BURNING GERMAN DEAD.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 May 1916, Page 4

BURNING GERMAN DEAD.

REPORTED GRUESOME OPERATIONS. As soon as the great German offensive before Verduti started three weeks ago (says the Central News special correspondent at Amsterdam) messages were _ received here from the Belgian frontier stating that the Germans wero again burning the bodies of their slain soldiers in the blast furnaces at Seraing. These reports have, of course, been contradicted in the German Press, but this is by no means regarded as proof of their inaccuracy—rather the reverse. Hitherto it has neen very difficult to establish the reliability of these reports, but I have just met a Belgian gentleman, a resident of Renting, whose trustworthiness is beyond cavil, and who has been able to give me full and specific information about this ghoulish business from personal observation. He said: "When the- inhabitants of Seraing living near tlri blast furnace* received orders from Ihe German military authorities to shut their doors and windows as soon ns darkness falls, they know what it means. They are also strictly forbidden to leave their houses. However, about a fortnight ago, at considerable personal risk, 1 succeeded in getting a clear view of what occurred. As soon ns it became dmk a number of long goods trains arrived from the front and were lined up before the furnaces. "These trains were filled with bodies packed in fours, and bound by steel wires. When the trains were unloaded all outer clothing was removed, the metal buttons and the doth being too precious to be waslcd. Then the corpses are thrown, in a businesslike way, but not irreverently, into the furnaces, aiul I should estimate the number burned during a single night ab about 800.

"Considerations of liygiene do not constitute the only reaßnn why the Qerman military authorities tarn such a great number of their dead soldiers. The soldiers | whose bodies are burned do not figure in the official lists of the killed, but are merely put down as 'missing,' and their relatives go on hoping against hope to hear something of them. This is the reason the number of 'missing' soldiers is so large in the German casualty lists. By this means the German authorities succeed i" Hiding from their people the truth r«v,'arding their heavy losses in killed."