taken to the concentration camps. For this purpose, all the inhabitants of the house must assemble in front of the house; in case of bad weather they may remain in the passage. The door of the house must remain open. No protest will be listened to. No inhabitant of the house (even including those who are not to be transported) may leave it before 8 a. m. (German time). Each person will be entitled to 30 kilograms of luggage; if the weight is excessive, the whole of the luggage of the person concerned will be peremptorily refused. The packages must be packed separately for each person, and provided with an address legibly written and firmly affixed. The address must bear the surname, first name, and the number of the identity card. It is absolutely necessary that each person should, in his own interest, provide himself with eating and drinking utensils, with a woolen blanket, with good shoes and with body linen. Every person must bring his identity card. Any person endeavoring to avoid transportation will be punished without mercy. BY THE BISHOP OF LILLE Monsieur le Général: It is my duty to bring to your notice the fact that a very agitated state of mind exists among the population. Numerous removals of women and girls, certain transfers of men and youths, and even of children, have been carried out in the districts of Tourcoing and Roubaix without judicial procedure or trial. The unfortunate people have been sent to unknown places. Measures equally extreme and on a larger scale are contemplated at Lille. You will not be surprised, Monsieur le Général, that I intercede with you in the name of the religious mission confided to me. That mission lays on me the burden of defending, with respect but with courage, the Law of Nations, which the law of war must never infringe, and that eternal morality, whose rules nothing car suspend. It makes it my duty to protect the feeble and the unarmed, who are as my family to me and whose burdens and sorrows are mine. You are a father; you know that there is not in the order of humanity a right more honorable or more holy than that of the family. For every Christian the inviolability of God, who created the family, attaches to it. The German officers who have been billeted for a long time in our homes know how deep in our hearts we of the North hold family affection and that it is the sweetest thing in life to us. Thus, to dismember the family, by tearing youths and girls from their homes, is not war; it is for us torture and the worst of tortures-unlimited moral torture. The violation of family rights is doubled by a violation of the sacred demands of morality. Morality is exposed to perils, the mere idea of which revolts every honest man, from the promiscuity which inevitably accompanies removals en masse, involving mixture of the sexes, or, at all events, of persons of very unequal moral standing. Young girls of irreproachable life—who have never committed any worse offense than that of trying to pick up some bread or a few potatoes to feed a numerous family, and who have, besides, paid the light penalty for such trespass—have been carried off. Their mothers, who have watched so closely over them, and had no other joy than that of keeping their daughters beside them, in the absence of father and sons fighting or killed at the front-these mothers are now alone. They bring to me their despair and their anguish. I am speaking of what I have seen and heard. I know that you have no part in these harsh measures. You are by nature inclined towards justice; that is why I venture to turn to you; I beg you to be good enough to forward without delay to the German High Military Command this letter from a Bishop, whose deep grief they will easily imagine. We have suffered much for the last twenty months, but no stroke of fortune could be comparable to this; it would be as undeserved as it is cruel and would produce in all France an indelible impression. I cannot believe that the blow will fall. I have faith in the human conscience and I preserve the hope that the young men and girls of respectable families will be restored to their homes in answer to the de mand for their return and that sentiments of justice and honor will prevail over all lower considerations. BY HERBERT HOOVER Statement Issued in 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. 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 the 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? W., VOL. IV.-8. American sympathy with the Irish demand for complete self-government has always been so strong that even so ill-advised an uprising as that of the Sinn Fein in 1916 aroused some degree of pity and even of approval. The central and bitterly accusing fact of the uprisal is, however, undeniable, and undenied. It was undertaken at Germany's instigation and its leaders allied themselves with Germany. At a time when Germany had been for two years revealing to the world her utter scorn of Democracy and her trampling on the rights and bodies of smaller peoples in Belgium, Poland and Serbia, these Irish leaders declared that they believed Germany to be the noble and trusty friend of Ireland and of freedom and Democracy. At a time when hundreds of thousands of Irishmen were fighting for the cause of Civilization in France, these few thousand Irish at home struck a blow which if successful would have gone far to ruin that cause by paralyzing the strength of Britons and Irishmen in France. What happened was, briefly, this: Sir Roger Casement since the opening of the War had been trying to convince his Irish countrymen that now was the time for them to fight England and win freedom by German aid. Chiefly he had tried to raise an army for this purpose in Germany from among the Irish prisoners there. In this he failed conspicuously; but in April of 1916 he left Germany on a secret German ship. Another secret German ship brought arms and ammunition. Both he and the munitions were captured by British ships. At the same moment seven leaders of the Sinn Fein published in Dublin a proclamation declaring themselves the heads of a free Irish Republic and summoning their followers to aid them in revolt. Padraic Pearse, one of the signers, was declared president, and James Connolly was made the general in command in Dublin. Some thousands of Irishmen joined them, chiefly in Dublin. They seized the Dublin post-office and custom house as fortresses and slew a number of unarmed policemen and of British officers caught unprepared in the streets. For two days the police and the small garrison of British troops could only hold their own; then a large force of troops under General Maxwell reached Dublin, surrounded the revolters, and attacked them with artillery. Three days later, April 29th, the Sinn Fein leaders abandoned the struggle, but fighting continued in sections of the burning city for yet a day or two longer. By that time all who could not escape had surrendered. Some eighteen hundred were thus made prisoners. Of the revolters and other civilians slain with or by them, two or three hundred were killed, and of the troops an even larger number, beside many wounded on both sides. Pearse and fourteen other leaders were condemned as traitors by a military court and were shot. Casement was later tried by a full British court and was hanged on August 3rd. His final speech is here given, as also the original announcement of their purpose by Pearse and his colleagues. John Redmond, the noted leader of the Irish "Nationalists" or main body of patriots, voices the condemnation of the reckless revolt by the great mass of Irishmen; and the British view of Casement is voiced by Lord Cecil, a noted lawyer and Minister for the Blockade. General Maxwell depicts the actual fighting in which he commanded. C. F. H. PROCLAMATION ISSUED IN DUBLIN APRIL 24, 1916, AND SIGNED BY PADRAIC PEARSE AND SIX OTHERS THE Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the people of Ireland: Irishmen and Irishwomen, in the name of God and of the dead generations from which you received the old traditions of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her chil dren to her flag and strikes for her freedom, having organized and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organization, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organization, the Irish Volunteers, and the Irish citizen army. Having patiently perfected their discipline and resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and, supported by her exiled children in America, and by her gallant allies in Europe, by relying on her own strength, she strikes, in full confidence of victory. We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be sovereign and indefeasible. Long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and Government has not extinguished that right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty. Six times during the past 300 years they have asserted it in arms. Stand |