WOMAN'S NOBLE SACRIFICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 201, 3 February 1915, Page 6

WOMAN'S NOBLE SACRIFICE.

• DRAMATIC STORY OF GERMAN "^RIGHTFULNESS.' (Special correspondent of News). ffhe Germans all through these first ' four months have made a practice of punishing every village whose non-com-batants have either sniped the enemy as he entered the place, or given misleading information as to the position of the French. I myself investigated many cases of the kind in hamlets surrounding Esternay, in the valley of the Marne, J in September. In that neighborhood, women were shot not only because Germans believed civilians had fired after the French troops had withdrawn, but because they declined to provide the invader with champagne—the wine of the country—in unlimited quantities. A young deformed. Eimouain, writing from the North-east of France on November 9th, gives a graphic picture of an incident on all fours with the scenes, now a matter of history, that have, disgraced the German arrmy in Belgium and in many part of France He-says: TO SAVE THEIR HUMES. "Wo were determined the Bosches (fiorniiiiis) should not take our village without our putting up some sort of a fight, thoulig our nearest troops were some nrles away,' and we had only grandfathers, "-onion and boys, and one j or two blunderbusses, to defend us. We barricaded the main street, and managed to surround and capture one officer and wound three or four soldiers. Immediately afterwards the Germans withdrew, and our village was bombarded for an hour. "Then they returned on November sth, drove us all into church, and an officer, standing b" the altar, announced in guttural French that the village was to be punished. 'A woman,' said he, 'betrayed us by telling us that there were no French troops in the place, whereas the houses must have been full of them; if she doesn't confess, we shall kill every inhabitant.'

THE SACRIFICE. "Groans filled the church. Several persons cried out that if their 'pious' were in the village they certainly were not hiding in their houses. The officer wouldn't believe them, and proceeded to announce that as an example and a warning he would have a man and a woman shot in the presence of the population. "At this point up stepped Madame Marie Masson, 28 years old, who has a husband and two brothers with the I Colors, and facing the German officer and the altar, said: 'There were no > French in £he houses, but here am I, take me, and do your worst.' "The German soldiers thereupon seized her arid an old man who stood by her. Everybody was ordered out of the church. The couple were marched and placed against a wall, while the German troops surrounded the inhabitants and compelled them to witness the double execution. "The German officer in a loud voice asked if the father and the mother of the young woman were in the crowd. (They came forward and were forced to remain in the forefront of the populace so that they might not miss anything of their daughter's last moments. Eight constituted the firing party, and in all sixteen shots were fired.' The pair died unbandaged, facing death without flinching.