The Mena weekly star., 1917-11-29
CHARGES BY EYE WITNESSES.

NfAftGES b1 .EtE WITNESSES. By E. E. Hartman of The Vigilantes
 | told my friend, Mf. M, of the U. <. Secret Service that l had just been informed that certain papers had retracted the charge made against German soldiers of cutting of the hands of children. He looked at me from deep set eyes that burned and burned, brighter with every breath, more intense, more fierce with each moment
 We'll. he said slowly They may retract and 1 may be wrong, but went everywhere 1 could be allowed to go on stricken territory last winter II may be that the thousand mutilated children that saw in one small town not far from Liege had lost their hands thru gum fire when they got in the way during battle. It may be that little girls lost their tiny breasts from the same cause. But l don't believe a word of it. just the same.
 T tell you only what I saw with my own eyes. l don't give you a single hearsay story. l saw mutil- ated children, male and female. saw them not by dozens, but by hundreds and thousands. saw more than any paper in America ever told. l saw enough to make me have a chronic rage smouldering, ready to flare at the first word in support of her-crimes. l saw enough to prove to me that Germany has. no sense of honor or decency orr com Men horse sense left. She is a t'avening beast, dexiL incarnate|
 T stood i'll trench with an En- glish officer and asked him why he did not send out a detail under flag of truce, to gather up the many wounded lying just ahead. He laughed grimly, viciously. We tried that once' he said. fEIad. man wigwag international code saying we wanted to gather up wounded under flag of truce. Our flag was answered by one from their side and the two signalmep stood up in plain view The German signaled back to come on, it was all right with them. Our men advanced. and entire battalion unarmed. They ad- vanced until they were only fifty yards from the German trench and began to pick up wounded. Then the machine guns opened fire and not one man of that battalion lived five minutes
 That is what an English officer told me while I stood in a trench only eighty yards from a Hun trench, and saw thru a periscope many wounded men lying uncared for outside. I don't believe mothers in France lied to me when they told of atrocities committed against their children. I don't believe that ofii- cer lied to me. Truth has estahl lished herself in the hearts of these people and her sign is on their faces. If any paper publishes a statement that retraction of these charges has been made by the AL lies, why l will just, think that here is another tentacIe of the German propaganda @gs N That issithe way my friend who has been at the front talked to me. That is the way Lieutenant A of a Canadian company talked when he came back to reeuperate after hav- ing the flesh torn from an arm by bursting shell. He said he saw two hundred little girls in charge of the nuns in one courtyard and not one had not been violated, nor one left unmutilated, tho the oldest girl there was but fourteen and the youngest nine. He went back to do his bit all over again and died in the trenches, victim of another shell.
 What I have here set down is fact as given by men who saw these things. Are we to take the word of these men or no? Why not, when they are men we would trust in any other matter?
 The report that certain papers of the Allies have retracted is merely one more indication that the snake is not dead yet.