Waldersee, was told in detail at a gathering in New York recently. The narrators were soldiers of the United

States regular army who served under Lieutenant-General Adna R. Chaffee in the China Relief Expedition, a majority of whom are again back in service to aid in the fight that, is on to destroy the same kind of German kultur which wrought havoc in China. “It is interesting to recall,” said .Sergeant Madden, “that seventeen years ago the United States was allied with the Central Powers and- all the various forces that served in China in 1900 were tor a time under command of a German, the Count von Waldersee because of his rank. Few Americans realise that the Germans under von Waldersee, did not arrive in China until after the purposes of the Pekin Relief Expedition were accomplished. Pekin had fallen, and the Americans, British, French, Japanese,

and other Allies were in charge when

along came von Waldersee with a force of Germans, greater in number than the combined forces of all the nations under whose flags the actual fighting had been done. “How many Americans, I wonder, know that the official slogan of that German horde_ under von Waldersee was ‘a million Chinese lives for von

Ketteler.’ Few of our people know about those frightful punitive expeditions that ■ the ' Germans made against defenceless Chinese villages and towns in the late fall and early winter of 19()0. What would our people really think of the German soldier if they knew him. as wo who had to watch him in 1900, knew him as our Allies know him to-day ? W? all recall those terrible stories, which we knew to lie true, of the murder of defenceless men, women and children, of incendiarism and of looting, in which whole brigades of von Waldorseo’s Germans swept down upon and wreaked vengeance for ‘von Ketteler’ on those helpless little Chinese settlements outside of Pekin. ' “We all recall the arrival of those Germans and the swagger of them. And then the announcement that they were going to make those punitive expeditions. All our soldiers, as well as those of our Allies, know that our own commanders refused to have an.' part in those expeditions, and there is not a man among ns to-night but who remembers how the poor Chinese women and children came flocking into the camps of the Americans, the British, and the Japanese to escape the German peril. And is there one among us tonight but who is not thankful that he was of Chaffee’s men and that those poor Orientals got the protection and the square deal they merited? ( “ Ihave seen and you have seen P little Crinese towns that dotted the Imperial highway on that ninety-mile stretch between lientsin and Peking I can see the wrecked homes to this day. I have seen the wells in those little towns piled to top with the bodies of Mancliu women ,those on the bottom dead and those on the top not much more than alive. I have seen three Manchu women plunge to their death in order to escape the shame that came with, the German column, and I speak in the plain 1 truth when I say. it was hut a few minutes after these women fell to their death when three German soldiers fell dead in their tracks;, and the bullets that ended their miserable existence came from ' American ‘krags’. ” Sergeant Voomuiger, who is again in active service, told a story which verified in every detail that narrated by Madden. '

“My old command,’’ lie said, “was troop L of the Sixth Cavalry an organisation made up almost entirely ol Western rough riders, and when I say rough riders I mean rough in the most emphatic sense of that work. “I know that if the people of the United States had known what the Germans did in China in 1900 they would have gone to war long before they did. In China* the Manchu women bind their feet-r-that is, they did in 1900 —and the poor things for that reason •'were unable to run, and that is Why wo found so many Manchus and so few Tartars in those wells between Tien Tsin and Peking. !

“One day together with five other troopers of the Sixth, I went into a German saloon in the German quarter of Pekin. We Americans were minding our own business, when we noted the Germans glaring at use and muttering things we did not understand. Then in came another trooper, a German*American, a real American, too and he was from the Bowery. He could understand. Finally one the Germans said something in a loud voice. The German-Ameri can trooper told us he had called us ‘Yankee Pigs,” and had said that we were no good, and that when it came to fighting the Germans could whip us in any number and at any time A German never went anywhere without his long bayonet. So they fought with bayonets and we with fists. We got all that was coming to us, and so did they. There was one casualty One of our boys attacked the man wlio had uttered the insult and took the bayonet with him, and when the fight was over that German was dead and his own bavonei was in his body.

“General Chaffee, and the commanders of all the other units sent proclamations to the outlying districts and told the people to come back home, and guaraneed them protection. And they came back to all the sections of the city except that over which von Wal dersee had control.