1917-05-16 — Page 2

Page

INTIMATIONS

THE HONGKONG DAILY PRESS, WEDNESDAY, MAY 16TH, 1917.

MOUTRIE'S

PIANOS

TO.

HIRE

FROM

$10

Per MONTH.

BRITISH IN THE OPEN:

GERMANS INSENSATE

VENGEANCE

MY PERCIVAL PHILLIPS, DAILY EXPRESS *** SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT]

Open warfare with cavalry skirmishes and pccasional encounters with clusive German cyclist patrols is still a feature of the new operations which began with our general advance south of Arras.

The resistance of the German rear- guard has been curiously irregular, vary- ing from the quite stubborn opposition

CANTON NEWS.

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT,)

CANTON, May 14th.⠀ CANTONEHE BOARD GE COMMERCE OPPORE WAR.

TWO AND A HALF YEARS WITH THE GERMANS. ENGLISHMAN'S REMARKABLE.

EXPERIENCES,

AND ANTWERP......

The Board of Commerce of Canton has LiFE IN ROUBAIX, LILLE, BRUSSELS, sent to the Government at Peking o telegram opposing a declaration of war against Germany.

MANY DROWNED IN TOW-BOAT,

The tow-bost Yue Ching, plying bai tween Shok-ki, Heung-shan district, and Macao, sank while loaded with a large shipment of goods and over five hundred. of entrenched infantry east of Bapaume passengers on May 7th The steam to mere glimpses of a few isolated detach-launch endeavoured to rescue the pas ments moving among the trees and de-sengers, but experienced great dificulty serted villages in the area west of St. owing to the boat being heavily ladon Quentin

with gouds. It is reported that about one hundred passengers were drowned, among whom were many children. young foreign lady also lost her life.

TUNING AND REGULAR ATTENTION through abandoned villages and a broad

INCLUSIVE,

SUMMER WEIGHT

[28-3-

For troops newly released from the long confinement of trench warfare the temptation to rush pellmell across the fertile, felds and fine hard roads in search of the vanished Germans was almost irresistible. They would like at least to get within earshot of the enemy guns, but for the most of them it has been a business this week of moving steadily expanse of devastated farm land, with out any of the experiences enjoyed by troopa in open warfare. Far ahead cavalry patrols and agile eyelist scouts scour the patches of woodland gullies between the fields for hidden Huns, and this is all of the actual hostilities to be our guns of paddy

The infantry and guns go forward' steadily along the newly mended rails, over filed in craters, with German sign posta at every turning, German notices of every conceivable kind nailed to the

PYJAMAS

We have now a large and varied stock of Summer Sleeping Suits made of Fine Ceylon Flannel, Zephyr, Aertex Cellular, eto, all cut specially for us full free lines that ensure perfect comfort in wear.

01

PRICES RANGE FROM $5.00 PER SUIT.

MACKINTOSH

CO., LTD..

Men's Wear Specialists,

16. DES VEUX ROAD.

THE BEST

TEL. 696.

Tazarxona 29.

[108]

STIMULANT-

BRANDY,

THE BEST BRANDY-

***

MOUNIE'S

***** LIQUEUR.

REMEMBER THE BRAND

GOLD VINELEAF.

DONNELLY & WHYTE,

Westminster Specials

Turkish

QUEEN'S BUILDINGS.

What Makes WESTMINSTER SPECIALS'

SO GOOD.

The painstaking care observed in the various stages of Manufacture which pro- duce a standard of quality second to none.

Westminster

TURKISH

SPECIALS.”

From all Leading Tobacconista.

Westminster

Tobacco Co. Ltd London

[95

[578

A

SAIGON RICE MARKET. The Compagnie de Commerce et de Navigation d'Extreme Orient, of Saigon, in their report dated May 8th, states

Our market is still firm, Last week some business was done with the Philip Pine Islanda, but these sales did not much affect our market, the steadiness of

Mr. J. P. Whitaker, of Bradford, the young Eng ishman who has recently suceeded in effecting lus escape from Roibuix, continues the account of his re- markable expériences during two and half years behind the German. lines.

Enslavement is part of the deliberate policy of the Germans in Erance. It began by the taking of hostages at the very outset of their possession of Roubaix A number of the leading men in the civic and business life of the town were marked out and compelled to attend by turna, at the Town Hall, to be shot on the spat at the least sign of revolt the townspeople

fing to a notibention sent to him, had lett- Brussels for doubaix failed to arrive. I know also that analysis of the bread showed that in some cases German ryo flour, including 30 por cent. of saw- dust had been substituted for the white American flour producing an indigestible putty ke substance which brought illness und death to many. Indeed the mortality from this cause was so heavy at one period, that all the grave diggers in town could not keep pace with it.

One could casily understand how must

have been the temptation to the Germans to tap for themselves the food which friends abroad had sent for their victims... It is a significant fact that sol- diers in Roubaix were eager to buy rion from those who had obtained it at the depot at four france (33.4d.) the pound in order, as they said, to send it home. I shall describe later how utterly, different were the conditions in Belgium as I saw

s

Breat

Meagre as were the food supplies for the civilians in Roubaix those issued to the German soldier towards the end of my stay were little better...

At first the householders on. whom the soldiers were billeted were required to feed them and to recover the cost from the municipal authorities.

In passing I may mention that all or

old, silver, and bronze,

urdered to weave cloth for tho. invaders, dianry money Breniation, long ago.

THE

DEPORTATION,

Barbarity reached its

was t

af

seen on a large portion of the front of which is due chiefly from the poor BUPPS called" deportations climax in the so- and deterioration, fall in the quantity

Not a few of the mill-owners were

200 on their refusal were sent to Ger- disappeared from many and held to ransom. Many of the Some of it possibly was hidden by the mill operatives, quite young girls were townsfolk, but much more was collected directed to sew sandbags for the German by the Germans and sent out of the coun tronches. They, too, refused, but the Cer-try. was replaced by paper money what they regard as juvenile obstinacy o mans. had their own way of dealing with all denominations, even

even to cardboard After some months. the billeting They dragged the girls to a disused system was altered, and the German mili- cinema hall, and kept them there without tary authorities undertook the feeding of food or water until their will was broken, their men. Frota that time on ward there in the soldiers daily They were just rations. To the end they seemed to

have slave raids, brutal and undisguised.

no lack of jam, not plum and apple, but The total amount of rice exported The procedure was this: The town was something red which looked rather like from the 1st January up to the 1st May divided into districts. At 3 o'clock in the raspberry. Often I have seen them walk- is 420,067 tons, against 452,749 tons in morning a cordon of troops would being along the street munching a thick. 1916. A ons, agama drum sound district the Prussian slice of ryebroad covered, with a generous Sifted in duality, hongkong No3.71 Regiment, played great part in this Just before I left

We quote to-day-White rice, No. 2 Guard and especially, I believe, the 60th

Just before I left I was shown, ona day's per picul Eo.b, Saigon, fór May/June diabolical crime and officers and non- menu provided for the troops Break shipment.

commissioned officers would knock at fast consisted of dry bread and coffee every. door until the household was dinner of boiled barley, and super of ToUsed.

A handbill, about Octavo size, tary authritis undertook the fooding of was aanded in, and the officer passed on cooked beetroot. It was some, comfort to

walls of deserted cottages and stable. docra, German graves lining the road- side-for many were apparently, buried where they died-German wire and piles of new concrete blocks and odds and

до

COLLECTION OF METALS...

Conditions in Germany, were reflected also in the systematic plundering of work- shops and houses of everything made of brass, copper, pewter, or German silver. The Germans began by taking all stocks

ends of stores and supplies confronting them in unexpected places. They go the foodstuffs possible, offering exorbit to the next house. The handbill contain-ng to know that while we could barely through wrecked towns, where hollow- ant prices and trying to cajole the shop-ed printed orders that every member of subsist the Germans were evidently not checked, waxen faced women and child-keepers by various promises into aug- the household must rise and dress immo- much better off, ren in tattered clothes smile a greeting menting their meagre ratione,diately, pack up a couple of blankets, a and try in many pathetic little ways to The gratitude of the civilians for the change of linen, apuar of stout boots, show their gratitude, d

relief now being given them is shown in a spoon and fork, and a few other small I have never seen. British soldiers so many ways. All the men who are suffi- articles, and he ready for the second visit grim and bitter as the men who are ciently strong for hard work volunteered in half an hour. When the officer return marching to-day through the destroyed to help mend the roads and repair theed the family were marshalled before. villages beyond Neste, with the abomi- damage wrought by the Germans An for him, and he picked out those whom he of raw and combed wool, raw cotton and wanted with a curt You will conie,' raw silk from the warehouses, and follow- nable handiwork of their enemy con- as possible, and 1 saw French peasants- fronting them on every hand. They were sixty or seventy years old labouring with time for leave-taking the selected victims piece goods. They next requistioned all you, And you." Without evened this up by appropriating all woollen never mors eager to come to gripa again pick and shovel side by side with women were paraded in the street and marched oil. Late last year they issued я Pro- with him. No incentive is needed to in some of the villages in the area be to a mill on the outskirts of the town blamation calling upon the residents to quicken the troops engaged in driving|tween Nesle and Roye.

There they were imprisoned for three declare to the military authorities what the Germans back. to their own

HACKED TO PIECES,

course, I could write at length of many acts days, without any means of communica-brass was in their poss

tun with friends or relatives, all herded nobody paid any attention. Of

to the order. of pillage, and vandalism committed by together indiscriminately and given but A few days later parties of German the enemy during the last week of their the bares modicum of food. Then, like soldiers went through the town, street by to street, and seized article of brass, occurred at Cayencourt, Bye miles north-an-yaknóing fate. of the bronse of copper on which they could ret west of Rove, the result brick chateau back, emaciated and utterly worn out private houses, helped themselves, to stair

of which I saw Menths afterwards some of

camo eyes. Without ceremony they entered this morning.

place, but, if there were, no surer method of galvanising the army into could be found than to

f

were sont

Archday the devastated acres stay, but none is worse than that which so many cattle, they we

which stood a short distance behind the ragged and verminous, broken in all but front trenches had suffered somewhat from shell fire as it had been used as an

strong among the mounted men, who, artillery headquarters, but was

still spoke with numbers of the men

roda,

brasg

or copper

fittings from clothes hooks, and overlooked. They took up brass headed carpet pins; they even tore the candle sticks from pianos. The things were

Verkou Nothing was had been told by the Germans, they Brook 568 Altis and other

of invaded France that have had been reclaimed from the hands of the Hun.

The cavalry alreaily engaged are having the time of their lives. Tuc enthusiasm which pervades all the troupe engaged in the advance is particularly

that they were going to work on the knick-knacks of after months of galling inactivity, at habitable up to the time the Germans and girls were put to farm labour..

They found that only the women fast come into their own. They regret crived orders to evacuate it last week, that they have not yet been able to fall They hacked the interior to picers in the Ardance and compelled to mend reads, bundled into a curt on the tail of whch

The men were taken to the French on the enemy and scatter the fragments usual manner, even mashing the bil-man saw-mills and forges, build masonry, were scales, like those carried on coal- of his rearguard over the landscape, and liard table bowing down the carved and toil at other manual taske. Rough and receipt averything was weighed the only reason is that the fugitives beams of the old ceiling, and stripping hutments formed their barracks. They and a receipt was given at the rate have shown extraordinary agility and the family portraits from the walls were under constant guard both there and two francs per kilogramme, or 10d. per made musual exertions to avoid a Then they set fire to the ruin, which at their work, and they were marched pound. Bronze statuettes worth at least 500 decisive blow, barned itself out

The kenness of our scouts, is shown This was not the extent of their crimes oder escort from the huts to work and francs were taken at the intrinsic at 500

work to the huts.

For food each the Motal by an incident in the suburbs of St. however. The family chapel of the deman was given a 21b. leaf of German The process was not confined to privato Fortaine family in the park near the bread every ave days, any At 6:0'clock mans made a tour of the cafés and ripped

a little

houses or workshops. One day the Ger- boiled rice, in two and a half miles of the town château was completely gutted. without mooting opposition, when, în the neighbourhood of Saoy Wood, a German patrol of five men of the 115th Begiment was seen reconnoitring the road from the shelter of a crater Two British scouts dashed at them, and the Germans, after firing severs stieffective shote, bolted into the wood. Our men followed and made prisoner a sergeant major who had just completed a course of instruction in a cadet school and was

Quentin. We penetrated yesterday with

When and E

I visited it this morning the door through in the morning after & breakfast consist off the pester lots of the counters. They the outer wall which led to the crypting of a slice of bread and a cup of coffee also went froin shop to shop and carried had been wrenched away. In the little they went to work,

At 4 o'clock in the way the brass trays from the scales. I saw vaulted chamber beneath was a terrible afternoon they returned for the night, one cart go along the street piled high spectacle. The oak coffin of Basile and took their second meal-dinner, tea, with gramophone horns. A week or two Curiel Michel Pouille de Fontaine, a and supper all in one Often they were later a notice was posted on the walls in- member of the Chamber of Deputies for buffeted and generally ill-used by their timating that anybody who wished to re- the Somme, who died in 1889-I quote internally or externally, was the invari ne could obtain them on application to taskmasters. If they fell ill, cold water, place requisitioned pots and pans by new the inscription or the broken tablet, able remedy. Once a commission came to the Kommandant. It turned out that the which had been tossed on the muddy see them at work, but they had heca warn subsitutes were of iron, made in Ger four had been wrenched open by thed beforehand that any man who commany, and that they were to be sold, not Germans,

SAVAGERY plained of his treatment would suffer for given away. Meanwhile the unfortunate. The feeding of the destitute inhabitants N

INCREDIBLE BAVAGERY, amit. One of them was bold enough to pro- people whose houses had been stripped of the invaded area now necupied by The naken lid with a large silver test to the visitors against a particularly had nothing in return except a piece of British armies has begun on a well crucifix was missing, and the lower part flagrant case of ill-usage. That man dis paper which they were told could be con- organised basis. Eight thousand rations of the leaden shell was cut away, ex-

verted into money at the end of the war.

Times. arrived at Nesle to-day, where one of posing the feet of the corpse. The da appeared a few days later. the shops closed since the Gerinans firstpall which covered the coffin was rolled Long before this the food problem had entered the town, in August 1114 was up and flung in one corner. On the become acute in Houbaix, Simultaneous- reopened as a distributing center by the floor of the roofless chapel above 1ly with the establishment of the system American Relief Commission

found, amid charred embers, several of personal control over the inhabitants You will find most striking evidence large fragments of costly silk brocaded the Germans closed the frontier between

to receive his enmmission this week,

CLOSING THE FRONTIER.

THE AMERICAN LIBERTY LOAN.

The Manager of the International

American Liberty Lean, carrying in- terest at 3 per cent, is to be issued in bonds of U.S. 850 and upwards, exempt version, should & Inter loan be found from tax, and carries the right of con- necessary at a higher rate of interest.

of the privations of the people in the vestiments of medieval workmanship, one France and Belgium and forbade as to Banking Corporation informs us that he smaller communities In more than one almost whole, which apparently had approach within half a bule of the bor has received a telegram from his head village to-day, where the few wretched beon used to wipe the boots of the der line. The immediate effect of to office in New York to the effect that the survivors looked more like spotres than soldiers, and bits of religious painting trickle the copious stream of foodstuffs isolation was to reduce to an insignificant human beings, gaunt men and women and the broken altar mingled in the

which until then poured in from Belgium with sunken eyes moved slowly and men who como listlessly about the littered tracts or Yet the ren who committed this littens Belgium of fiction but the sought in a hopeless kind of way to mend sacrilege exnect others to respect their Butchers and bakers and provision

supplied Belgium of fact, seme holes in the ragged was of their own dead. In the centre of the burnt dealers had to shat their shops, and the poor homes. It was no wonder they out and blackened little village of Cham town became almost wholly dependent on locked so much like living corpses, but pien, a few miles east of Roye, is a new supplies brought in by the American Re- rather a wonder that they survived at ornate German military graveyard at

least two hundred yards square, enclosed unobtainable, except by those few people RICHEST WOMAN ON THE STAGE Lief Commission. Fresh meat was FOOD with a carved stone and pillared wall who could afford to pay fabulous prices Kad The graves within are neatly hanked and for jointa smuggled across the frontier

ARRESTED.. At Rouilly, for example, the people bordered with green grass. Many have Months ago meat cost 32 francs a kilo had no ment for nine months, no mille for large carved marble head-stones, and un gram (about 13 shillings a lb.), and an a year, and what little food they re most of them are wreathe of fowers egg cost 1 franc 26 (a shilling). Obvious ceived was from the American relief There are several graves containing ly such things were beyond the reach of supplies Very occasionally they got a unknown German and French dead with the bulk of the people, and had it not little fat from this source. Otherwise large granite headstones, while at the been for the efforts of the Relief Com they lived on bread and what potatoes end of the cemetery in a large marble mission we should all have starved, puted to be far and away the richest they managed to secrete from the Ger- memorial, the lifesize figure of a woman mang, who commandeered all the sup carrying a wreath of laurel and stand-a local plies they could find. NE

STARVATION DIER

Hardly & goutter of the American sup- plies intended for these people ever reached them. They were sent white flour, but received black, and frequently rations were withheld for a long time by the local German authorities. It was small consolation to the civilians to know that the Germans fared little better. During the last six months they were obviously short of food, even after diverting a portion of the supplies from neutral countries to their own ute. Soldiers billeted in the villages or marching through them tried to buy a

(Continued at foot of next column.)

A message from Petrograd states that the dancer, Mme. Kechessinska, has

been arrested."

Mme. Mathilde Kchessinska, who was Dancer of Honour to the Czar is re-

The opened a food depot, womun on any stage in the world, the

Issued tickets for the value of her jewels alone being stated at ing between pillars various

and rich and poor alike £50,000. She has been for some yeara There are evergreens in this little had to wait their turn at the depot to past a prominest political personagen cemetery, and the carefully kept walks procure the alloted rations. The chief Russia, and her receptions, which were were newly swept before the 5th Grena maize, bacon; lard, ceffee, bread, condens marked by almost regal splendour, were

foodsuffs supplied were: diers marched away on Sunday. They ed milk (occasionally) haricot beans, regularly attended by royalty, diplomats, hoped the French would guard their lentils, and a very small allowance of and the leading Russian officials She dead Yet just before they left they sugar Potatoes could not be hi cut down all the fruit trees on the

op any price.

Le hought at is also famous as being the best-dressed posite side of the road, and the little

woman in Russia and the possessor of home of an old peasant adjoining the should have to record it, there is evidence Mme Kchewingka, who is a Pole, was

Unfortunately, though I regret that I priceless furs cemetery was blown up with a charge that by some means or other the German last seen by the London public in of ammonal French infantrymen were Army contrived to intercept for itself a November, 1911, when she appeared with walking in the neat German cemetery part of the food sent by the American Nijinsky at Covent Garden in & dance. this afternoon and reading the inscrip Commission. Ono who had good rea from Tchaikovsky's ballet, Sleeping tion Friend and foe in death united, son to know told me that more Beauty, and in the Schumann" Car- with ironie smiles

thas

once trainloads which, accord- nival"