CHATS WITH GERMANS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 18, 13 January 1915, Page 7

CHATS WITH GERMANS.

SOLDI KITS CUV FOR BAIIiXS. THE VISIOX OF nuns. ''l have a wife and children, and I cry for them, i shall never see them again, 'We never wanted this war. It was the Emperor and his officers wlip .brought us here." The speaker was an old German reservist, with whom Monsieur .lacques Fliillippe, who was one of the last Belgians to escape from -Brussels, was in conversation. M. Fliillippe, who has just returned to take up his .work again with Messrs Lever Bros. in their Liverpool office, tells a vivid story of the things he saw in and around Brussels. Speaking German fluently, M. Fliillippe had several opportunities of talking with the German officers and soldiers, lie found these in almost complete ignorance of what was happening. The military situation, he says, was .completely hidden from tliem, or, if they had any news at all, it was all distorted. One sole aim and ideal had been drilled into them for the last three months—to got to Paris. They were- , given a picture of Paris finer than the Paradise of Mohammed, where all the pleasures they could possibly wish to enjoy would be given to them. It was' that side of the picture which was made to appeal to their higher culture and their higli philosophy as Germans.

WHILE DEFENDING TIER PARENTS, j For some time now Brussels has been | guarded by Austrians. and the German r reservists, or Landsturm. The tone and manners of the German officers has J changed. They have become humble, | and almost polite. The atmosphere of retreat and defeat is already showing itself amongst them. A feeling of rage has shown itself on all sides at the German failure to enter Paris, or to realise the vision of pleasure they had before their eyes so long. On Sundays and feast days thev have dressed up masne(|iiins in the ljniform of Belgian soldiers and burnt them before the people. A trustworthy friend of M. Phillippe's told him how he himself had seen on August j 16 a young girl who tried to defend her I parents, burnt alive in straw by German officers at the village of ChaumontGistaux. The 168 th German regiment of Infantry has committed some of the worst crimes of this sort. Many of these are too terrible to print. It waß at the village of Planienoit that this regiment is reported to have, smoked out and then burnt alive forty poor Belgians wlro were hidden in a cellar under a farm house. There are many eases of systematic pillaging. Dining with a friend one evening in Maestricht —there were some German officers also present—

Phillippe noted his liost 'becoming more and more distressed by the erics of outraged inhabitants at the hack of his house. He begged the German officers to do what they could to stop this brutality 011 the part of their soldiers, promising unlimited champagne if the carnage stopped. One of the officers went to the window, blew once on a shrill whistle, and immediately the soldiers lined up before the house, marching ofi' soon afterwards to barracks, quiet and orderly.