The Vareddes hostages especially went through a veritable Calvary. Several of them, all old people, were murdered, as we have already mentioned. Those of Sinceny, about 200 in number, were likewise shockingly ill-treated. At Gravelines, 2000 conscripts were deported, and all the natives of Combres, after being exposed to the French fire, were transferred to the camp at Zurickau. Life in the camps was intolerable. Several of these “civil prisoners” lay in tents: others were huddled together in prisons. At Landau, an old woman aged eighty-seven was undressed and drenched with petrol. She succumbed some time afterwards to the fearful burns which she sustained. Blows, ill-treatment and painful forced labour were the order of the day. We cannot, therefore, be surprised at the enormous number of cases of death and illness among them. The only medicine prescribed by the doctors was tincture of iodine. As one of the victims said, “We were like burnt-out candles, for we no longer had the strength to stand upright.” Those who went back to France had their health more or less permanently affected, and the mental depression to which they were subject was really an illness. The effects, therefore, of German activity continued after they were released. The Austrians followed the example of the Germans, even in carrying out this kind of policy, especially in Syrmie (Semlin and the regions adjoining). At Chid, also, all the inhabitants, children excepted, were deported: at Pazoon, M. Petrovitch, deputy to the Parliament of Pest, was arrested with his son, pummelled with the butt-end of a rifle, and deported. At Karlowitz and at Rouma, all the inhabitants of Serbian extraction were arrested and deported. THE GERMANS ADMIT ALL THESE CRIMES As in the case of other kinds of outrage, so in that of the actions which we have just enumerated we are in possession of some admissions which have come from the Germans themselves. A soldier named Philip, of Kamenz in Saxony, writes as follows: “At ten p.m. the first battalion of the 178th regiment went down into a burnt village to the north of Dinant, a sadly beautiful spectacle, which made us shudder. At the entrance to the village there lay about fifty citizens, who had been shot for having fired on our troops from an ambuscade. “In the course of the night many others also were shot, to such an extent that we could count more than 200 of them. Women and children, lamp in hand, _were compelled_ to look on at this fearful sight. We then ate our rice in the middle of the dead bodies, for we had had nothing to eat since morning.” “At Leppes” (writes a Saxon officer, of the same regiment as Private Philip, 12th army corps, 1st Saxon corps), “_two hundred inhabitants were killed, among whom there must have been some unoffending people_. In future, we must have a regular inquiry and establish the guilt of the accused before shooting them.”