GERMANY'S LATEST CRIMES.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 October 1916, Page 5

GERMANY'S LATEST CRIMES.

INFECTING PRISONERS WITH TUBERCULOSIS. IN SECRET CAMPS. TO SPREAD CONTAGION OR DIE. 50,000 FRENCH VICTI VIS. Received Oct. 27, 7 p.m. London, October 27. The following message has been released for publication:— New York, Sept. 23. The Paris correspondent of the New York Times cables a summary of remarkable documents, headed: "Indisputable Proof of Germany's Latest Crome,"

The publication of the documents was prefaced with a statement as follows: This new crime by Germany differs from the Lusitania and all other crimes. It was dictated by the criminal idea that if Germany fall? she will drag the whole world with her. German-,• is deliberately infecting her prisoners with tuberculosis and then casts them luck into their own or neutral nations to breed contagion or die. Already fifty thousand Frenchmen have bofin inoculated, beside a thousand men of other nations. Germany has "show" camps, but tuberculosis manufacture ii carried on in other camps, secretly guarded. It? existence was hardly suspected by any American investigator. In one of the secret camps a German doctor, after mixing tubercurars with the convalescents from other diseases, in order to spread consumption, said : '"Thus 1 wage war, in my own fashion." Thirteen hundred French and a thousand British consumptives were dumped into Switzerland, the disease being so advanced that they were no longer useful as prisoners. THOUSANDS DYING. . Many arf dead, and thousands are in a dying condition. The French Government is treating them in a special hospital at Lyons. Swiss doctors discovered the secret camps, the majority of which are in ealt, coal, and iron mines, or drainage reclamation areas. DANISH AUTHORESS CONFIRMS STORY. The following report was made by the notable Danish authoress, Madame Karen Branson, who obtained information from prisoners or from French official sources. She. says: We found that Switzerland is only the advance ?uard of Germany's victims rit consumption, the num'ber of which is growing rapidly. The wholesale manufacture of consumptives is a deliberate, organised attempt to destroy the French race, as the French are the greatest s'.illerers. PRISONERS PERMANENTLY BROKEN. Germany can never defend or explain her treatment jf prisoners. There are three forms of camps. In the third prisoners are forced to labor until they are permanently broken invalids. There is no inspection of these camps and only two doctor; visited them; they were Blanched and Cpeiiser, ot the Geneva Red Cross. Blanched asserts that at a certain Ivrupp factory and coal mines, forty per cent, of the prisoners are permanently broken in health. He instances a youth of twenty tied to a post in the open air until his knees were permanently bent.

BRUTAL TORTURE OF PRISONERS. MEN SHOT POINT BLANK 'FAMISHED, FROZEN, VERMIN INFECTED. Received October 27, 8.30 p.m, London, October 27. Another form of punishment was putting men under a lighted coke oveiv where the heat and lack of a ; r makes them quickly plead foi mere}. The longest period any men withstood this torture, was two hours. English prisoners were shot at point-blank range. One man who was imprisoned at Honielburg, in Bavaria, stated that the mattresses were changed halfyearly, and were full of vermin. There was sawdust and chopped straw in the bread, and they had a concoction of roasted acorns for breakfast. The prisoner declared that twenty-four thousand prisoners in Munste- for shelter dug holes- in the ground and covered themselves with turf. In the labor camps, despite the icy storms, the men were only tent bedded so ill in straw and mud, they were covered with vermin, tortured by hunger, and dying of cold. Men died nisrhtly, and .starving men, threw themselves in the mud and lapped up porridge that had fallen fiom the pot. ENGLISH THE WORST TRGATED. The worst treated are the Eng'.ish. It is a, terrible sight to see the faces of the dying men, with coverlet?, of rags, some being so covered with vermin that one could hardly see the skin Typiioffl and pneumonia eases were all together, and the general drug is a solution of chalk. ■DEATH ENDS VICTIMS' MISERY. At the camp itself the odour gripped One's tin oat. After rain the t(Vt. floors were covered with water, the tents being too low for men to stand up and too wet for them to lie down. The men spent; their nights in misery until deatli ends it. DISEASE SPREAD BY VEIOIIN. The doctors state that the Russian prisoners brought the typhus, and the contagion from the disease was spread by vermin, wherefrom the prisoners could not escape, and the necessary remedies are not given. The demands that the French, be separated from the disease of the Russians was refused by ;tlie camp commandant ■

J3ERLIN' RESPONSIBLE. The doctors assort that the criminal order to mix the, sic!; and '.veil was given from Berlin in January. Out of ten thousand prisoners there were, four thousands deaths. All the German officials and doctors left the camps. In many cases the tubercular patients were put in the same barracks witn men weakened by other disease j. SLOW ASSASSINATION Dr. Blanched adds that they are thus' easily suspeetible, and this slow assassination is being carired out. II; :s unquestionable that Germany has acted in full appreciation of what she is doiu?. DAY OF JUDGMENT COMING. Since July 10th new orders have been issued, making it more diflicult to got information. This is her latest <ind greatest infamy, but the wai is dragging slowly to an end, and beaten, convicted Germany will await hei judgment. ' BRITISH OFFICIAL REPORT. CAT.LOTTS CRUELTY AND OVERCROWDING. HORRIBLE SANITARY CONDITIONS. A REPORT OF TERROR AND BRUTALITY. Received, Oct. 27, 12.35 a.m. London, October 27. A Pritish official report says that the typhus epidemic at Cardelegen in the spruit' and summer, 1015, reveals horrifying (icrman mismanagement and callous ivisuty, equalling that at Wittcnburg. The area of the camp was 550 by SuO yards. Prisoners were not allowed to '.eavc except for fatigue duties. There was a single bathhouse for eleven thousand men, whereof four thousand were Russians, six thousand French, seven hundred Belgian, and 230 British. Ihe overcrowding was most terrible. Vi: huts were devoid of tables and itools, and men sat on their beds to eat tlo';v meals. Here lay the sick, and even dead, and the atmosphere day and night was indescribably faetid. The food Was of bad quality, and prisoners constantly suffered the pangs of hunger. The Russians, who received few private parcels, were seen on their hands and knees crowding to the pit where polaio peelings were thrown, struggling to find th'i> rind. ' A few' prisoners without boots and overcoats had their sufferings intensified by extreme cold and the absence of proper fires. Tii? sanitary conditions wer* horrible. Twehe hundred men had to congregate at a single standpipe for personal washing and 1 cleaning the eating utensils and their clothes, all without soap. .Some men were three months without a bath, the iesult being that liee swarmed in every garment and blanket. The commandant and guards established a reign of terror and brutality, and t\o camp was soon in a state of utter 1 niiseiv and desolation. Everyone of the i men was anaemic and listless. The ** ' thorilies, early in February, fearing epidemic chose seven British. French, and Russian doctors, and brought them to CardeUgen, The doctors found the i-nial'est quantities of drugs, including four ounces Epsom salts, three or four dozen tablets of quinine, asperin, and "akmici, and a few lint dressings. The sicknesses are now fifty daily. A commission of- German doctors arrived and spent an hour in the camp and half an hour later the German guards packed up. Soon there was not a German inside the ramj). The sick were left utterly unattended and the kitchens empty. Brunner, commandant of the camp, summoned the seven doctors to the edge of the barbed wire and told them that ti c sentries would shoot anyone attempting to leave, and added that he would return to the spot daily to receive report?. AN APPALLING SITUATION The doctors were faced with ail appalling .••{nation. There were no beds for tli» sick men, and the state of the patients on the floors was indescribable. They had no milk or eggs, and the sick were, fed on black bread and raw hcrHbus like the rest of the prisoners. The docters commenced to sort out the cases and isolated the convalescents. 'lhe epidemic lasted four months, and totalled twr thousand cases, whereof 14 percent. ciied Brunner and the other camp authorities were actively hostile throughout. The doctors encouraged games of tootbal!, but Brunner ordered the games to be stopped under pain of severe punishment.

AUSTRO-GERMANY.

OFFICIAL GERMAN ATTITUDE. A NEUTRAL'S VIEWS. London, October 2(1. The. Stockholm correspondent of the [ Daily Chronicle states that a distinguished resident of Berlin, who is visiting Sweden, gives the following account of the official German attitude on the I present position. The war authorities realise that the war is lost and know that Germany has still power to manufacture munitions at a formidable rate, but that the output of the Allies is greater. Secondly, they recognise that their reserves of men are insufficient to allow Germany to conduct tlie war to a victorious issue, Though a defensive war can be conducted for a considerable time, the Germans acknowledge that sooner or later the Allies must break through on the Somme. They estimate the limit of German endurance at twelve months. The authorities are co-ordinating their efforts to secure a peace which wi!! not brand them as defeated. They arc determined to smash Roumania and to u-~,0 submarines to hurt Britain to tie utmost, believing that Britain will thus more quickly accept peace. WHAT THE KAISER SAID. TO HIS TROOPS AT CAMBRAI. Amsterdam Oct. 28. The Kaiser reviewed his troops at Cambrai. He said that he had hurried from the east to bring them greetings and thanks from their comrades for their heroism in the greatest battle of the world's history. The battle of the Somme would stand for centuries as a brilliant example of a whole nation's determination to conquer. "You," lie said, "are the incarnation of that determination in resistance to French arrogance and British obstinacy. Comrades, hold on; the Lord of Creation is with you.'e j