The Germans themselves have been so demoralized by the régime they have established that the authorities have had to put a check on anonymous denunciations, almost all of which were false, by an official communiqué published in the Gazette de Hagenau for the sixth of December, 1916.
The story of how the civilian population has been treated will only be known in its entirety later on. The government has, as a matter of fact, forbidden the press to publish accounts of the war councils' debates because the population, far from being terrified by them, would find in them laughing matter.
It is estimated that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have served in actual hours more than five thousand years in prison. Here are some crimes committed by them:
M. Giessmann, an old man seventy years old, saluted French prisoners in a Strassburg street: Sentence, six weeks in prison.
Guillaume Kohler, an infantry soldier from Saverne, during a journey in Germany, censured the inhuman manner in which certain German officers treated their men at the front. The council at Saarbruck sentenced him to two years in prison.
Emilie Zimmerle, a cook at Kolmar, sang an anti-German song as she washed out her pots. Thirty marks fine.
Mlle. Stern, the daughter of a pastor at Mulhouse, spoke against the violation of Belgium. One month in prison.
Abbe Théophile Selier, curé at Levencourt, for the same offense, six weeks in prison.
Even children and young girls have been punished for peccadillos that were absolutely untrue.
The Metz Zeitung for the twenty-second of October mentions the sentences pronounced against Juliette F. de Vigy, eighteen years old, a pupil in the commercial school, and Georgette S——, twenty-three years old, a shop girl, dwellers at Mouilly. Having gone one morning to the station at Metz, they saw some French prisoners in a train to whom they spoke and at whom they "made eyes."