WORLD APPEAL.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 14 February 1917, Page 3

WORLD APPEAL.

ALLIES’ WARNING ABOUT BELGIUM. GERMAN OPPRESSION. RESULT OF SLAVE-DRIVING AND EXPLOITATION, The following declaration by the Allies regarding the present state of Bel gium has been issued by the British Government with the approval and concurrence of the French, Russian, and Italian Governments, who arc issuing declarations to the same effect:— "The Allies must warn the world of what is about to take place. As their own situation grows more desperate the Central Empires intend to tear up every guarantee on which the work of the Relief Commission rests. They intend to cast aside all their promises, and to use Belgian foodstuffs and Belgian labour to support their own failing strength. The work of relief which neutrals have built up for two years is about to lose its foundation, and is in danger, of falling.

"As soon as the financial resources of the Belgian Government were exhausted,. the Allies provided sums for the continuation of the work. They have furnished the Commission with shipping and all other necessary facilities. Further, they have done their utmost through neutral commission to protect Belgian industry from the disastrous consequences of invasion. THE ALLIES’ STIPULATION. "The AljLics have only stipulated that the Germans should equally draw no advantage from the operations of the commission; that they should not seize either, imported or native supplies, and that the distribution of relief should not be used for the purpose of coercing Belgian workmen against their conscience. “ These conditions, which the Germans have pledged themselves to obey, have in the past been frequently violated; Belgian cattle have been driven out of Belgium to feed the German armies at the front, Belgian workmen have been coerced., and seizures and requisitions of foodstuffs have 'taken place throughout the occupied territories.

"The Germans have also seized all the raw materials, machinery, and property of the Belgian factories essential to th e maintenance of the national industry, and have thus deliberately created unemployment and misery. These infractions of the German guarantees have in the past been disavowed in many cases by the German Government, and the Allies were content to rely on the neutral commission to watch over and enforce the fulfilment of the condis tions under which it worked.

“Now, however, the situation is changing. The Germans have abandoned all pretence of respecting personal freedom in Belgium. They have deliberately ordered suspension of public relief works, supported by the neutral commission, and have ' openly, in spite of all their professions to the contrary, aimed at creating the unemployment which would furnish them with an excuse for deportations. OPPRESSED POPUT,ATION. “They have become themselves the organisers of and co-opcratoVs .with manhunts, which they solemnly pledged themselves by the Brussels Convention of 1890, to put down in Africa. Further, the machinery of the Belgian industries has now been totally destroyed, and the export from Belgian of foodstuffs essential for the maintenance of the population has again begun on a large scale. “The Allies do not intend to change their policy or desert the oppressed population of Belgium in this most critical moment of the Avar, but as it will be impossible fori the relief work to continue if its basic guarantees are destroyed, they appeal to the civilised world,, not on their oavu behalf, but on that of innocent citizens who cannot protect themselves, to sec that this great Avork of international bencvo-> lence and co-operation which has grown up in the midst of the wan and for Avhich the Allies have advanced the money, shall not be endangreed by treachery or destroyed by violence. ”