SCARECROWS & PRISON BREAKERS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 219, 17 November 1916, Page 6

SCARECROWS & PRISON BREAKERS.

•WHY GERMANY HAS FORBIDDENUSE OF THE FORMER. Orders have recently been issued in Germany compelling the peasants to remove any old clothing from scarecrows in the fields. The reason for. this somewhat extraordinary behest is that escaping prisoners of war have exchanged clothes with the dummy figures, and, so disguised, they have, in many instances, succeeded in reaching the frontier unsuspected. The dodge is, of course, no new one. Over a hundred years ago two French officers, confined as prsioners of war in Dartmoor, escaped to the coast in scarecrows' rags annexed from a farmer's cornfields, and eventually reached France in a smuggling sloop. In November, 1597, again, a prisoner who escaped from Shrewsbury gaol, annexed the clothes from two scarecrows pressed up in feminine attire in an orchard. He then retired to a thick wood and with a pair of scissors and a needle and cotton, converted the skirts into a coat and a pair of trousers. In this ■ case, however., freedom did not reward j his ingenuity, for he was speedily recaptured. I