WHO ARE THE HUNS?

Violations of Red Cross Rules. 101
with my handkerchief—but an officer thrust me back with his
sword."
It would be senseless to aver that such cases as the foregoing
were common to all French troops. But no excuse can
be found for them under the conventional plea of "exceptions."
The charges against the French for maltreatment of the wounded
are legion, and their substantiation is complete.
This is confirmed by an uncommonly objective writer, a
French contributor to the Danish paper "Politiken." He writes
of what he had himself seen in repeated visits to French military
hospitals :
"The French are accused of killing the wounded and so
far as the care of wounded prisoners of war is concerned, showing
the utmost negligence. If this were not so, why should it have
been necessary for the government to issue a manifesto in which
the point is emphasised that the wounded enemy is to be given
the same humane treatment as a son of la patrie?
After a savage battle between the Prussian Guards and the
notorious Turcos, one of the latter was given the order to
guard the tent in which the wounded German soldiers had
been placed. When the doctors were making their rounds and
came to this tent guarded by the Turco, he motioned them
away, and said reassuringly in his mongrel French: "Pe-maladici".
(No sick men here.) A French doctor discovered that in
his blind rage the Turco had cold-bloodedly cut the throats of
all the wounded men that had been entrusted to his care!
Could one seriously believe that a negro would pay any attention
to the international laws of the Geneva Convention?
During one of my visits to the military hospitals, I myself
spoke with a colored soldier who stood at the entrance to one
of the sheds to which the Germans had been brought. He was
a Senegalese with a broad, animal-like nose. "It would be
much better to kill them all," he remarked, as he made a significant
movement across with his hand across his throat,
"instead of nursing them and giving them food. They are
only barbarians!" This, undeniably, was a most remarkable
statement to hear from the lips of a semi-savage!
Even reputable French newspapers have done all that lay
in their power to induce the government to refuse humane