GERMAN OUTRAGES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 159, 11 December 1914, Page 6

GERMAN OUTRAGES.

WHAT GIRLS AND WOMEN SUFFERED. UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS. Sir Charles Phillips has written a series of letters from Antwerp to the Papermaking and British Trade Journal. He describes how he went from Ghent to Antwerp:— We inquired about a train, and were informed that a train was being mads up to leave at 5/17 p.m., with a large number of refugees who were anxious to reach the fortress city of Antwerp. The authorities, however, had been instructed by the Government to restrict the number of tickets, as too many people had flocked into Antwerp already. You cannot go by the main line via Termonde, as the Germans have cut the line there i and are in possession of the whole district. The train is going through Flanders by way of St. Nicholas, the tote de Flandre, via Waes, and it is just proj bable you may get through, in fact, I safely,"though there is a doubt. So I booked my ticket to Antwerp by that | route. The train was an immense one, and was filled with refugees from Liege, Louvain, Malines, who crowded in with their bags, and bundles, the greater part being women and children. The men were either serving in the army, killed on the battlefield, or done to death by the Germans in cold blood! Most of them had been chased from pillar to post. Ghent was thought by them to be a safe haven. This illusion was speedily dispelled by the news of the everadvancing enemy leaving a blackened trail of burnt towns and villages, yiiich first had been given over to rapine, plunder, mutilation, and murder wholesale. I expected to see these poor and innocent victims of this most cruel and barbarous war in tears. But no, they have passed all that. They women and children do not weep; they seem as if their very hearts have been seared with the red-hot iron of tyranny, of torture, of violation, and everything the Huns of old were guilty of. They are to-day financial wrecks. The well-to-do are the poor, and the poor have become the absolutely destitute. Little wonder, then, that, scarcely realising what the years to come will mean for them, they live with the canker of bitterness, eating out their hearts, longing and hoping that one day soon they will have their revenge for all their sufferings. These Belgians, high and lowly, men, women, or children, are all so brave, so calm. No excited and vociferous protests. Look into their faces; that is enough to tell you what they are made of and what they mean.

I occupied a coupe feserve, w'.i.h is the equivalent of first-class, which seats six passengers; but before the train left, my compartment, like every other, had been invaded by another ten, bundles and all, making sixten passengers. And oh, how hot it was! No one grumbled; how could they! I took leave of my friends and the train started, carying at least 1000 persons. Stopping at all stations, we persons were invaded each time by other refuge'.'s desperately anxious that they should go oft the train by hook or by crook, as the cry had gone forth: "Les Allemands approehent!" I managed to ptlll in and wedge another four people, making twenty in our compartment. Phew! the heat was overpowering, and the sun's rays poured down most fiercely. I don't know how many people were crowdech-and crashed into the corridors, because it was not possible to move an inch, but I could see that some were wedged through standing, while others had sunk exhausted to the floor.

They were very communicative, the stronger ones. .Some had been flying three or four days, from Louvain princi- | pally, also Liege, Brussels, Aloat, hiding ! by day and hurrying on by night, with scarcely anything to cat or drink. They ! described to me over and over again the terrible sufferings they had underj gone. How the advance guard fired on } the main body of troops advancing to occupy Louvain by mistake, and sooner than acknowledge their blunder, they swore that the inhabitants had done it. Swiftly the genera! in command ordered the town to be given over at once to loot, with significant instructions that all the officers and men were at liberty to do just what they liked with women All this was carried out to the 1 letter, and then, after a huge number of men had been shot or sent off under a heavy guard, the city was bombarded and burnt to the ground, I heard all tliis from independent witnesses at flic various places I visited, and therefore there could not have been any collusion. I regret to say that some of the diabolical things done to women and young girls, and even to men, too, beggar description. lam afraid that our native prudishness will only permit me in cold print to hint at it. Even women just before and after childbirth were not exempt from the brutal acta of these savage Germans, I learned to my regret that I could not visit Louvain, because a strong detachment of Germans were encamped near it; but I.will say this, that tho very ground cries out for revenge for the wrongs committed against freedom and _ civilisation. And yet this terrible punishment has been visited on the heads of the subjects of an innocent nation whose only crime in the eyes of tho enemy was defending their hearts and homes, the honor of their women, and the independence of their country! As true as there is a living God, such abominable iniquity, such a colossal crime, such studied brutal, ghoulish, dovilish, handiwork of the nation which has the effrontery to term itself the foun-tain-head of "Welt-Kultur" is in this twentieth century alsolutely appalling, and must be amply atoned for. Are we' to think that the German nation, which we have so admired in the past for so many progressive ideas, and who have been "Wilding" the whole world with their sophistry and forward cry of "German culture," wishes us to believe that it was so serious? If so, then I can only say that their meaning of the term "German culture" is synonymous with the diabolical works of the Devil and Hell.

Heaven knows! I stand to lose heavily through the Germans and this war, but I would sooner occupy one of the humblest positions in life than "thrive on the gold of the representatives of "German culture" after what I have seen and heard of their diabolical and hideous deeds during this great war, which they moved all the powers of His Satanic Majesty the Devil to encompass. There arc, of course, Germans whom I know who would recoil in horror at the horrible malpractices which their hundreds of thousands of compatriots have, been guilty of ifi this war. They wrill not, and cannot believe them, but yet have the approval of the vast majority cf the German nation, headed by the KaiseV Itself.