THE WORLD AGHAST

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 77, 28 October 1916, Page 5

THE WORLD AGHAST

GERMANY’S LATEST CRIME.

PRISONERS DISE ASE-1N FECTED

SC HOC KINO DISCLOSURES.

Press Association— Copyright, Anstrn

lian and N.Z. Cable Association .London, October 27. The following message has been rclease|j»|i|T publication : .2»'ew York, /September 28. The, .Paris correspondent .of the Luries cables a summary of ' documents, headed : “fad ispul able Proof of Germany ’s Late^lbCTirae.” The publication of the documents was prefaced with a statement as follows: This'new crime by Germany differs from the Lusitania and all other crimes. It was dictated by the criminal idea that’ if Germany falls she will drag the whole world with her. Germany is deliberately infecting her prisoners with tuberculosis and then casts them back into their own or neutral nations to breed contagion or die. Already fifty thousand Frenchmen have been inoculated, beside a thousand men of other nations. Germany has “show” camps, but tuberculosis manufacture is carrie'd on in other camps, secretly guarded. Its existence was hardly suspected by any American investigator. In one of the secret camps a German doctor, after mixing ■tuberculars with the convalescents from other diseases, in order to spread consumptibnf said: “Thus I wage war, in my owns fashion.”

Thirteen hundred French , and a thousand British" consumptives . were dumped into Switzerland, the disease being so advanced that they were no longer useful as prisoners; Many are dead, and thousands are in a dying' condition. The French Government is treating them in a special hospital at Lyons. ■

Swiss doctors discovered the secret camps, the majority of which are in salt, coal, and iron mines, or drainage reclamation areas,

REVELATIONS CONFIRMED

The following report was made by the notable, Dailiiif asMbr<M; daip^.Kpjjqp} Branson, who obtSMed information from prisoners or from Frepsj| j seiufcesi «£h e 'lga found;- ,that Switpuftand* tlil advance guard ofi Ge’rmahylssi victimifi of consumption, this; number ‘of which' is-■.growing. rapidly, i The wholesale maaufagturo of consumptives is a deliberate,," organised attempt to destroy the French race, as the ■ French. mre* the greatest sufferers. Germany clan never- defend- or explain her treatment of prisoners. There are three forms of camps. In the third prisoners are forced to labor until [they are permanently oTOketf-nival ids. There is no inspection of these chihffe |auc( ! ohl| twi| doctors visited them ; they were Blanched and Cpeliset, of the Geneva, Red Cross. Blanched' asserts that at a certain Krupp factory and coal mines, forty j per cent, of the prisoners are permanently, sfi health/' 1 ’ He! instances a ■ youth,-.pf; twenty tied to a post in the opener Until hi v s ,;l ltnees were permanently Lent. |

Another form of punishment was putting men under a lighted coke oven, where the heat and lack of air makes them quickly plead for mercy. The longest period any men withstood this torture* was two hours. English prisoners were, shot at pointblank range. One man who was imprisoned. at Hemelburg, in Bavaria, stated that the mattresses were changed half-yearly, and were full of vermin. There was sawdust and chopped straw in the bread, and they had a concoction of roasted aconis'for breakfast. The prisoner declared that twenty-four thousand prisoners in Munster for shelter dug holes in the ground and covered themselves with turf. In the labor camps, despite the icy storms, the men were only tent bedded so ill in straw and 1 mud, they were covered with vermin, torturned by hunger, and dying pt cold. Men died nightly, and, starving men threw themselves in the mud and lapped up porridge that had fallen from the pot. The worst treated are the English. It is a terrible sight to see the laces of the dying men, with coverlets of rags, some being so covered with vermin that one could hardly see the skin. Typhoid and pneumonia cases were all together, and the general drug is a solution of chalk. At the camp itself the odour gripped one’s throat. Alter rain the tent floors wore covered with water, the tents being too low lor men to stand up and too wet for them to lie down. The men spent their nights in misery until death ends it. The doctors state that the Russian prisoners brought the typhus, and the contagion from the disease was spread by vermin, wherefrom the prisoners could , not escape, and the neecssarv roihodios are not given. The demands that the French ho separated from the disease of the Russians'was refused by the camp commandant. , ,

The doctors assort thAt the criminal order to mix the sick and well was given from Berlin in January. Out of ten thousand prisoners there were four thousands deaths. All the German officials and doctors left the camps In many cases the tubercular patients were put in the same barracks with men weakened T.y other diseases. . Dr Blanched adds that they ai tints easily snspentibln, and this slow assassination » Mm " is unquestionable that German, has anted in pH appreciation ol »diat she is doing. . '■ Since July IOLh new orders hate b P on issued i making it more ddben t to get information, This is hei hit-

est arid greatest infamy, but the war is dragging slowly to an end, ' and beaten, convicted Germany will await her judgment. BRITISH OFFICIAL REPORT. APPALLING CIRCUMSTANCES. I < London, October 27. j A British official report says that the typhus epidemic at Cardelegen in tho spring and summer, 1915, reveals horrifying German mismanagement and callous cruelty, equalling that at Wittenburg. | The area of the camp was ’550 by 550 yards. Prisoners were . ‘riot a allowed to' leave except for fatigue duties. There was a single bathhouse for eleven thousand men, whereof four thousand were Russians, six thousand French, seven hundred Belgian, and 2-10 British. | the overcrowding was most terrible. The Inns were devoid of tables and j stools, and men sat on their beds to jeai uicir meals. Here lay the sick and even dead, and the atmosphere 'day and night was indescribably foe'fid. The food was of bad quality, and constantly suffered the pangs of hunger. The Russians, who received few private. parcels, were seen on their hands and knees crowding to the pit where potato peelings were thrown, struggling to find the rind. A few prisoners without hoots and overcoats had their sufferings intensified by extreme cold and trie absence of proper fires. ’ I he', sanitary conditions were horrible. Twelve men had to congregate at a single standpipe for personal washing and cleaning the eating utensils and their clothes, all without soap. 1 Some men were three months.without a bath, the result being that lice swarmed in every garment and blanket.

The commandant and guards established a reign of terror and brutality, and the camp was soon in a state of utter misery and desolation. Everyone of the men was anaemic and listless. The authorities, early in February, fearing an epidemic cdiose seven British, French and Russian doctors, and brought them to Cardelsgen. The doctors found the snmllesf quantities of drugs, including four ounces Epsom salts, three or four dozen tablets of quinine, asperin, and Calomel, and a few lint dressings. The are now fifty daily. A commission of German doctors hour,in the, camp and half anjtm'.r later the German guardsr goon' there was not a (si*n*n mjndc the/ camp. The sick were left utterly unattended and the kitchens empty. T..' Brunner, commandant of the camp, summoned the seven doctors to the edge of the barbed wire and told them that the sentries would shoot anyone attempting to leave, and added that ho would return to the spot daily to receive reports.

/pi, ? doctors were ’.faced swith an .appalling situation. There were no beds for tlip sick men, and the state of the patients on the floor were indescribable, They had no milk or eggs, and tlte sick were fedron black bread and raw herrings like the rest of the piisoners. The doctors commenced to sort out the cases and isopited the 'Cdhl4tt events; The euidcmip' lasted <: dtirLhonths, and totaired,Vt«.o.-.:lhous-ancl ch'ses, whereof Brunner and the otheritiea were actively The doctors encouraged-' games oi football, but Brunner ordered the games to ‘be stopped under pain of severe punishment.

further confirmation. u 1 . eating and drinking with TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS. (Received 8.50 a.m.) New York, October 27. Miss Gertrude Atherton, the novelists, who recently spent four months in France, in a letter to « the New York Times confirms the French charges that the Germans deliberately infest their prisoners with tuberculosis- Prisoners were returning clqthed in rags and suffering Irom tubercular disease requiting special treatment at the French hospitals. The writer' proceeded“l learned through a thoroughly reliable source that the French prisoners were not only forced to sleep with tuberculosis sufferers, but to eat and drink from the same vessels, which were not washed. Moreover, I know of' authenticated cases in which they 'ha given injections of tuberculosis serum under the pretence of vaccination against typhoid.”, This report confirmed the statements of doctors,"who had special opportunities’of obtaining accurate information.