GERMANS BRUTAL; AUSTRIANS POLITE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 95, 20 April 1916, Page 2

GERMANS BRUTAL; AUSTRIANS POLITE.

Dr. Alice Hutchinson, of Edinburgh, the head of the second Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia, gives a spirited account of the two months which she and the members of her unit spent as interned prisoners. She likes Austrian soldiers, and does not like German soldiers. "At Stalatch," she says, "the German troops jeered at us, made vulgar remarks, and even worse than vulgar. No officer checked them. How different in Kevavara, where we were under the Austrians. The wooden hut to which we were taken was full of Austrian orderlies. They gave u s seme of their bread (we were famishing), and we all slept in the hut on the table, on the door, anywhere. I awoke from time to time, and it was amusing to see Austrian soldiers and Scottish women sleeping side by side anyhow on the straw. In the morning, we washed in the Danube. Three soldiers were on guard over us. They were tcld not to fix their bayonets because we were ladies. So different from the German soldiers, who rioted because they said we were getting better rations than they. After all,' said one of our .Austrian su& r d s > 'y° u are human beings like us, even if you are English.' Christmas Day was the jolliest we ever spent. We bought live geese in the market, killed them and cooked them, and also ate them —all of them. We drank toasts. We had never previously dared to sing 'God Save the King,' but this night we risked it pianissimo while the guards were out of the room."