CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 July 1916, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE HIDEOUS HUN.

.To the Editor. Sir,—There are, unfortunately, many people loyal lo the British Empire in every sense who deplore any mention of drastic treatment being meted out to the Germans in reply to their hideous methods of dealing with the unfortunate soldiers and civilians of armies at war with them. The class that lift up their arms and say we must play the game must lie given credit for having good intentions, but they are sadly behind the limes. To bring them to their senses it is neces- ' sary for others favoring drastic methods that they should continually reiterate the stories of how the Germans subdue those opposed to their views of what is right and proper. In Germany the individual is a very minor quantity. The military authorities and war manufacturers dominate the atmosphere. And whv? The individual sTiould possess tlie right to live, anil his exit should be by Nature and not by rifle bullet or big artillery. The "peacc-ai-any-price" party invariably : take every precaution that the right of liberty so far as they are concerned is observed, and, to be consistent, they should go further and insist that tlie rights of the individual should be recognised in Germany, as well as in New Zealand. That time may he a long way oil', but it will not be ■brought forward one day nearer by tlie adoption of an attitude of kindness where punishment is required. Germany at the present moment may well be likened to a malignant growth, and only the surgeon's knife can cfl'ect a remedy. The surgeons (in this instance the Allied armies) are about to apply the knife, and they will cut deep, and that will be for the ultimate good of tlie nation. The immediate results may not prove pleasing to the timid, but this calls for a strong' arm, not a weak constitution. It has got to be done. Our task, on behalf of hunnmUy, is to put down the hideous Ilun, to prevent a continuance of his atrocities, and to crush for all time the idea that a nation's progress must be marked by the strength of the army or navy. In the present war the world has been startled by the sinking "of neutral .steamers, the calculated cl'Ueltv to unarmed civilians, etc., but if the public have sickened of the details, the Germans meanwhile have not mended their ways,. In Saturday's News mention was made of Russian soldiers discovering comrades previously taken .prisoner by. Germans who had been barbarously murdered by cutting the throat. Again, the essence of refined cruelty must surely be the action of the Huns who suspended a captured British odicer over the trenches tlmt were being bombed by a British party. Recently a Home paper, the Liverpool .Mercury, published a few statements of how the war is faring with the unfortunate prisoners. It states that "messages from the Paris Matin related by an escaped prisoner confirms the reports of others that men who refuse to workin factories were savagely beaten with heavy sticks and drugged by the feet till they'pitifully gave in. ... A Petro-

grad paper states Hint Russian prisoners are compelled to work in the manufacture of shells and the preparation of asphyxiating gas- The Russians were driven in hundreds and compelled to dip and deepen trenches ..mler the shrapnel and other gunfire of attacking Russian forces. It the prisoners decline thev are immediately, lieaten and starved and then confined to solitary confinement with the right hand fastened liv. a chain to the left foot. Condemned men are placed in a coffin and the lid hermetically scaled. Later they are revived i:i<l then again thrown back into the" coffin of torture." Fiends responsible for this class of treatment of prisoners are devoid of feeling and sympathy would be wasted in showing the least consideration. Leniency towards them would be a sign of weakness? so when one hears a tearful soul bewail the fact that Britain ma\ T mete out something similar to the Huns let us not show symptoms of wavering, but rather exclaim, ''Serves them ri.rht, and the sooner the better!'—! am, ' SUFFERER.