Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1918-06-21

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
determination they express to fight
to a finish and to give or take no
quarter.
eff 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 loans 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 shellfre, I SUP
pose, must be expected. But the thing
that makes one boil is the absolutely
unnecessary and wanton destruction
wrought by the retiring Hun. His
usual wonderful and systematic meth
DDS have been applied to this destruc-
| ion. Whole towns that have hardly
been touched by shellfire have 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 the bark cut,
so the trees will die. Cemeteries have
been ransacled; graves and vaults
opened; bones thrown about or in
heaps on the ground. I 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
If the officers, and the thing is so
complete that it looks as Thought was
Ill a part of an official program. /
never did believe 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. Certain Canadian and
! Scottish battalions take no prisoners.
They give and ask no quarter. The
| -eason Is that the Boche has several
times crucifed the Canadian and
| scotch prisoners and held them above
| he trenches in view Of their bat
alions. In one such case a Canadian
battalion went right over the top after
he Boches without orders. Very few
Of them have come back. A British
chaplain told me that he knows per-
sonally Of a Belgian convent where
they found that f1fty-seven out Of
eighty-two nuns had been violated
| when the Boches fell back.
Looks Like WrathfuI Spite.
IT cannot understand what the men,
tai operations or processes Of the Hun
can be. I cannot understand what his
| object can be. 1t must be the wrath
| Jul spite of a disappointed, degenerate
mind. In fairness to our many very
line acquaintance of German birth IL
! America I will say that the German
prisoners I have seen appear to be
argely different type from the Ger
nan in America. They look not OF
particularly high type. Major --
loes not agree with me in this. He
ays he can see among them the coun-
erpart Of every German he ever knew.
"The prisoners will not believe that
We are American troops. They say
No, it is impossible. Our submarines
nave stopped all traffic between Amer
ca and Europe That is the way with
he German soldier, and I suppose ev-
Try one in Germany is kept in ignor~
,nca NJ thn tr11e Situation"