The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1918-01-26

Tales" Says an American Soldier,
"There Would Be Five Million Men
Training for War and Loans Would
Be oversubscribed by Billions of
Dollars.
CrucifiXion of Canadian and Scot
fish soldiers by Germans on the west
ern front, with wholesale outrages on
nuns in captured converts, are given
by members of the Eleventh United
States Engineer regiment in letters re-
ceived in this country as the causes of
a determination they express to fight
to a finish and to give or take no
quarter.
"If all of America could hear the
horrible tales these refugees tell and
see the country about us here" says
one letter, there would be five mil
lion American soldiers training for
war and war loan would be over
subscribed by billions"
Makes the Blood Boil.
One of the officers of the regiment,
in "A letter to Robert Ridgeway of the
public service commission, wrote:
"The devastated country and vii
lagos destroyed by shellfire, | sup
pose, must be expected. But the thing
that makes one boil is the absolutely
unnecessary and wantou destruction
wrought by the retiring Hun. His
usual wonderful and systematic meth
nHc hoUn hnon onn1in1 70 This 1nStpiIa-
ton. Whole towns that have hardly
been touched by shellfire lave been
completely destroyed by dynamite. We
find notches cut in the few standing
walls and marked with the size of the
charge to be used. Evidently every
building had been systematically pre-
pared in that way, long in advance,
for blowing up upon retirement.
$50 homes, beautiful chateaus, gar
den walls, little summer houses are
all blown up. Shade trees, Towering
shrubs are cut down or die bark cut,
so the trees will die. Cemeteries have
been ~ransacked; graves and vaults
opened; bones thrown about or in
heaps on the ground. l have seen the
cemeteries, that are awful sights; one
body dragged halfway out Of the cask-
ct collins broken open and the bones
from several dumped into one. Evil
IDENTIFY the boche was looking for jew
elry, was simply malicious. or both.
"Those things could not be done
without 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. 1
never did believe the stories we got
in America of the o%utrages. l have to
believe them now, and they are many
times worse than the stories that l
heard at home. Certain Canadian and
Scottish battaliOns take no prisoners.
They give and ask no quarter. The
reason is that the Boche has several
times crucified the Canadian and
Scotch prisoners and held them above
the trenches in view of their bat
talions. In one such case u Canadian
battalion went right oyer the Top after
the Boches without orders. Very few
of them have come bael,. 4 British
N1lupidlA tOlu III lldl 1t +AAbNS per
sonally of a Belgian convent where
they found that fifty-se4eu out of
e~ighty-two nuns had been Violated
when the Boches fell bacs.
Looks Like Wrathful Spite.
II cannot understand what the men,
tai operations or processes of the Hun
can be. l cannot understand what his
object can be. 1t must be tho wrath
full spite of a disappointed, degenerate
mind. In fairness to our many very
fine acquaintance of German birth in
America l will say that the German
prisoners I have seen appear to be
largely a different type from the Ger
mar in America. They look not of a
particularly high type. Major -
does not agree with me in this. He
says he can see among them the coun-
terpart of every German he ever knew.
"The prisoners will not believe that
we are American troops. They say,
NO, it is impossible. Our submarines
have stopped all traffic between Amer
lea and Europe That is the way with
the German soldier, and l suppose ev-