The New York Times/1916/11/22/Calls Germans Slavers
CALLS GERMANS SLAVERS.
Semi-Official French Statement Says They Violate Their 1883 Compact.
PARIS, Oct. 31, (Correspondence of The Associated Press.)—A semi-official statement just given out here replies to statements from German sources in which the enforced labor of civilians of Belgium and Northern France is justified on the ground that the army occupation is required by Article 43 of the Hague Convention to take necessary measures to re-establish and maintain order and public life. Attention is called to the fact that the same article requires the occupying article to provide nourishment for the population which, the reply says, Germany has not done.
In referring to the deportation of 25,000 inhabitants of Lille, Roubaix, and Turcoing, forced to work in other regions by the military authorities, the statement cites the decrees issued by General von Bissing, constraining the population under severe penalties to enforced labor either in Belgium or Germany. It recalls the protestations made by France against the deportations from Lille, and denies that the German military authorities were under the necessity of resorting to this measure for the nourishment of the population, because they had never occupied themselves with that duty. On the contrary, it is declared, they have disinterested themselves entirely as to the fate of the population in the occupied regions, who receive their sustenance from the Allies through the philanthropic intervention of the Spanish-American committees.
The statement says, furthermore, that not only did Germany neglect its duty in this regard, but it has actually obstructed the provisioning of the population of occupied regions by requisitioning and sending to Germany all the raw materials and industrial equipment found in these regions.
On this question the statement cites the evidence of Siegfried Herbert, a Swedish doctor, who resided in Lille from 1908 to June 10, 1916. On his return to his native country in September last, he declared that all of the production of 1915 in that region had been seized by the Germans, and that, not being able to consume the entire product on the spot, they put the surplus into storage for the account of German authorities, and by reason of that action enormous quantities of potatoes were allowed to rot.
The occupying forces have not, according to the rights of man, the statement sets forth, absolute liberty in the choice of measures proper to assure order and public life. Besides the obligation to respect, except in the case of absolute impossibility, the laws in force in the country, (and no French or Belgian law imposes obligation to work,) Article 52 of The Hague Convention regulates in what measure the occupying forces may impose work upon the inhabitants. It provides that requisitions of products and of labor cannot be claimed of communes or of inhabitants excepting for the needs of the army of occupation. Such is not the case, the statement asserts, if the product of labor imposed upon the population is to be transported to Germany; neither is it the case if the labor is not utilized on the spot, but in Germany. In either of these cases, it is contended, the work is not imposed for the needs of the army of occupation, as required by the Hague convention, but with an entirely different object, which entirely disregards the limits set by Article 52.
The statement concludes that neigher the usages of civilized nations, the laws of humanity, nor the workings of the public conscience, is compatible with this enforced service; that it is a veritable return to slavery, to that slavery which the signatories of the General Act of the General Conference at Berlin in 1885, Germany among them, engaged to suppress in Africa, and that Germany has revived it for the unfortunate inhabitants of Belgium and the North of France.