GERMAN ATROCITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 12 November 1914, Page 7

GERMAN ATROCITIES.

m AMERICAN WITNESS. ■ The New York Sun of September gives prominence to a letter written from London under date of September 15, by Mr Howard Copland to Mr. Harold M. Sewall, of Maine, and by 'him forwarded to the iSun. la its leading article, the -Sim says, thai after serious consideration it has decided to print, and print conipieuthe following revolting story as related by Mr Copland to his friend, Mr Sewall, who, the Sun informs its •readers, is a "man not only of'honorable reputation but also of keen intelligence and large worldly experience." Mr Sewall was Consul -General in Samoii and Minister to Hawaii. He is, the Sun adds, "a lawyer and diplomat, about the last person to be deceived as to the vivacity of a friend or to be moved in his own person to unneccsary excitement over a doubtful tale." In sending Mr Copland's letter to the Sun, Mr Sewall says he knows of Ino man whose testimony is worthy oF greater credence, and describes his friend as a graduate of Yale, a linguist, a traveller, and cosmopolite, and om l w r no "from the vantage ground of his Swiss homo, has been for years an unprejudiced student of all 'international politics." ■SCEPTICISM AND CONVICTION. _ Mr Copland writes that he was living in Sw/tzerland at the time war broke 'out, and three weeks later was delgute ed by the American Ambassador in Paris to take charge of a special train to bring Americans from Switzerland to Paris. On the journey, which took 2ti hours, they frequently had to stop to allow trains carrying'wounded to pass, 'and on such occasions owing to his official position, he was peimitted by tiro French authorities to talk to the wounded.

Mr Copland continues: '•The reports in the newspapers about German atrocities I had previously set down to hysterical exaggerations, such as eharaeter'istic the beginnings of so many wars and it was wifch a sort of amused tolerance that I first listened to it all in my talks with these soldiers. But, by Heavens, neither you nor nobody else would have talked, with them long without realising that all wel have been I reading in the newspapers about these inhuman barbarities does 1 not even <*ivc ;a faint idea of the horrible trot... One soldier after another I questioned, always asldng for exactly what he hart seen with his own eves, and not picked up by mere hearsay. I tell you tie things I learned all through that long day and rKght ,i n regard to th« mutilations of women and young girls were beyond description in'their inconceivable horror. No such mass of cirsumstantial details related to me by actual witnesses Hying so neftr to d'eath in those bare cars and next day in'the long rows, of cots ,in the hospitals th.it I visited in Dieppe, could have been collaborated nor invented. Each simple, straightforward, narration stood clear as but another fact of a great central mass (hat could not but lie the truth. If the Germans had acted but sialf so ' madly they would now stand worse' condomneil j n the eves nf the world'. It is the very enormity of tlip acts that defeats their gaining credence. That women and young girls should lie ravished, mutilated, and' diNnawekT for life. not. in rare instances hut literally in hundreds of cases, appears too improbable to the average person to be augtht but exaggeration." • GERMAN FRENZY.

Mr Copland says that a'll the wounded rame from the campaign in Belgium and on the Mouse; having frequently! entered towns where! the corpses nf ravished' women and children were a constant feature. At first the soldiers thought they were: casualties from bullets, but the wounds were too frequently of bayonet and sword. After the final conquest of Liege, "the. German soldiers, so long baffled, starved, and maddened, then fell upon Belgium in a frenzy, famished astheV wore and mad with thirst for «lc.ohol." Victims of mutilation, he says, cannot hope to hush their stories, although tho victims of mere rape naturally would.

"As you read this letter of mine'' -Mr Copland concludes "I suppose you will already have ceased g : ving credence to any such enormous scale of orgy in this Twentieth Century as T nave outlined, il should have, certaiin.lv done the same had not talked with all those, soldiers frcs.li from, the scene. Becoming convinced of it« truth,, and unite munliT to my first enivietinn. T bone you will 'lianlon me if T seem iiieniianle of thinking or writing of aught else."