systematic destruction of the Serbian nation is a pendant to the enslavement of Belgians.'

The part of Roumania over-run by the Austro-German forces suffered in many ways but not so violently. The little son of the beautiful Queen of Roumania dying from alleged poisoned candy, dropped by a German aeroplane before the capture of Bucharest, typified the state of that country in its sufferings from the enemy, from traitors within and treachery without. The conquered region was squeezed like an orange for the benefit of the conquerors and the people driven like slaves to work; but their production of grain and food supplies was too valuable to escape the organized and in this case, preservative operation of German policy. In Italy, and typical of German war character, were the instructions issued in November by the Military Governor of the newlyconquered Province of Udine: "Al workmen, women, and children over 15 years old are obliged to work in the fields every day, including Sunday, from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. obedience will be punished in the following manner: (1) Lazy workmen will be accompanied to work and watched by Germans and after the harvest they will be imprisoned for six months-every three days, one day with bread and water; (2) lazy women will be exiled and obliged to work after the harvest, and receive six months' imprisonment; (3) lazy children will be punished by beating and the Commandant reserves the right to punish lazy workmen by 20 lashes daily." If this was not slavery it would be hard to find a definition for that system.

Dis

Of the Armenian massacres many volumes have been written, many more will be published and a question of the ages will be German responsibility or otherwise. In an earlier and famous effort of the Turks to destroy these unfortunate people Mr. Gladstone made England ring with his denunciation of a British Government which did not go to war in order to avert the crime of that period and which he therefore held to a partial responsibility. During this greater crime of the World-war Germany had Constantinople in an iron grip, German officers and officials were everywhere in Asia Minor, Germans controlled transportation interests and the regular Turkish armies. Yet the Turkish irregulars and regulars alike sometimes the latter were under German officers-committed this dreadful offence against humanity and religion and law without fear and without punishment, without German interference or any expressed official regret. Stories of the crime continued to sift through in 1917.

The Rev. G. E. White, President of Anatolia College, Marsovan, whose Faculty was slaughtered with axes and their students murdered in varied ways, reached New York on Sept. 30 and described to the press the brutal way in which his town was cleared of Armenians by wholesale outrage and slaughter. Much of the evidence collected in 1916 and 1917 showed that Government orders were given as the excuse for every kind of crime; that masses of murderers believed in German approval of their killings, tortures and rapes.. This was one of the elements in the "Holy War" preached by the Germans

and the Turks-a jehad carried through the East with fire and sword. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., like so many others, was explicit in his view of the responsibility. He stated in an address at Chautauqua, N.Y., on Aug. 11 that: "For a generation the voice of Berlin had been omnipotent in Constantinople. At that very moment the troops of Germany and Turkey were fighting side by side. Is it not clear, therefore, that Berlin had only to say a word and the massacres would not have begun, and even if they had begun, would not a word have brought them to an immediate end?"

Dr. Harry Stuermer, then correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung, witnessed the 1915 massacres and wrote reports which were suppressed and for which he was dismissed from his post. In his book, Two War-Years in Constantinople, he afterwards gave a passionate account of what he saw and heard. Having established the "boundless guilt" of Turkey in this Armenian slaughter, the "most terrible massacre since Nero's day," he accused Germany of being the Pilate of a whole race. "Conscienceless cowardice, cynical levity," were some of the terms with which he branded his own official countrymen. "How do I come to make such a terrible charge?" he asked. "Because of the fact that when the Armenian Patriarch used to come to our Ambassador with tears in his eyes, begging for help-and I witnessed this scene more than once at our Embassy -no interest was shown." The Germans, he pointed out, had Turkey absolutely in hand, and could have put an end to the massacres at once had they so desired: "In some cases, unbelievable as it may seem, German officers were found who, when the Ottoman authorities had not the heart to fire on women and children taking refuge within doors, turned their guns on the buildings and engaged in 'cynical artillery practice."" On Feb. 24 the American Committee for Armenian Relief received at New York a despatch from Mr. Balfour, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who stated that:

The sufferings of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire are known, but it is doubtful if their true horror is realized. Of the 1,800,000 Armenians who were in the Ottoman Empire two years ago, 1,200,000 have been either massacred or deported. Those who were massacred died under abominable tortures, but they escaped the longer agonies of the 'deported.' Men, women and children without food or other provisions for the journey, without protection from the climate, regardless of age or weakness or disease, were driven from their homes and made to march as long as their strength lasted or until those who drove them drowned or massacred them in batches. Some died of exhaustion or fell by the way; some survived a journey of three months and reached the deserts and swamps along the middle Euphrates. There they have been abandoned and are dying now of starvation, disease and

exposure.

Meantime, German War methods had not been limited to conquered countries or peoples. At home there was autocratic oppression and a continuous suppression of agitation, of free-speech, of journalistic criticism or individual opinion. The cases of Mehring, Mme. Luxemberg, Mme. Duncker, Mme. Spahn, Dr. Meyer, Herr Regge, Editor Kluers, Editors Oerter Weinberg and Albrecht, were all discussed by Socialists in the Reichstag as being flagrant instances of improper and cruel imprisonment in different parts of Germany-manipulated, as Herr Dittmann alleged, by an army

of police spies and functionaries. Prisoners of War in some of the German camps were brutally treated, practically murdered on certain occasions; in other camps they were treated with a fair degree of decency. Wherever possible they were put at work and it was stated that over 1,000,000 were engaged in agricultural workGeneral Gröner being quoted in February, 1917, as estimating the number at 750,000.

As to the individual treatment of prisoners-with exceptions as already stated-there was every possible proof of brutality. J. W. Gerard, on his return from Berlin, told a New York audience (Canadian Club, April 9) that German authorities imprisoned townsfolk for giving food and drink to starving Canadian prisoners of war; that German sheep-hounds were trained to bite British soldiers; that small German boys were allowed to shoot arrows tipped with nails into the bodies of prisoners; and that, when typhus broke out in a camp of Russian prisoners, Frenchmen and Englishmen were sent to live with them. He declared that war prisoners were housed in horse-stalls, six men to a stall, at the Ruhleben racetrack, Berlin; they were underfed and the conditions were such The French authorities became insane. that many of them reported officially all sorts of cruel punishments and tortures inflicted upon unfortunate poilus; the British White-Paper (Cd. 8480) dealt in detail with the brutal use of dogs in various camps.

Another characteristic of German militarism was revealed in the extraordinary, almost unbelievable, statements that the German Offal Conversion Co. (D. A. V. G. were the German first letters) was in active operation with a capital of $1,250,000, and its chief factory at St. Vith near the Belgian frontier, for the purpose of converting corpses from the front into oils, fertilizers and foodfodder. Proofs of this revolting practice included an advertisement in the Chemische Zeitung for an Engineer to direct such a factory, details published in the Independence Belge as extracted from La Belgique of Leyden, a photographic facsimile of descriptive words in an article by Herr Karl Rosner which appeared in the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger of Apr. 10, stories told by returned prisoners, the photographed copy of an army Order issued to the 6th German Army and dated Dec. 21, 1916, which said: "It has become necessary once more to lay stress on the fact that when corpses are sent to the corpse utilization establishments returns as to the unit, date of death, illness and information as to (contagious) diseases, if any, are to be furnished at the same time."

Still another curious development was the use of Commemoration Medals. Though not actually issued by the Government they were permitted, controlled in the same way as the press, and at times were encouraged. Those which had found their way to neutral countries numbered in 1917 nearly 600 varieties.* The most notable marked and celebrated Zeppelin raids on London, the announced victories of the Crown Prince at Verdun, the bombardment of defenceless Scarborough by German ships, various Sub

*NOTE.-Pamphlet by G. F. Hill, M.A., Keeper of Coins and Medals in British

Museum.

marine snccesses with "Gott Strafe England" as a motto and portraits of Admiral Von Tirpitz as a new conqueror of Neptune, the sinking of the Lusitania.

One point that time and history will not forget in this War was the German destruction of Art treasures. No reparation was possible nor any explanation sufficient for the destruction of the Louvain galleries where Charles V, one of Europe's greatest rulers, pored over treasures of old learning; for the burning of 250,000 ancient and priceless manuscripts in the Louvain Library; for the destruction of 16th century editions of Virgil and Terence and Sallust and many others and the loss of rare copies of Aristotle and other Greeks of eternal memory; for the priceless Bibles and libraries of ecclesiastical history, illuminated and bordered by long and patient Monkish labours. Nothing in money or power or greatness could ever restore Rheims Cathedral or St. Quentin, the Chateaux of Coucy and Caulaincourt or other French and Belgian monuments of religion and art and century-long creation; nothing could repair the damage done in Padua to the Carmini Church or to the façade of its famous Cathedral, the levelling of the evacuated part of France-the Tuscany, the classic region of that beautiful country. As with Greek paintings and temples, the works of Menander and Sappho, the fruits of Greek sculpture destroyed by the barbarians of old, so for ages will Europe mourn over the losses and regard with disgust the memory of the invader who caused similar destruction in a supposed new era of civilization. When the Archduke Karl ascended the Austrian tions in Aus- throne on Nov. 21, 1916, he had confirmed Dr. Von tria-Hungary; Koerber in the Premiership and announced by proclaBulgaria and the Turkish mation that: "You know me to be in harmony with Empire. my peoples in my inflexible decision to continue the struggle until a peace assuring the existence and development of the Monarchy is obtained." At the same time he would hasten, with all his power, the evolution of peace. This was the keynote of Austro-Hungarian policy in 1917; its Government fought doggedly on but with an ever-growing desire for the end. The Foreign Minister, in his Note to the United States on Mar. 6, stood frankly behind Germany, endorsed fully what was described as long-suffering struggles for "the freedom of the Seas," and declared the official Submarine warnings given to neutrals and the enemy by that Power as quite sufficient.

War Condi

In opening the Austrian Reichstath on May 31 the Emperor delivered a long address in which he foreshadowed a grant of freer institutions: "I am convinced that the happy development of constitutional life after the unfruitfulness of past years is not possible without expanding the Constitution and the administrative foundations of the whole of our public life, both in the State and in the separate Kingdoms and countries, especially Bohemia." He also dealt with peace and war in these German-like words: "While our group of Powers, with irresistible force, is fighting for honour and existence, it is and remains, towards every one who honestly