GERMAN RULE IN LAON.

Taihape Daily Times, 16 December 1918, Page 5

GERMAN RULE IN LAON.

SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION. FINES FOLLOW AIR RAIDS. The fate of Laon during the years of the Germans’ occupation of the town has been that of all the larger French towns that have come under German rule, but more fortunate than most, it has escaped wanton destruction. On the other hand, the city and its people have been systematically j robbed and oppressed for over four ' years. ■' j Whatever the Germans needed was j taken out of private houses and confiscated. The Germans entered private houses at any hour of the day or | night that suited them, and, if need ! be, they turned inhabitants out of their beds to make room for German j officers.

When General von Heeringen, once Prussian Minister of War. who had his army headquarters in Laon for something like two years, left Laon, he took away all the furniture of the Prefecture. In 1914 German officers usually j spoke to townspeople revolver in hand i Since then their ferocity has been less | apparent, but there has never been j any real mitigation of the hardships wantonly imposed on the town. Men and women were requisitioned to labour for the Germans in whatever number was needed. Those who were forced to work were paid by the Germans in the form of orders to pay addressed to the municipal authorities at Laon, who'Tiad to pay in the district notes which the Germans compelled the city to issue, and for the redemption of which the city is alone responsible. People of Laon, therefore. both did the Germans’ work and paid the Germans’ wages bill. Some German officers organised a big shootmear Laon, and requisitioned as beaters and to carry the game a hundred residents of Laon, picked at random, and including a number of 1 women and girls. j The town has been forced to pay 1 since 1814 many millions of francs as war indemnities. Twice the town was j fined because French airmen bombed j the railway station. On the first occasion the town was mulcted in a hundred thousand francs, and on the second in one hundred and fifty thousand francs as punishment for the audacity of their countrymen. The Germans also practised an ingenious system of extracting money in the guise of taxation. Dividing the amount of the French Budget by the number of people left in the town—8000—they ordered every inhabitant must pay them 200 francs yearly in taxes. They made no administrative or other return for the money. From the Laon region 300 persons were taken and from town itself 24 persons half of whom were women and girls, were taken early in year as hostages on the pretence that the French Government had illegally detained Alsatians in France. These have been returned since. The roads leading into Laon have been torn up by great mines placed a | couple of hundred yards apart, and It lis impossible for wheeled traffic to j enter the 'town. During the last 24 I hours of German occupation, the i townspeople were compelled to reI main in their cellars, and consequentily they knew little of the time and manner of the enemy’s departure.