The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1918-05-24
THE CRY OF A DESPAIRING NATION
TO AMERICAN WORKMEN FOR HELP
Workers of Belgium Cry Out in Anguish Against the
Fendshness Brutality and Fasehood of the German Gov


| HcIHId1S SpIttu lOIClSH COuIJIiCS
these unemployed and their families
are not charge upon public bud
gets or public charity. They have
been and still are maintained in de-
cency and in fraternity by private
organization, exclusively Belgian,
which has yet to make its first COM
plant about its duties and it's mis-
sion. The solidarity of Belgian So
cial classes is keeping alive that
magnificent work which has not
a precedent in the history of mutual
aid in the worlds socities.
Workmen of America: To these
half million of the involuntary I'M
employed they are saying for a
month past: either you shall sign a
contract to work for Germany or you
shall be reduced to slavery.
In one case as in the other it is
exile, deportation, forced labor for
the profit of the enemy and against
ones own country; formidable cor
receive measures so cruel that no
tyranny in any age has been able
to invent the like for the punish
ment of crime And what crimes are
included here? Involuntary unem-
ployment which the tyrant himself
invented and keeps up.
And when, despite the most hate
full oppression, the Germans were
unable to obtain signatures-which
in their official communications to
Neutral countries they have the hard
hood to describe as voluntary
they have seized with violent hands
our workmen, your brothers and
ours; they take them up by thou
sands every day; they tear them from
their wives and from their chill
lren; at the point of the bayone
they lead them into cattle cars AM
send them into foeiign lands il
France and Germany.
On the west fronts by the mos
brutal means they have force,
them to dig trenches, to prepare
aviation fields, to make militar.
roads, to fortify the German lines
And when the victims in spite Of ev-
Iything refused to engage in these
asks forbidden by the rights OF
nations they starved them, they
maltreated them, they beat them,
hey infected them with disease,
they visited them with wounds and
even death.
In Germany they cast them into
mekilns. no matter what their age
their profession or station in life.
they depot pell nell youths of II
md seniors of 60 and over. Can
lavery of ancient days show any
! greater horror?
There are, then, more than 5O,-
700 working men, unemployed or not
Who have thus been deported to fore
I'd labor or to slavery. Day by day
a new region is raided; they deploy
l formidable military apparatus,
machine guns and soldiers without
lumber; and the doleful military OPP
grafton accomplishces its end against
1his poor disarmed people terroriz-
I'd but conscious Of its violated
rights.
Workmen of America: Never for
get that the soldiers who become
the eXecutioners of the Belgian la
borers are workmen of Germany
Thus 100000, perhaps 100000 will
be deported if you do not put a
stop to it. After the men the
women will come without doubt.
That means 100000 more
1t is the whole iaboring popula-
ton of Belgium which is threatened
with slavery, with Punishment, with
death.
Have you any idea, Americans
and brothers, what wages" the
Germans toss to their victims?
tut udy.
600 "pfennings" make one mark,
and mark" is IL cents less than
the American fuarter dollar.)
And the food? What food-The
Belgian civil prisoners who came
back from Germany after three
months detention have lost third
of their weight; they are scarcely
recognizable, wasted. sick; too often
they cannot recover their health,
they languish and die If such be
the lot of prisoners who do nothing,
what deplorable fate is reserved for
Belgian laborers deported and sub
jeeted to the most painful tasks?
In few months our laboring pop
'ulation, the pride of our land while
yet it was free, will undergo ami
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