ORGANISED SAVAGERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 150, 1 December 1914, Page 7

ORGANISED SAVAGERY.

GERMAN BARBARITIES. DELIBERATELY PLANNED. ■Deeds of vandalism and brutality that would disgrace a savage continue to be perpetrated, says a London paper, whereever the Kaiser's Huns penetrate. As in Belgium, so now in France. There is scarcely a hamlet in which some appaling deed of savagery, some insensate act of ruthless vengeance is not related and attested by overwhelming proof. There' cannot lie any doubt that the German campaign of outrage in Belgium was deliberately planned and "provided," as one investigator puts it, "with scientific machinery." Special machinery for incendarism accompanied the German forces, and special drill for it had been taught. The modern Huns burned out a town with methodical correctness with which a German battery went into action.

The invaders' methods range from the refinement of cruelty to the depths of depravity. A fjivorite mode of torture is to mass together large groups of peaceful citizens, keep them in a semistarved condition for four days, and tell them then that they are to be shot. For days these terror stricken folk await, their fate, the suspense thus caused being worse than death itself. DEPTHS OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY.

Human depravity has never reaehed such depths as it has during the progress of the modern Ilun through Belgium. Officers and soldiers have not always been content to kill out of hand and burn quickly. They had to torture beforehand, and to desecreate and insult beautiful buildings before destroying them. A Belgian, talking on the point, used the illustration of a low-minded servant in envy of her beautiful mistress deliberately soiling the pillow on which she would sleep. Beautiful churches carved out—nay, rather stitched — in lace-like stone by mediavel piety have been befouled. In one cateau of rare beauty, the German officers, after pillaging the cellar and destroying the marbles and bronzes, brought in a cow from the fields, disembowelled it, and spread its entrails and blood over the carpets and tapestries! Very frequently 1 torture has been applied to the peasants physical and moral torture of the cruellest kind. 'Peasants have been kept on their knees with hands uplifted for hours under threat of instant death if they moved. They have been shut up and told be be ready to die within three hours, then released, then shut up again, and then sentenced to death. They have ' been shut up for long periods with hardly any food or water, and with no means to observe the decencies of life. Sometimes death has followed torture of I this kind, sometimes not. 1

! Some of the Belgian refugees now in I London have related terrible stories of 1 the treatment meted out to Belgians by | German soldiery. A young married woI man belong to Acrschot, whose husband | nas taken by .the Germans, had a ter--1 rible experience to relate. Before she and. some of her family escaped to Ant- ! werp, she was a witness to the bru--1 tality of the enemy. Speaking with great emotion, she said: "One day T -.aw: a party of German soldiers, headed by an officer, enter a cafe in Aersclrot, and drag out a woman and seven men into the street. For no reason whatever, these eight innocent people were lined in a row and shot deadl Then the Germans buried their bodies in a garden close by. Our priest asked the officer in command who the people were who had been buried, and he replied that they were German soldiers who had been killed in battle. Our people were suspicious, and during the night, some of them opened the graves ill the garden, and recognised the bodies as those of 1 inhabitants of the town. They carried the dead to the local cemetery and re-in-terred them there, reverently and sorrowfully. A priest, who had been active' in Red Cross work, and had shown great bravery under fire, was captured. The Germans shot him, and flung his body into an adjacent stream. Again, a woman, who was ill in bed, was thrown into the street, in order that a German officer, who was weary, could have a rest. My father and mother, both of whom are over 60, my husband, children, and myself, together with a number of men, and women, were captured. We were herded into the phurcli, the doors of which were locked. For two days we were kept in the church the only food we got being some pieces of bread that the soldiers had thrown away with undrinkable water. It was true that some milk was given to the children, but you ran imagine the state of terror we were in, wondering and fearing what would come next. At last the Germans opened the doors and allowed the women , to go free. But our men. including ray husband and my father, were taken from us. and T have not hard or seen anything from them since."

BODIES RIPPED WITH BAYONETS,

Amongst the Belgian refugees who were hospitably treated at Manchester this week" were two or three Liege ladies. One of them. Madame Beyloos, said that between the market-place and the University at T.iege she saw 37 men and boys shot by drunken German soldiers, who afterwards ripped their bodies with their bayonets. Women who witnessed these barbarities were forbidden by the soldiery to cry. Another horror of slaughter was witnessed by a woman between Alost and Louvain. She saw sixteen civilians shot and bayoneted in a small scullery. With a baby in her arms, and accompanied by her husband and three children, she tramped all through the night to Antwerp. DUG THEIR OWN GRAVES. Several villages in the neighborhood of Phillipville and Givet, in Belgium, been entirely burned. Hervc anil Battice have been completely destroyed. The inhabitants resisted and inflirted heavy losses oil the inhabitants, who commandeered fifty civilians to bury the German dead. After this task, which took them four days, had been completed, they were ordered to dig a last pit. The Germans made them sit on thi! edge of it, and then shot 48 of them. The two who were spared had to shovel in the earth on their fellow eitiezns, and were then taken as prisoners. A Belgian who arrived at Ghent from Brussels with his wife, after an agitating .journey, stated that two women who went to Brussels bv tramcar from Ninove as far as Delbeek were at Delbeelc stripped to the skin in the presence of a German officer, and all their clothing was narrowly examined. They "ere eventually allowed to proceed into I'l'iisscls on loot. They had previously been searched on the tramcar by infantrymen, who left in their pockets and tnriist their hands into their bosoms. On each occasion they were asked especially If tiley had any French, English, or Beijgian newspapers. All outside newspapers are forbidden, the official "lie" journal published by t]ie. Genrmna