Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 181, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1918 — SHOWN TO CROWDS [ARTICLE]

SHOWN TO CROWDS

How Germans Turn Their Captives to Account Idea l*\to Delude the People Into Thinking That Military Victorio* Are Constantly Being Won by the Kaiser’s Soldier*. Ivan S. Rossiter, a Canadian soldier, has just been in to see me. For a year he was a German prisoner. When the Germans caught him he was badly wounded in the right hand. They took him to a hospital, where, without the use of an anesthetic, they cut off one of his fingers and removed five pieces of bone from his mangled wrist. They said that they had no anesthetics to spare for use on a “schweinhund,” and added that they were saving their anesthetics for their own wounded soldiers. Rossiter showed me what is left of his hand. It isn’t "much, and what is left is of no use, except as a reminder of that German surgeon who operated without giving an anesthetic. While Rossiter was in Germany he was moved about from one prison camp to another until he and other prisoners were exchanged for German prisoners held by the allies. This moving-about process was the most interesting thing he described. He was never allowed to stay in one place more than a few weeks. In the year that he was there he was in nine different prison camps, located in various parts of Germany. On each trip the train that was transferring these wandering prisoners stopped at every station. German officers got out every time the train stopped and told people that the prisoners were all new ones—just taken! Rossiter says that one excursion of this kind began at four o’clock in she morning and lasted until late’ at night. And always at every station were a crowd of people to jeer at these “new” prisoners, many of whom were French and Belgians who had been in captivity for two years. It got to be like a theatrical troupe playing one-night stands-—only far more boresome, for the prisoners were never allowed to leave the trains or to communicate with the crowds that came to see them.' Rossiter says that one company of British artillery “takes the palm” for touring Germany in the guise of “new” prisoners. They were captured in the fall of 1914 and they are still playing to packed houses. In other words—to fool the people is Germany’s policy. Bismarck believed in that idea. He once said that it is impossible to overestimate the stupidity of the human race. No doubt the kaiser feels just as contemptuous about us. In his mind, men are nothing but so many tons of flesh and bone to be used to push back boundary lines. This war is for the purpose of preventing human beings from becoming as boneheaded as the German emperor would like them to be. It is a war against the thick skull. Op one side are those great nations whose policy is to teach the people to think for themselves. On the other is the German autocracy, which says: “Believe what I tell you.” Imagine trying in this country to palm off a trainload of veteran prisoners as new ones.—John M. Slddall, editor of the American Magazine.