COMMON ROBBERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 4, 6 January 1915, Page 4

COMMON ROBBERS.

Shylock himself could not resist legitimate calls for reimbursement more obstinately than does the German Treasury (writes a Belgian correspondent of the London Telegraph). The creditors are made to stand hours and hours outside before they gain access to the German cashiers' offices, where they have to submit, however .small the sum claimed, to endless bickerings, with the result that they are finally made to cut down by a quarter, sometimes by a half, the amount due- to them, and agreed to by the Teuton under his very signature. Anyone who has had the sad privilege of being locked up for weeks in Brussels has had daily opportunities of observing that robbery and corruption have become such natural habits to the Germans that they even practise those vices against themselves—l mean against their own national Exchequer. For instance, when General von Arnim's army corps first entered the Belgian capital, the officers of Jris.. staff, mostly barons and "vons," purchased I what few motor-cars remained for sale in the city, compelled the merchants to make the bill, say, £2OOO, when it ought to have been £ISOO or £1.600, and unblushingly pocketed the difference. And the custom has so permeated the whole army of a degraded race that rank and file men, being sent to buy chocolate for the officers' mess, made the invoice 30f instead of 25f, i and likewise grabbed from 5 to 20 per cent, for themselves. So one may con. ceive how little they scruple in turning into mere mockery the payments they have to make to Belgians.