THE KAISER'S GHOULS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 26 June 1917, Page 2

THE KAISER'S GHOULS.

TRADE IN THE DEAD.

MORE FACTOEIES FOR "CANNON

FODDER."

The Somme fighting last year brought an immense harvest to -the Corpse Utilisation Works, and that was why, after that battlefield had come to be known among the Germans as the "Graveyard," German soldiers began to call it the "Fat Farm" says the Daily Express correspondent in Amsterdam.

Some people believe, apparently, that there is only one German factory for this work out of which Germans are making handsome returns. This is not so. The factories are established in each army area including Eumania. This the Germans have admitted.

They erect mausoleums over the bodies of influential generals and other important people, but the rank and file of their "cannon fodder" as they gratefully call the duped "heroes in feild-grey,'' must serve to increase German profits in death as in life. It is not only soap, pig food, lubricants, manure, and gelatine for munition works that tiiey extract from the corpses. You must remember that of all things hungered for in Germany today fat is the most precious. There have been cases of servant girls stealing their mistress' cold cream to spread on their war bread.

Cannibalism exists In Germany today in more direct forms than the catting by human beings of corpse-fed pigs. I will say no more, except this: I will guarantee that none of the present generations in Holland who personally know of these things will ever again purchase Germans-made sweetmeats, honey, jam, pates, margarine, or anything of that sort —not if they live a hundred years.

English know* of course, that the German soldiers call their margarine "corpse fat.'' There is a reason for these things. And then they talk of Kultur

Trained chemists have been withdrawn from the German trenches to work in these factories, and have begged to be sent back to the firing line. They never are. The morality from blood-poisoning among the labourers at these works is very high. They use double-pronged hooks, for dragging the bundles of corpses about and the wire stands which holds the bodies together often inflicts scratches. These are fatal. In many cases decomposition is advanced. The bodies are bound together in faggots of four or five head to feet —the Kaiser's martyred dupes. Only Germans could do these things. Recently one of these awful waggondestined for the Liege District Eoiling-Down Factory, missed the point in a shunting yard, and in error was dragged across the frontier into Holland. This sealed truck lay for a week under the eyes of the frontier guards, who waited instructions. The odour from it was then so vile that the Dutch railway authorities opened it. It was crammed full of corpses, wired together in faggots of four.

I have spoken to one fellow who saw this load. As he said: "Only Germans cculd do this. Hottentots would draw the line at it-''