The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH; 28, 1917. THE TRAIL OF THE HUN.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 March 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH; 28, 1917. THE TRAIL OF THE HUN.

The retreat of the Germans in the West fiords a striking example of their unrestricted savagery and lust for devastation. During the war this professedly kultured r.ation has established a record for wanton outrages and fiendish barbarity such as is beyond tho conception of civilisation. Apparently this di/e canker is in their blood, for it is in evidence in all its ghastliness whenever opportunity occurs. The reports that have been cabled recently describing the terrible sufferings of the inhabitants of the districts lately occupied by the enemy and now liberated from his pestilential presence, teem with horrors that make the blood of all humane people boil with anger and resentment. Mere devastation of the country is sufficiently reprehensible to evoke the strongest protests, hut the wilful starvation and illusage of the women, children, and feeble inhabitants of Northern 'France calls aloud for vengeance. Mr. Beach Thomas has given a heartrending account of these victims of Hun barbarity and rage. He says that the faces and gestures of the residents depict their weakness and illness, and that pitiful stories are told of the invaders' last brutalities. Let those who live in ease and comfort in the Dominion ponder over the picture of villagers being forced to assemble at a given point to watch their homes being destroyed by fire; women, children, and the feeble portion o® the community of thirteen communes herded into a fixed position in a town, and then fired upon by Hun artillery; famished children wandering ghost-like among the ruins of their homes; three hundred women, children, and aged men done to death by means oE hardships, 'brutality, and starvation immediately preceding and during the German retreaJ. What sort of feeling will these horrors evoke? They should fan every spark of our manhood into a flame of impelling force that would gather tho full strength of the Allied nations in one great determination to mete out an adequate punishment to the authors and perpetrators of these cold-blooded atrocities that are a foul blot on the world's history. The instances we have quoted are but a small proportion of the barbarities that mark the trail of the Hun. (People have been enslaved, men carried off, pillage,

vandalism, and devastation wantonly committed. Sacred building? liave been defiled, coffins broken open, and a saturnalia of bestiality indulged in. Besides this, one of the most fertile regions in France has been ruthlessly devastated and ruined for many years to come. As if these outrages were not sufficient to satisfy tho insatiable lust of the enemy for wreaking vengeance on the helpless, there was added the still further malevolent crime of poisoning the wel! with arsenic. The destruction of buildings might possibly have been expected, but not the diabolical havoc which was wrought merely for the sake of destroying every portion of France that came under their hands. It is not surprising that, the re-entry of the Anglo-French into this territory was greeted with frantic joy, which found expression in Ilag-ivaving and tears. But what an awful shock they must have experienced at seeing the desolation and misery cr-used by the enemy! It is stated that tin 1 French soldiers supplied the inhabitants of some of the di-stricts w'itli the first food they had received for days—no meat since September and no milk for a year, No wonder these French soldiers were infiaihed at the sight of the destruction wrought, and that they drove back the enemy with heavy losses. -A somewhat similar chapter of horrors comes from Ilouinania, where the Germans are methodically starving and exterminating the people, while tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed ar,d between one and two hundred thousand wounded. There is no new in these latest brutalities, but it is as we'll to bear in mind that >vhat is happening and has happened in France and Belgium would happen in the British Dominions if only Germany could defeat the Allies, only with probably added {rightfulness. The Huns and fiendish practices are inalienable, and that is why, in the interests of humanity, and not through fear of suffering the fate of Belgium and France, that the manhood of the Dominions is bent upon crushing these incarnate demons, whose latest inhumanities will evoke a still more ardent desire to win the war and arrive at the day of reckoning.