HUN CRUELTY.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 August 1918, Page 4

HUN CRUELTY.

[PER PRESS ASSOCIATION. —COPYRIGHT.] fAUSTRALIAN & N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION’] NEW YORK, August 18. The “World’s” correspondent at 01deny.aul on the Dutch-German frontier, interviewed Sergeant Schwarts Leigh, who deserted from the 74th Pomeranian Regiment after serving as a guard of the prison camps, fie says that the Germans, acting on Headquarters auhority are outdoing their own record of cruelty towards the American prisoners. They have adopted the policy of “Fewer Americans who return home the better for us,” and are applying the so-called “Sharp Regime,” and Preventive punishment,” whereby the Americans are punished before committing offences and sent to Kuestrin reprisal camp, where they are compelled to work from eighteen to twenty hours daily. Ihe guards are instructed to shoot if the prisoners sit down, aim c r'ush their Skulls with bayonets :! they collapse. The food consists of dirty thin soup and bread. Ihe latter is missing twice weekly, and those making complaints are punished by being made to stand motionless in the sun for three days.

Tlie Americans are compelled to fill fish ponds, using only a water glass, in one month. Solitary confinement is the punishment on their failure to fill the pond. Americans have been conveyed in chains to Russia and exhibited while a lecturer explains that the Gormans have been victorious. One one occasion an American broke his handcuffs and assaulted the lecturer. The prisoner was shot. Negroes are specially cruelly treated and are flogged mercilessly for the slightest offence. The German American prisoners arc treated kindly for the purpose of trying to organise brigade to fight for Germany, but the German-Americans refuse to (>at the extra bread ration when the- other American prisoners arc not supplied. \t railway stations the police invite the populace to insult and spit on the Americans, saying: “The war prolongcrs are here.’’