"Whoever, after due examination, has reason to believe that a soldier or a man on reprieve proposes to desert and who can still prevent the execution of this crime, must without delay give notice of this fact to the nearest military or police authority."
The Strassburg Neueste Nachrichten for the twenty-seventh of September announced that the "chambre correctionnelle at Kolmar had condemned by default one hundred and ninety men from the arrondissements of Guebwiller and Ribeauville to fines of six hundred marks or forty days in prison for having failed to perform their military obligations."
The Oberelsaessische Landeszeitung for the eleventh of October, 1917, announced sentences of fines of three thousand marks or three hundred days in prison for the same reason against seven persons.
The Haguenauer Zeitung from the eleventh to the twentieth of October published the names of seventeen soldiers, some of them deserters, the others guilty of rebellion in favor of the enemy or of treason.
On the twenty-fifth of October there was another list of deserters, nineteen of whom were natives of Strassburg.
In his book, "The Martyrs of Alsace and Lorraine," M. André Fribourg has fifteen pages taken from the lists of the debates of the German war councils. These pages are made up of the names of young Alsatians who have left their country rather than fight against France.
Besides, far from treating the Alsatians enrolled in the German Army like Germans, the government has accorded them a distinctly different treatment.
It has sent them to the Russian front and employed them at the most dangerous posts, as this secret order, from the Prussian Minister of War to the temporary commander of the Fourteenth Army Corps, proves:
All men from Alsace-Lorraine employed as secretaries, ordnance officers, etc., must be relieved of their duties and sent to the battle front. In the future, all the men from Alsace-Lorraine will be sent to the "General Kommando," who will send them at once to the units on the Eastern Front. This order to go into effect before the first of April, 1916.
For the Stellvert, General Kommando
Radecke, Major.