GERMAN ATROCITIES.

Taihape Daily Times, 24 December 1918, Page 5

GERMAN ATROCITIES.

STORIES OF OUTRAGES. WHAT BRITISH FOUND IN LILLE Commonwealth Official Correspondent Now that the Allies have liberated Lille, Bruges, Valenciennes, Courtrai, and the great districts which those cities serve, the full story of the incredible oppression of the whole vast civilian populace under the German army is coming to light. There is no longer any doubt of what the Germans are, and what they have done upon defenceless human beings who were unable even to pro- 1 test against German iniquities. If any Afghans or dervishes had done these things the world would still have stared aghast at the spectacle. The people the Germans oppressed were people absolutely helpless—captured prisoners of war and women and children of the districts they had | overrun. j WHAT PEOPLE SUFFERED. Australian officers who entered Lille with Sir William Birdwood’s army immediately after the release of the city, say they had not believed hither to many Blue Book stories of the German’s early atrocities; but the plain evidence of what the people of Lille district had suffered entirely altered their views. Thero was an expression still on the faces of those people during the first few days of their liberty impossible To mistake. The Germans had ordered that every man should uncover his head when he passed an officer in the street, and ; every woman should smile and bow. The people still did these things mechanically to British officers when they first came to Lille. Children in the houses fled at the approach of troops to the backrooms and dark corners, whence their mothers brought them back, telling them, they need not be afraid as these Avere British officers and not Germans. The country people were dri\ T en away by the Germans on their retirement, but they subsequently returned to the villages outside Lille. When I questioned about the Germans they spat on the ground before proceeding to curse them. CONSCRIPTION OF WOMEN The conscription of the Avomen of Lille in 1916 Avas an infamy whereof ' much already has been written. The 1 Germans put machijncpguns in the streets, and called out the people from the houses at ten o’clock at night, many being in their nightclothes. While whole families stood in the streets, German officers selected with a gesture which Avomen and i girls were to be taken. There followed i at the Lille railway station a public I medical examination of these women I What happened to them in the j months following in the back areas | of Belgium and France, Avhere they I were taken to work on the land, many refuse to relate, saying: “It is too horrible.’’ A few daye before they left Lille the* Germans drove off 18,000 men and boys over 15 years old. OUTRAGE ON BRITISH. Thu German treatment of British prisoners of war was a crime which nothing can ever excuse. During the winter of 1916 British prisoners Avere driven through Lille streets. They had no boots, their feet were bleeding and they had no trousers or shirts. All these were taken from them. All the covering they had were bits of hessian and' old rags wrapped about their shoulders and waits. A FrenchAA'Oman, the Avife of a Scottish factory owner of Lille, saAA r them and offered them bread. She was arrested and only escaped gaol by the influence of her father, whom the Germans greatly respected, Another Frenchwoman A\ 7 ho gave them bread Avas imprisoned for 10 days.

During the more recent advance German prisoners, being brought back under a British escort, passed a certain convent. One of the nuns in this convent asked the escort why they did not kill those Germans, and added: "You would never take them alive if you knew what the British prisoners have suffered. ” French civilians in the redeemed districts marvel at our solicitude for Hun prisoners. In many,. cases, as the British soldiers halt in the villages liberated during the past couple of wo?*?, the inhabitants offer them coffee, food, and shelter and refus 1 to take any payment therefor. All through their occupation the Germans were amazed at the unbroken patriotic spirit of the French civilians under calculated oppression. In Lille they saw their property looted under organised official theft, iall machinery in the factories and city services taken away, the whole place rendered commercially worthless, and gangs of Russians employed to break to pieces with hammers what machinery the 'Germans did not desire to remove. Still, they boro themselves firmly, and never once despaired of ultimate rc dere. ntion.