DEFIANT BELGIANS.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1917, Page 8

DEFIANT BELGIANS.

Vi hen Hie released "French women readied London from Holland in January last there was a busy scene at the War Kefugees' Committee's hostel, to which they were taken. It did not take I lie women long to pack up their luggage, which was of the scantiest. In some cases, indeed, the packages of sandwiches given to tliem by the manageress of the hostel were practically all that they had to carry. One of the women, a native of who had been in Brussels only three months, gave some painful particulars of life in Northern Krancc and Belgium to a representative of the Daily News, "The Germans thought they were going to get to Calais," she added, "and even when I left they were as arrogant- as ever. We would surely have dietl of starvation but for the food distributed by the-. American Committee. There was no interference by the Germans, who seemed to hold the distributors in great respect. But it was otherwise when the Germain wanted work done. They used the harshest method: - , of compulsion in the Douai district, and it is 110 secret tliat men who refused to work for tlic.n were shot, "According to 1 lio news which reached lis from time to time, many made desperate efforts to escape, and not a few succeeded in reaching Holland, and are no doubt in England. Others, again, paid the supreme penalty for resisting the slavery decree, and one heard of many who will never be able to work again. The Germans have made that impossible, I am a Frenchwoman with only three months' experience of life in Belgium under the German yoke, but I must tell .you I am amazed at the demeanour of the Brussels populace. I had expected to find a cowed people, but I was agreeably disillusioned." 11 ' ,8S