The latest estimate of German losses at Verdun is 200,000! Does the Kaiser, at safe distance, still "look on"? What blessing has this monarch of a great and productive realm brought upon his people? Mourning, desolation, and irremediable misery! No triumph, no victory can atone for such a deluge of blood and tears! That capricious Personage "somewhere in Heaven," whom Wilhelm calls "Unser Gott," may possibly resent the deliberate casting away of golden opportunities on the part of his crowned earthly "familiar," to whom a peaceful world was offered, only to be kicked aside for a battered helmet and broken sword! "Thrust in thy sickle and reap!" O Emperor of a brief and bitter day! The harvest of death, not life!--the harvest of curses, not blessings! The thousands of dead men--dead in the very strength of manhood--sacrificed in a holocaust on the flaming altar of the wickedest war the world has ever seen, may have their own story to tell to "Unser Gott"; so may the bereaved and wretched women whose husbands and sons have been torn from their arms forever. MARIE CORELLI _in The Sunday Times, London, April, 1916._ [Illustration] _THE DEPORTATIONS FROM LILLE_ * * * * * The attitude of England renders it increasingly difficult to feed the population. To lessen misery, the German authority has recently asked volunteers to work in the country. This offer has not had the success which was expected. Consequently the inhabitants will be removed by compulsion and transported to the country. Those removed will be sent in the interior of French occupied territory far behind the front, where they will be employed in agriculture and in no way in military work. _German Proclamation. Lille, April, 1916._ Upon the order of General von Graevenitz and with the assistance of Infantry Regiment 64, sent by the German General Headquarters, about 25,000 French, young girls from 16 to 20 years old, young women and men up to the age of 55 years, without distinction of social condition, were torn from their homes at Roubaix, Tourcoing, and Lille, pitilessly separated from their families, and forced to do agricultural work in the Departments of the Aisne and Ardennes. _French Official Report._ [Illustration] _THE LAST THROW_ * * * * * These are not, as our enemies are pretending to believe, the last exertions of an exhausted nation, but the hammer blows of a strong, invincible people which commands sufficient reserves in men and all other means for the continuation of the hammer blows. _The Prussian War Minister_, GENERAL WILD VON HOHENBORN, _the Reichstag, April 11, 1916._ [Illustration] _RUSSIA TO FRANCE_ * * * * *