The evening Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1918-1920, 1919-01-27
GERMANY MUST PAY
Boche Entitled to No More Sym-
pathy Than Any Criminal.
WRECKED CITIES AND LIVES
Many Girls in Lille Are Mothers of
Babes Whose Fathers Are Ger.
mans-Punishmen Cannot
Be Too Severe.
BY WRIGHT A. PATTERSON.

MUSE anu steals LnaL WHICH ne can
carry away and then destroys that
which he cannot steal, you expect that
when caught he will be punished both
for what he stole and for what he de-
stroyed.
So it is with Germany.
The German army, acting under the
orders of the German government,
stole everything it could carry away in
the invaded sections of Belgium and
France, and what it could not carry
away it destroyed.
I was in the city Of Lille very short
~ after the retreating Germans had
evacuated it. Before the war Lille
had been one of the busiest and most
prosperous manufacturing towns in all
of Europe. Its great factories, pro-
ducing linens, cottons, velvets, ribbons
and wooden goods, had patrons all over
the world, and it's sugar and chemical
plants supplied much of France with
these products.
For four years, during the German
occupation, the factories of Lille had
they will be idle for many months to
come. The reason is that Germany
stole the machinery from all of these
factories, or in the very few cases
where actual theft was not possible or
profitable, they destroyed the machin-
cry. The people of Lille told me that
this theft of machinery had been car
ioH 10 nrr4I no
even invaded the homes of the people
and took from them their sewing ma
chimes.
Germans Fathers of Their Babes.
The GermaHRarmy looted this beau
tiful French city of more than 200,-
900 population. 1t stole not alone the
machinery from it's factories and it's
homes, but even its people. French
mothers told me of how 5000 young
girls of twenty-five years of age and
under had been carried away at one
time. They told me of another time
when nfure than 10000 boys of from
fourteen to twenty years of age had
been carried away to Germany. When
1 was in Lille on October % it had
very few inhabitants except old peO-
pie or very young children. Among
the few exceptions were girls of from
seventeen to twenty years of age nurs-
ing babies, which they told me were
the offspring of German fathers, and
the pathos of the situation of those
young girls is something I shall never
forget.
And this condition at Lille is the re-
suit of German ambition for world
domination, an ambition fostered
among the German people through
years of training, the ambition Of a
people whose boast has been that
might makes right
am sorry to say have heard peo-
pie attempt to excuse this looting OF
Lille on~the ground that it could be
shown to be war measurable need
of Germany for this machinery and
for the labor of the people deported
to Germany But these people cannot
find any reasonable excuse for the war
itself, a war that was started only for
the Selfish purpose of a selfish peo-
pie.
Shall Germany not pay for this con-
dition at Lille? Shall she not pay for
the machinery that was carted away
or destroyed, for the people that were
deported? Shall she not pay for the
years of idleness Of these factories,
for the years of idleness of the en-
ployees denied the opportunity of prof
liable employment? Shall she not pay
for the markets that have been de-
stroyed and which it will take years
to re-establish if it can ever be done?
No, Germany will never be able to
pay for all of it. She will never be
able to pay, and 10 sum of money
could pay for the anguish of those
mothers who were forced to stand
aside and watch their sons and daugh-
tiers carried away into virtual slavery.
She will never be able to pay for the
anguish, the wrecked lives, Of those
girls with German babies. Money will
not pay for these things, but money
and work can in some small degree
pay for the wrecked factories and ru-
ined business of the city of Lille, and
through the payment of this money
and labor the people Of Germany will
learn that might is not right, and that
war for the purpose of gratifying
selfish ambition is not profitable.
Why Lille Was Not Destroyed.
The German retreat from Lille came
near the close of the war when the
Germans knew they were beaten and
they would have to pay, and for that
reason the city itself was not de-
stroyed. But the fact that it was not
destroyed is but another evidence of
German selfshness rather than of vir-
tue.
There are hundreds of cities and
| towns that have been destroyed after
being looted as Lille was looted; hum
dreds of towns where even the mate
rial of which they were built has been
carried away that it might be used in
! the construction Of Notifications be-
| hind which the German army might
! defend itself and its ill-gotten gains.
For all of these Germany should pay
now, and for generations to come.
No sympathetic pardon board should