at a public hall, in order
to have my control card, which was divided into squares for the months
of the year, marked in the proper space with an official stamp "Kontrol,
July," or "August," or whatever the month might be. We were summoned for
this process by groups, first those from 17 to 25, then those from 25 to
35, and so on. Hundreds of young fellows would gather in a room, and one
by one, as their names were called, would take their cards to be stamped
by a noncommissioned officer sitting at a table on the far side of the
room. On the occasion I have in mind, the noncommissioned officer said
to me, "You are French, aren't you?" I answered, "No." "Are you
Belgian?" "No," again. "You are Dutch, then?" A third time I replied
"No."

At this stage an officer who had been sauntering up and down the room
smoking a cigarette came to the table, took up my card, and turning to
the man behind the table, remarked, "It's all right. He's an American."
I did not trouble to enlighten him. That is probably why I enjoyed
comparative liberty.

[Sidenote: The German policy of enslavement.]

Enslavement is part of the deliberate policy of the Germans in France.
It began by the taking of hostages at the very outset of their
possession of Roubaix. A number of the leading men in the civic and
business life of the town were marked out and compelled to attend by
turns at the Town Hall, to be shot on the spot at the least sign of
revolt among the townspeople.

[Sidenote: Treatment of girl mill operatives who refuse to work.]

Not a few of the mill owners were ordered to weave cloth for the
invaders, and on their refusal were sent to Germany and held to ransom.
Many of the mill operatives, quite young girls, were directed to sew
sandbags for the German trenches. They, too, refused, but the Germans
had their own ways of dealing with what they regarded as juvenile
obstinacy. They dragged the girls to a disused cinema hall, and kept
them there without food or water until their will was broken.

Barbarity reached its climax in the so-called "deportations." They were
just slave raids, brutal and undisguised.

[Sidenote: The deportations or slave raids.]

[Sidenote: Taken to an unknown fate.]

The procedure was this: The town was divided into districts. At 3
o'clock in the morning a cordon of troops would be drawn round a
district--the Prussian Guard and especially, I believe, the Sixty-ninth
Regiment, played a great part in this diab