GENERAL WAR NEWS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1835, 4 June 1918, Page 1

GENERAL WAR NEWS.

BRITISH MINER'S .FORTUNE

A Welsh soldier, formerly a miner, who escaped from Germany to Holland, says in a Idler: “1 would like you to give this message to the Minors’ Federation officials. I was in a coalmine near Essen, with 13 other Britishers. When we

found what wo wore to do we refused to work-. Thereupon we were at once made to stand with our faces to (ho sun. I hail a bayonet banged in my face and across my throat. We were made lo stand 22 hours a day, without food, and we had to work at last. I learn now that our trade unionists are opposing the employment of Gorman prisoners to work in the English mines. 1 hope that my hrolher unionists will think of what some of their own have gone through; then, perhaps, they may alter their decision.” CRIMINALS IN GERMANY. The bitter complaints about the growth of crime in Germany and the insecurity of thy public against, burglars and murderers have hitherto been heard chielly from Berlin, hut the trouble is now spreading-to all the huge capitals. In .Frankfurt, as well as Berlin, the police are reinforced at night by military patrols. The Cologne Gazelle says that it is •impossible to provide such patrols everywhere, especially as an increasing number of crimes are now being committed in broad daylight and in the open street. The same paper says that there are in Germany about 300,000 men between 20 and 50 years of age who have served sentences of penal servitude, it proposes that, although the convicts cannot he fallen into the army, at least 100,000 of them should be called nn and formed.into labour halallions for use in dangerous parts of the front.