PRISONERS LEFT TO STARVE

Hokitika Guardian, 27 March 1919, Page 4

PRISONERS LEFT TO STARVE

HOW MANGIN RESCUED 300 BRITISH. With British Army in Germany, January 9. In a.clay’s motoring one can pass through all four of the Allied bridgeheads along the Rhine, Belgian, British, American, and French—a lovely land ot vineyards and wooded bills, of crooked little gabled towns with fortified gateways like the pictures of a Grimm’s fairy tale, and, most beautiful of all, the majestic river itself, now swirling past in the fullness ofits winter flood, a mighty yellow torrent, where the castlecrowned crags hem it in, but stretching out when the banks are low, until it submerges the fields, and in places even the roadways that lie beside its course.

Everywhere the Allied occupation runs with the smoothness of alongestablished institution. The psychology of the German nation is an extraordinary thing. These same people who but a few months ago were at the zenith of national arrogance and were convinced that their country v.as about to establish its domination over Europe by force of arms, now accept even the control of their personal liberties by the conquering Allied armies with complete docility and without a trace of resentment or even of regret. HUNS’ “ VELVET GLOVE.” It needs a continual effort to remember that it was this very nation which made war with deliberate barbarity and ruthlessuess beyond precedent. The explanation of the anomaly lies, I think, in their sense of absolute discipline. Wlrat they are told to do they do thoroughly. They have no personal feelings of their own in national matters. Their patriotism is a Statemanufactured article. When the order was to practise irightfultress, they practised it.

Now that methods of violence have failed, they are going just as deliberately about the business of trying to make friends with the peoples they had hoped to crush. They stroke just as gently with the velvet glove as they crushed heavily with the iron hand.

As General Mangin, Commanding the French Army at Mayence, remarked, “Peace with the Germans only means that they change their weapons.” He was referring especially to the propaganda which was carried 011 among the French prisoners of war, even after the signing of the Armistice, evidently upon an order from Berlin.

The prisoners were released from their internment camps, but everywhere they were told the same story. “ France refuses to receive you back. Many parties of the French prisoners have already been turned back on trj'ing to enter the French lines. Moreover, all France is in the throes of a Bolshevist Revolution.”

It was an eleventh-hour attempt to harm an Allied country by breed • iug despair among her captured soldiers.

GENERAL MANGIX’s STORY

The state of these prisoners, said the general, was often even worse than any accounts that have been printed. He told of a party of 300 British prisoners of war who, having been set free in the interior of Germany, but left entirely without food or transport.They managed to struggle to the French area of occupation on the Rhine, They reported that there 300 more farther back along the I’oad who had been unable to get any farther.

General Mangiu accordingly sent ont a convoy of ambulance wagons under a white Hag into German territory, which at last found these poor fellows quite exhausted, lying by the roadside, without any attempt being made to do anything for them by the German authorities or civilians.

They were in so feeble and demoralised a condition when brought in that they were like dumb animals, hardly speaking and incapable even of showing joy at their rescue. It was not until they had had a meal that a French officer turned ou “ God Have the King” on a gramophone, and General Mangiu said it was a moving sight to watch their haggard faces . brighten as they heaid the familiar tune. WELL-PEI) HERMANS. The French zone extends up to the suburbs of Frankfort. In this city, General Mangiu toid me, there is a certain battalion, supposed to maintain order, but the temper of the men is such that neither their officers nor even the general commanding the town dare to appear in uniform.

At Mannheim, which lies outside the original Flench zone, political disorders recently began, and the municipality appealed to the French to send troops to occupy the town and maintain public security. The German Armistice Commission at Spa, however, denied that there were any troubles at Mannheim, and it was not until the demand ot the townspeople had been renewed that the French sent a battalion there.

Everywhere that I have been during this journey of '2130 miles ou both banks cf the Rhine I have seen no sign of food shortage, nor, as the French commander at Mayence said, is any noticeable in his zone, except nerhaps among the young children, who have suffered from lack of fats.

At Neuwied, which is the home of the former King of Albania, Prince William of Wied, we had such excellent beefsteaks for lunch as I have not tasted for many a day, and the landlady of the little Rhineside hotel told me that right through the war there had always been good butter, such as she put on the table.