Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-12-15
SEE BRITISH SOLDIERS
} CRUCTFIED BY BOCHES
U. S. Engineers at Front Hear
Awful Tales of German
Barbarity
NUNS PITIABLE VICTIMS
Canadians and Scots, Knowing En-
emy, Neither Give Nor
Ask Quarter
NEW YORK. Dec. Is.


Cruclnxon Of Canadian and Scottish
soldiers by Germans on the western
front. with Wholesale outrnges on nuns
In captured converts. are given by mem.
bers of the Eleventh United States En-.
gincer Regiment In letters received here
today as the causes of n determination
they express to fight to finish and to
give or take no quarter.
"If all of America could hear the hor.
rible tales these refugees tell and sec
the country about US here" says one let
ter, there would be 5000, 900 American
soldiers training for war and war loans
would be oversubscrbed by billions"
one of the officers of the regiment.
In letter to Robert Ridgeway, OF the
Public Service Commission. wrote:
THE devastated country and villages
destroyed by shellhre, I suppose, must be
expected. But the thing that makes one
boil is the absolutely unnecessary and
wanton destruction wrought by the re.
firing Hun. His usual wonderful and
systematic methods have been applied
to this destruction. Whole towns that
have hardly been touched by shellfre
have been completely destroyed by dyna-
mite. We find hotches cut in the few
standing walls and marked with the size
of the charge TO he used. Evidently
every building had been Systematically
prepared in that way. long in advance,
for blowing up upon retirement.
EVEN GRAVES DESECRATED
80 homes, beautiful chateaus gar.
den walls. little summer houses are all
blown up. Shade trees, Towering shrubs
are cut down or the bark cut so the
trees will die. Cemeteries have been
ransacked; graves and vaults opened ;
bones thrown about or in heaps on the
ground. I have seen cemeteries that
are awful sights: one body dragged hall
way outs of the Caskct; cofiins broken
open and the bones from several dumped
into one. Evidently the boche was look.
ing for jewelry, was simply malicious, or
both.
'Those things could not be done with
out the knowledge and permission. of the
officers. and the thing is so complete
that it looks as though it was all a part
of an official program. | never did be-
lieve the stories we got In America of
the outrages. | have to believe them now
and they are many times worse than
the stories that ! heard at home. Ger
tain Canadian and Scottish battalious
the Boche has several times cructied the
Canadian and Scotch prisoners and held
them above the trenches in view of their
battalions.
ATTACKED WITHOUT ORDERS
"Ir. one such case "A Canadian bat
TALON went right over the top after the
BCches without orders. Very few OF
them have come back. \ British chap
lain told me that he knows personally
of IA Belgian convent where they found
that fifty-seven out of eighty-two nuns
had been violated when the Boches fell
back.
"I cannot understand what the mental
operations or processes of the Hun can
be. / cannot understand what his ob-
ject car be. 1t must he the wrarhful
spite of disappointed. degenerate mind
In fairness to our many very fine ac-
quaintances of German birth in Amer
lea I will say that the German prisoners
/ have seen appear to be largely a diff
ferent type from the German in America
They look not of a particularly high
type. Major - does not agree will,
me. in this. He says he can see among
them the counterpart of every German
lie ever krew.
The prisoners will not believe that
we are American troops. They say, no
it Is impossible. our submarines have
stopped all traffic between America and
Europe That IL the way with the Ger
man soldier, and I suppose every one in
Germany is kept in ignorance OF the true
situation"