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Show I HORRORS AFTER THE WAR. In a pamphlet sent out by a committee with headquarters in New York the charge is made thai Germany is looting Lithuania. One of the representaties of the I -nuanian national council makes this declaartion : . "The German army was allowed to stay in Lithuania after the armis-ice. armis-ice. They were supposed to keep order. This was a mistake. They ; have made disorder and tried in every way to retard orderly Lithuanian j r-organization. But that mistake was nothing lo the error of letting them stay in Lithuania throughout the summer. They are supposed to leave before autumn, but autumn will be too late. Meantime they use the pretext of evacuation to get their stolen goods out of the country. "The towns, the houses, the farms, the Germans leave are stripped. They take the door-knobs of metal, the glass from the windows, the furniture, the bed-coverings and the beds, the horses, the cattle and sheep and hogs, the knives and forks, the machinery from the sawmills, the sawed lumber, the motors, wires, all metals whatsoever, the fruits and the grains of the fields. They not only take from the living the means of existence but they rob the dead. There is an ancient monastery monas-tery of the Capucines five kilometers from Kovno. I went there to verify ver-ify what others told me. The dead had been buried in heavy coffins on which there was much metal. The plates had been torn from the coffins. That was bad enough, but the sacrilege was made complete. The coffins were opened. The dead were thrown out. The ornaments orna-ments buried with them were taken. Then the bodies were not returned re-turned to their coffins but were heaped on the floor in a single room. There I saw them. "There was none to halt the Germans. Their forces are behind the lines where our soldiers face the Russians. Only a few places where we have troops can we save our property. There are clashes every day. The allies ought not to leave us to fight foes both inside and out. There will be order at once when the Germans are out, if we can have them out soon, but if they stay until they have finished the robbery, it is ruin. "While they are 'evacuating' they hold the railroads, the posts, and the telegraph wires. Thereby they are aided in delaying all our efforts at leorganization. "Under the terms of the armistice 600 locomotives, 10,000 freight cars and 2000 passenger cars, our pre-war equipment, were allotted to us from Germany by the allies. But Germany never has obeyed the order, and there are not now more than 100 locomotives and 2000 freight cars in Lithuania, and Germany was removing these until General Gen-eral Foch recently ordered them left. I do not believe even this order is being obeyed. "The Germans rob us and constantly interfere with us. That is our complaint. We ask and are entitled to relief." "It is necessary to remember that: Lithuania from the beginning of the world war was a battlefield. During four years the country was terribly exploited by the German militaiy occupation. Lithuania after the armistice was signed fell a prey to the Russian Bolsheviki and was again pillaged and robbed." |