The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1918. HUN DEVASTATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 October 1918, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1918. HUN DEVASTATION.

"For sixty miles the horizon is a sea of smoke and tiaines, and every town and village for miles behind the enemy's lines is burning." Thus wrote Router's correspondent at French headquarters in connection with the German retreat along the whole of the Champagne front. The line of the Hun retreat is marked by luthlcss devastation and desolation—carried out according to orders, so that France, on recovering her invaded territory, will find it a desert littered with dead cities. .At Lille, these ravishers of peoples and desp'oilers of civilisation looted the last fragment of furniture from every house, even stripping off the panelling and removing the doors and windowpanes, leaving nothing but the shell of the town. At Oourtrai able-bodied men were forced to depart. Tens of thousands of famishing fugitives were driven out of northern France by these su-per-fiends without the means of existence. The Belgian railways have been stripped of zinc, copper and other metals. Everywhere, before the victorious advance of the Allies, the Germans have removed the civilians from the Belgian villages, which Avere then stripped bare. Yet they have the audacity to protest against what they describe as President Wilson's "allegations of cruelties, about which be has received onesided information." It is all part of the piece, and is in keeping with the way "Wilhelm the malefactor began the war, carried it on and is still pursuing its level course. With n swiftness that proved premeditation lie sprang at France, tearing great gaping wounds in Belgium, prostrate, hut protesting, in his path, trod a ruinous way through Poland, and completed his foul conspiracy in Turkey. The only reply he has ever concocted when outraged humanity has raised its voice at his unprecedented brutality and barbarism is to cast the blame on his enemies, and to endeavor to justify his abominations by the alleged necessity "to punish the guilty and frighten tlie bloodthirsty population from eonlinning their shameful deeds." President Wilson neither misunderstands the Germans nor is his information unreliable. They know they cannot contend against the Allied hosts, but they still have the power and the opportunity to wreak their vengeance on unarmed civilians and defenceless towns and villages. They are obsessed with' the lust, of destruction wlrieh runs riot when they have the oprort.unitv to indulge their criminal instincts. Words fail to adequately convey , the horror and loathing which these cultured barbarians have inspired in the breast of civilised humanity. Their infamous work at Donai stands out as a glaring example. The contents of the bou.ses were destroyed, many dwellings burned, the streets strewn with' furniture, shop windows broken, twothirds of the pictures in the museum stolen, stained glass windows and organs in the churches, smashed and the sacred ornaments flung 011 the flagstones. If this sort of savagery is Avar then how completely are the Allies justified in warring against war? But it is not Avar. To tear up roads, batter cathedrals, destroy art treasures and wilfully devastate toAvns and villages . are the achievements of savagery, the outcome of frightful ness, but the driving of peaceful people into unrelieved slavery, the lustful forcing into maternity of large numbers of pure-minded young Avomen, the staiwing to death of innocent children and aged refugees, the shelling of hospitals and torpedoeing hospital ships, and the inhuman treatment ol: prisoners are the acts of brutally callous demons. It is 1 he reckless ferocity of beasts, made a thousand times more bestial by the depraved genius of man. To find an adequate means of punishment would be impossible, but punished the authors of these terrible crimes must be. To bargain Avith them over terms of peace would be overlook their treachery, their murders, and their ever lengthening list of atrocities. No Avonder the super-fiend, Avho Avagecl this Avar on humanity for the mere gratification of his lust for power, is prostrate. The weight of his enormities must be pressing heavily, hut most of all is big thwarted ambition gnawing at bis vitals. G'ermany must lie crushed before she Avill be penitent. No other argument. Avill suffice, and when the day of reckoning arrives she must be. made to feel that justice and humanity demand reparation on a scale commensnmie •with* the .aature of her crimes. This will %, only reasonable but?. German" 1 ' '"ndd be warned •if an <sg» r-iot put to thes» /inn' •- tactics the'*»enalt/.should '

lie iuci'cascd sufficiently to mark the Allies sense of wrongs that canuot he tolerated. No false sentiment should be allowed to enter into this award of jnst punishment ; it is a duty that the Allies owe to the civilised world.