THE DEPORTATIONS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 276, 18 May 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE DEPORTATIONS.

In an article in the "Fortnightly" on "Germany's Latest Crime," Professor Leon van der Essen (Professor of History in tha University of Louvain) deals with the Belgian deportation*. The Germans profess that the deportations are the result of the "social and economic situation," but Professor van der Essen states that the German authorities are themselves responsible for tlio situation which they affect to deplore so much. They have deliberately sought to bring about a state of unemployment in Belgium, in order to deport Belgian workmen. For instance, in the collieries of Bo'giun Liniburg recently the miners were invited to work exclusively for the benefit of Germany. They refused. Then the German authorities simply occupied the mines by fore 1 , closed them, and throw out of work the very large number of miners employed Where. Hencefi'orlh they were to be regarded as "unemployed" and "fit" for deportation. "The Germans are showing no sense of humanity, no pity. They have carried off fathers of largo families; only sons, supports of widows; heads of families where the mother had died that very day, and was not yet buried. As to the fa to of the deportees, all we know up to the present is that part of them have been sent to places behind the German front in France. Large numbers of men from Ghent, have been conveyed to Soissons, to St. Quentin, to the Aisno district, and are making

roads, preparing trenches, machine-gun positions, strategic railways, and military aviation grounds. The main fact is that every Belgian deportee released a German workman, who will take up sirms to fight Belgium and her allies. Up to the present, more than 1 .">O,OOO men have been deported."