HUNGARIAN OPINION ON DEPORTATIONS.

"Mechanical skill, and especially qualified mechanical skill, is for the moment a more important factor than usual, and as it must be obtained where it can be obtained, Belgium has had to suffer in accordance with the old saying which always holds good: Vae victis (woe to the vanquished). In Poland, mechanical skill and the arms which exist there are mobilized under 'the glorious and fortunate banners of Poland'; in Belgium under 'the banner of necessity.'"

The Germans are using the Belgians for war work.

"* * * The question remains: for what kind of work will the Germans use the Belgians? * * * Every kind of work in Germany is war work, whether it is called agricultural or industrial work. As the deported Belgians have not given their consent, their use is contrary to international law, and the policy of the Germans in Belgium and Poland is equally to be deplored. Instead of aiming at bringing us nearer peace, it serves to embitter our opponents and to rouse more hatred towards us amongst the neutrals. Many times and more and more we have had occasion to observe that the neutrals show more sympathy for Belgium than for any other belligerent."

Belgians still being deported, September, 1917.

The news dispatches indicate that the deportation and forced labor of Belgians still continue. In a dispatch from Havre (New York Evening Post, September 13, 1917) it is stated: "The removal of the civilian population of Belgium continues, according to advices received here. The town of Roulers, immediately behind the battle line in Flanders, has been evacuated completely. Ostend is being emptied gradually, and two thousand persons already have been sent from Courtrai." In another dispatch from Havre (Washington Post, September 24, 1917) it is stated that "the German military authorities at Bruges, Belgium, are conscripting forcibly all the boys and men of that city between the ages of 14 and 60 to work in munition factories and shipyards. The rich and poor, shopkeepers and workmen, all are being taken, only the school-teachers, doctors, and priests escaping."

REPORT OF MINISTER WHITLOCK (concluded).

German capacity for blundering.

"One interesting result of the deportations remains to be noted, a result that once more places in relief the German capacity for blundering, almost as great as the German capacity for cruelty. Until the deportations were begun there was no intense hatred on the part of the lower classes, i.e., the workingmen and the peasants. The old Germans of the Landsturm had been quartered in Flemish homes; they and the inmates spoke nearly the same language; they got alone fairly well; they helped the women with the work, the poor and the humble having none of those hatreds of patriotism that are among the privileges of the upper classes. It is conceivable that the Flemish population might have existed under German rule; it was Teutonic in its origin and anti-French always. But now the Germans have changed all that.

Germans will be hated for generations.

"They have dealt a mortal blow to any prospect they may ever have had of being tolerated by the population of Flanders; in tearing away from nearly every humble home in the land a husband and a father or a son and brother they have lighted a fire of hatred that will never go out; they have brought home to every heart in the land, in a way that will impress its horror indelibly on the memory of three generations, a realization of what German methods mean, not, as with the early atrocities, in the heat of passion and the first lust of war, but by one of those deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race, a deed coldly planned, studiously matured, and deliberately and systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are said to have wept in its execution, and so monstrous that even German officers are now said to be ashamed.

"Whitlock."

Mr. Hoover's mature conclusions on the German practices in Belgium, which he has written for this pamphlet, reinforce the detailed evidence already presented.

MR. HOOVER'S CONCLUSIONS.

September, 1917.

I have been often called upon for a statement of my observation of German rule in Belgium and Northern France.

I have neither the desire nor the adequate pen to picture the scenes which have heated my blood through the two and a half years that I have spent in work for the relief of these 10,000,000 people.

Belgian atrocities are the result of the "system."

The sight of the destroyed homes and cities, the widowed and fatherless, the destitute, the physical misery of a people but partially nourished at best, the deportation of men by tens of thousands to slavery in German mines and factories, the execution of men and women for paltry effusions of their loyalty to their country, the sacking of every resource through financial robbery, the battening of armies on the slender produce of the country, the denudation of the country of cattle, horses and textiles; all these things we had to witness, dumb to help other than by protest and sympathy, during this long and terrible time—and still these are not the events of battle heat, but the effects of a grinding heel of a race demanding the mastership of the world.

All these things are well known to the world—but what can never be known is the dumb agony of the people, the expressionless faces of millions whose souls have passed the whole gamut of emotions. And why? Because these, a free and democratic people, dared plunge their bodies before the march of autocracy.

I myself believe that if we do not fight and fight now, all these things are possible to us—but even should the broad Atlantic prove our present defender, there is still Belgium. Is it worth while for us to live in a world where this free and unoffending people is to be trampled into the earth and to raise no sword in protest?

Herbert Hoover.

FRANCE.

German practices were the same in all occupied regions.

In France the German system of forced labor and deportations, with its attendant callousness, brutalities, and horrors, was the same as in Belgium. Inasmuch as the German system in action has been adequately illustrated in the foregoing pages on Belgium, it will suffice in this part simply to show the real identity of German practice in the two occupied regions. This can be done from the official documents and from a summary by Ambassador Gerard. The harrowing details may be gathered from the scores of depositions which accompany the note addressed by the French Government to the Governments of the neutral powers July 25, 1916. These are on file in the State Department, and have also been translated, along with the official documents, in The Deportation of Women and Girls from Lille, New York, Doran.