HINDENBURG'S LIES TO HIS SOLDIERS.

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

HINDENBURG'S LIES TO HIS SOLDIERS.

Mr. Henry Wood, the United Press correspondent with the French armies, writes as' follows: One of the imperative military necessities for the incredible devastation and destruction being wrought by the Germans along the pathway of their retreat in Trance Is to convince the German soldiers themselves that if they either desert or surrender to the French they will be instantly shot in .reprisal. German soldiers now being taken prisoners by the French along the entire front between the Aisne and St. Quentin declare, without exception, to their captors, that they realise they are going to be shot, and are quite prepared for it.

While the Germans manifestly have various aims in view in their systematic policy of reducing every inch of French soil occupied by them to a wasteless desert, the French military authorities have been able to establish definitely from the German prisoners capturer that not the least of these objects is to inject a moral of desperation into the Germany army. The latter are told not only that they will be instantly shot if they fall into the hands of the French, but also that unless they fight to the death in an effort to keep the allied troops from reaching German soil their own homes, farms, and villages will quite naturally suffer the same fate by way of reprisal that they have inflicted on the homes, farms and villages of France. It is under Hindenburg 's orders that all German regiments now falling back on the western front have regularly appointed crews, whose sole business it is to destroy all property and to leave every inch of the ground that goes back into the hands of the French a veritable desert.

While this new policy of Hindcnburg appears to have convinced the German troops that summary death awaits them at the hands of the French it does not appear in the least to have decreased the tendency either for desertion or for surrendering, and the prisoners still falling into the hands of the French have difficulty in believing they are not going to bo shot.—Exchange.