THE MURDER OF BRITISH WOUNDED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 221, 5 June 1915, Page 3

THE MURDER OF BRITISH WOUNDED.

WRITTEN EVIDENCE. | Th c following account from "Eye- ; witness," at General Headquarters: Prisoners express ffre'at respect for our artillery, especially for our field guns, whose shrapnel bursts at exactly the right height above the target and causes splinterst to fly back. In speaking of their own army they state that the shortage of regular officers and the promotion of one-year volunteers has led to a great deterioration in the quality of the junior officers many of whom the soldiers regard with secret contempt. The wholesale distribution of Iron Crosses, it appears has caused the decoration to be despised by the fighting troops. One man said that it was given as a matter of course to regimental-sergtt-ma.iors, and to "fawning dead-heads," on the lines of communication, who had never even heard the sound cf a bullet, and that thirty thousand had been distributed before th e fall of Liege. The Kaiser and Hindenberg arc still popular heroes, but the Crown Prince has lost cast. Information has been obtained regarding the British prisoners from the point of view of t.he German private soldier. They ar 6 described as very proud and obstinate, and refusing to work like others of t he Allied prisoners 0 in f aotories or m ines. They are apparently not allowed to work in the fields, even if they are willing to do so, for fear cf their making a concerted attempt to escape. On this account also they ' are kept more strictly guarded than the others, and are more harshly treated. PRISONERS" HARDSHIPS. According to civilians who have com e in from Lille, the British prisoners, who are kept i n the citadel, are enduring great hardships,' being insufficiently fed, and having been deprived of their greatcoats. In connection with the treatment of prisoners, both civil and military, the following extract from,a letter of a French civilian who has recently returned from captivity in Germany, is not cheerful reading: "If our deliverance is delayed much longer, we shall find thousands of unfortunate people dying of hunger behind the German line. The enemy feeds the population they have ruined with. 150 grammes of "K" bread per day. About the fate of these prisoners, all I can say is that the papers underestimate the truth. Of th e 12,000 civilians taken prisoners, more than a quarter will die of hunger and privations before six months; the remainder wfll suffer for the rest of their lives from the horrors of their captivity. You can tell the soldiers that I would wish them death rather than captivity in Germany. I must stop, because I cannot bear to think of these horrors. I have the firm conviction that victory is at hand, and what I have seen and heard of the Germans confirms this belief." Some of the inhabitants who have returned from the same area brought samples of the bread which was being supplied to t hem. It was a kind of

p'oft brown dcufih, largely! composed of potatoes, and eitramoly indigestible, i 'haT-irsd A hobey. J The absurd Jorws rssumed by j th e German I':.'.i"od : cri British nation are shown'by the report made at Diedenuoffen'are painted witk'"Gott Strafie England" in enormous letters. And unless some of the remarks shouted out'to our troops in the trenches have been misunderstood, hatred of their neighbours is becoming a hobby with the Germans, for at one point the usual cry was changed to "Gott Strafe Holland." The precise cause for this alteration in the objective of their kind wishes is not known. In view of the false accusations wbich hav e recently appeared in the enemy newspapers regarding the conduct of the British at Ncuve Chapelle —to which allusion has already been made —th e following extract from the diary of a German officer, date] December 19th, 1914, descriptive of the conduct of his own men on a former occasion, is of mora than ordinary interest: "Tli G sight of the trenches and the fury—not to say the bestiality—of our men in beating to death the wounded English, affected me so much that for the rest cf the day 1 was fit for nothing. The writer cf this was in the loth Regiment, 13th Division of the 7th' German Corps. His testimony as> to the brutality of ths enemy is borne out by the evidence of cur own men en numerous occasions, notably at Nouve Chapelle, where several of cur wounded temporarily left behind were subsequently found bayoneted, or with their brains blown cut. Amongst the many incongruities of this campaign, not the least- strange contrast is that bewesn the waging of trench warfare and the gardening which is carried en in many places by th e British soldier. The gardens, which are mostly near the dugouts, are not of a very ambitious order, but when circumstances permit considerable care-is devoted to their cultivation. In som e instances the small plots of growing primroses and daffodils are not mere than Iro1 r o hundred yards from the enemy, close behind the breastwork protecting their owners form the bullets that whistle overhead and bury themselves with a vicious thud in the sandbags a few feet away. .. .