The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1918-03-30
SPEAKER TELLS
OF ATROCITIES
GERMAN SURGEON GOUGES OUT
GOOD EYE OF PA
TENT

mans in the regions VI DOi
eium and northern France are de
scribed by a soldier-orator, Doc
Wells. who is in this country on
tour after having been in
home, a sufferer from wa
wounds. A writer in the San Jos
Mercury-Herald thus details event
described by the soldier:
Doc Wells has done to
bring the people to a realization
of their responsibility in relation
to the war than any or all other
speakers who have appeared In
this country. He is a quiet, earn
est soldier who has personally
seen and suffered, and whose i'm
p~ressions of German brutality
were formed not from newspaper
and magazine articles, but in the
trenches and as a prisoner OF the
enemy. Nor has he entertained
his audiences with recitals OF his
own gallantry, as he might have
done, but has confined his words
to what happened to others under
his own eyes. 1t is natural that
he should, in the fervor of the
moment manifest a degree of re-
sentiment or even of revenge, since
his comrades are still fighting or
lying in hospital cots recovering
or dying from their wounds.
1t is surely enough to inflame
a mans passions to see a comrade
subjected to a surgical operation
in a German hospital by a Ger
man surgeon without the use of
anaesthetics, and because teh tor
tured man made an cutlery, have
the good eye p%unctured with the
instrument by the surgeon, de-
stroying the sight of both and
leaving the victim worse than
dead, to make his way through
life in darkness.
1t is a terrible reflection in
this goth century that an enemy
surgeon could be SO brutal, but
Doc Wells saw it, knows the
victim and will give his name and
address to anyone who doubts the
.k4.y o n loot tho q 10 fndoU
cropping his way among his
frieds in a Canadian city. Or of
those Belgian children with their
little arms chopped off. numbers
of which may be een in their
London refuge as well as in many
American cities.
A man with normal human
feeling cannot listen to a re-
view of these atrocities without a
sense of outrage, but when n is
an eyewitness of them his indig-
nation is naturally without bounds.
Americans will know from these
instances of savagery what their
boys must face, and when it hap
pens to them, as it has repeatedly
to others of the allies armies,
that they are nailed to the doors
of barns and their bodies mutilat-
ed, we at home will know how
dastardly is the enemy we are
fighting.
When, too, the crew of a tor
pedoed ship is picked up and put
on the deck of the submarine,
their life preservers taken from
them and thrown into the sea, and
then swept off helplessly as the
submarine submerges, we are not
likely to talk of peace or advise
a cessation of hostilities.
Doc" Wells, We have said, tells
only of things he has personally
seen and experienced, and how
ever terrible they are, we know
he is but one of thousands who
might tell of similar or even worse
treatment. 1t is an expensive war,
to be sure; already it has cost
hundreds of American lives, but
so far as we are concerned it has
only started = the real lists of
casualties. have not yet come to
us. for our men have not yet suf-
fered a serious offensive.
But they will, and when they do
we know their mettle will bear the
strain, for nothing that Germany
produces in man-power is COM
parable with the clean, self-think-
ing young Americans who are
capable of sustaining reverses
without complaint, and equally
capable of initiating offenses of
their own.