A BELGIAN REFUGEE.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 April 1916, Page 3

A BELGIAN REFUGEE.

FROM WEALTHY MERCHANT TO. UNSKILLED LABORER. From being the heart of a business in Belgium worth £25,000 to doing the work of an unskilled laborer in New Zealand sounds like a chapter out of a book of romance, yet that is what has happened to a Belgian who is at present resident in Cbristehm'ch, and is in employment in that city. Monsieur Albert Joseph Van Ossclaor has not experienced .the ordinary ups and downs of life, and his present posh tion has not been occasioned by bad markets, financial tightness nor any of the ordinary attributes of loss of fortune. The Oermans are the sole cause. When the Huns overwhelmed Belgium in their parage onslaught in August, 1914, Van Osselaer, his mother and his two brothers lived at Lokeren, which is between Antwerp and, Clliont. M. Ossclaer was head of a manure manufacturing business and he had ilso patented and was rurmin;! a machine which had effected a great economy in the rabbitskin trade. His business .vas worth anything from £7OOO to £BOOO per year net profit, and these industrious people were looking forward to a life of peace and happiness when the crash came]. [But why is Monsieur Albert Joseph Von Osselaer not in the firing-line helping his. countrymen and the Allies to regain his beloved country?]