GERMAN DRINK MADNESS

Levin Daily Chronicle, 17 October 1918, Page 4

GERMAN DRINK MADNESS

IN BELGIUM AND PRANCE,

The part that drink played in the furious and savage orgies of destructive rage and violence attending the German march through Belgium and Northern Prance is attested by Major Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, "who says that the German troops -were '.'drunken." He " After'they had emptied the cellars of the French chateaux they ransacked, the furniture and the priceless contents, and then laid upon the . floors in stuporous semi-consciousneßs; whilst at Rheims they behaved with ferocious cruelty; and in the dugouts during the Somme battle, our men found German officers helplessly drunk and filthy. The account of eight drunken German, soldiers - returning from Malines is authoritatively quoted, and relates that when a little "girl ran out into the street as these drunken Huns passed by, she was bayoneted by one of their number, slung up, and thus carried away whilst his comrades sang. The organised cruelties and atrocious outrages.carried out by gangs of. drunken German .soldiers, the assaults committed upon helpless women and children, are an eternal disgrace to the.military forces of Germany and those in authority over them. "I have personally witnessed ' the mental breakdown of innocent women from Flanders who were driven into madness by the coarse savagery of German officers and men whose animal nature was set loose, and whose instincts and brutal desires through drink were no longer inhibited by the control of higher faculties. The horrors of German atrocities have, already been ac " curately and with great moderation described in the Bryce Commission and other records. The German troops and the higher commands have shown a mad brutal: ty and a sordid lovei of malicious destruction, and they have delighted in spoiling anything beautiful and irreplacatto.,'_ .