Despicable German officers dared to cross-examine prisoners whom they had just made. Brought bound before the officers, the prisoners found they were ordered to reply under penalty of being tortured and killed. Near Aerschot, a Belgian soldier, who had been made a prisoner, understood that he was asked in this manner, by an officer and three soldiers, where were his regiment and the body of his troops. This soldier, who had refused to reply, was thrown to the ground, kicked, and finally abandoned, still tied with ropes. On the 29th March the Germans took prisoner, north of Mychinetz, a Russian non-commissioned officer, Paphyre Panasiouk, and tortured him in the presence of ten German officers, who tried to drag information from him about the positions of the Russian troops. Having refused to act as a traitor to the advantage of his enemies, the wretched non-commissioned officer had the lobe of his right ear cut off by a German officer, who then, in four strokes, cut off the top of the ear, leaving only a piece of cartilage round the auricular passage. In the meantime, another officer was mutilating his nose, separating the cartilage from the bone, and biting him. This torture lasted for a whole hour, and the victim, who afterwards succeeded in giving his guards the slip, was placed in hospital at Warsaw, where the doctors photographed his mutilated face. MURDERS In other places prisoners were shot. In an official note of the Russian Government, a German officer was mentioned by name as having formally given the order to hang all Cossacks who should be made prisoner. This was Major Modeiski, of the German cuirassiers. In confirmation of the fact, it was stated that in many places Cossack prisoners had been hanged, shot or killed by bayonet thrusts; at Radom, in the middle of October, an officer and four Cossacks; at Ratchki, a Cossack; at Monastijisk, four Cossacks; at Tapilovka, the Cossack Jidkof, who had been made prisoner at Souvalki, etc. At Chabatz, sixty Serbian soldiers, who had been made prisoner, were massacred, and in the Belfort region a large number of French prisoners were undressed by the Germans, who exposed them naked to French bullets, and threw others into the canal, only to take them out again and throw them in once more. At Namur, during the retreat, Parfonnery, an infantryman, was made prisoner with a group of soldiers. “Their hands were tied behind their backs, they were bound together four by four; they were compelled to march all day, being struck with the flat of the sword and the butt-end of the rifle, and finally were thrown into the cellars of the Château Saint-Gérard.” Elsewhere another Belgian prisoner, who rebelled against this ill-treatment, had his neck twisted by his guards.