The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1916. GERMANY'S LATEST FOUL CRIME.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 October 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1916. GERMANY'S LATEST FOUL CRIME.

For over a month there has been held up by the authorities a message the contents of which will make all civilisation stand aghast at a crime perpetrated by th« Germans on their helpless prisoners —a crime unparalleled in the history of the world. The Germans have committed a series of atrocities during the war, differing only in their degree of flightfulness, but their latest horror is almost beyond human credence. The message comes from New York, but it is apparently vouched for directly and indirectly, and it may reasonably tie assumed that its release, after over a month's detention, indicates that enquiries have been made as to the truth oi otherwise of its .contents, and that these enquiries justify the publication of a summary of the documents containing indisputable proof of Germany's latest crime, differing from all other of her crimes by reason of its being directed to the destruction of a whole nation instead of one or more victims. It is a savagely cruel idea that has prompted this foul blot on civilisation, akin to the desperate act of an unscrupulous yet desperate villain who, face to face with certain death, seeks to destroy the lives of all around. "If Germany fails, she will drag the whole world with her," and because of that she sets to work to infect her prisoners with tuberculosis—a painful and lingering deathanil then casting them tack into their own, or into neutral countries, to breed contagion and die. Jt is stated that already fifty thousand Frenchmen have been inoculated, besides a thousand men of other nations. The horror of it! The blood of all civilised humanity will boil with a desire to stamp out of existence the authors of such a worse than barbaric crime, aggravated by the secret methods adopted in its pcipetration. To what greater depth of infamy can tho Huns descend? They appear to have probed the sink of iniquity to discover and utilise, for the purpose of vengeance, the most revolting cruelties that the region of arch-fiends could evolve, and what makes their devilry worse is the fact that now these atrocities have been mjde pi'ibli.-, greater secrecy and probably increased tortures will follow. Truly, the Huns stand revealed in all their tiger-like ferocity awaiting the day of reckoning. * Reprisals are out of the question, lor the Allies cannot descend to the Hun depths of infamy and degradation. It is the auti-ors and executants of the crimes nn whom a just retribution should b-; visited, and not on the helpless prisoners whom the Allies hold. As a Wellington contemporary forcibly puts it: "These crimes began in Belgium, they increased in Franca, Poland added to their number, in Serbia they rose beyong imagination, in Roumania they have surpassed the unthinkable, and in the un-der-sea and the upper-air they aro maintaining their level within limits permittec; by a defence which smites them with unexpected strength and skill," And this is what- the nation of F.ullur culls warfare! There are the people who are now cringing for peace! Ther; can be no peace while the fiends who sanction such frightfulness have power or ability to pursue. Apparently the Germans have reached the pinnacle of their system of torture and frightful- . ness. The revelations which are con--1 tained in the British official report are a series of harrowing recitals of brutility towands prisoners that almost defy human conception. No one can read the awful details of the sufferings of these victims of Hun tyranny without feeling the most profound sorrow for those who have had to undergo such a terrible ordeal. These sufferings call aloud for retribution commensurate with the baseness of the crimes, but n> punishment that could be applied would meet the enormity of the offences, which brand Germany as a foul blot on the map of the world. And yet the ruler of this norde of remorseless fiends can glibly say to his troops: "The Lord of Creation is with us." Peopie may i well wonder what the German idea if the Deity is. Such blasphemy should make all God-fearing men and women shudder, for they know that the Day of Judgment will arrive.