mous denunciations, almost all of which were false, by an
official communique published in the _Gazette de Hagenau_ for the
sixth of December, 1916.

The story of how the civilian population has been treated will only be
known in its entirety later on. The government has, as a matter of
fact, forbidden the press to publish accounts of the war councils'
debates because the population, far from being terrified by them,
would find in them laughing matter.

It is estimated that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have served in
actual hours more than five thousand years in prison. Here are some
crimes committed by them:

M. Giessmann, an old man seventy years old, saluted French prisoners
in a Strassburg street: Sentence, six weeks in prison.

Guillaume Kohler, an infantry soldier from Saverne, during a journey
in Germany, censured the inhuman manner in which certain German
officers treated their men at the front. The council at Saarbruck
sentenced him to two years in prison.

Emilie Zimmerle, a cook at Kolmar, sang an anti-German song as she
washed out her pots. Thirty marks fine.

Mlle. Stern, the daughter of a pastor at Mulhouse, spoke against the
violation of Belgium. One month in prison.

Abbe Theophile Selier, cure at Levencourt, for the same offense, six
weeks in prison.

Even children and young girls have been punished for peccadillos that
were absolutely untrue.

The _Metz Zeitung_ for the twenty-second of October mentions the
sentences pronounced against Juliette F. de Vigy, eighteen years old,
a pupil in the commercial school, and Georgette S----, twenty-three
years old, a shop girl, dwellers at Mouilly. Having gone one morning
to the station at Metz, they saw some French prisoners in a train to
whom they spoke and at whom they "made eyes."

Juliette F----, the more guilty of the two, was sentenced to pay a
fine of eighty marks, and Georgette S---- to pay one of forty marks,
because "acting this way to prisoners of war exercises a particularly
disturbing effect on them."

Two little girls of Kolmar, named Grass and Broly, were arrested for
"having answered, by waving their hands, kisses French prisoners threw
to them."

A boy fifteen years old, pupil in the upper school at Mulhouse, named
Jean Ingold, who, in the classroom tore down the portrait of the
Emperor and painted French flags on the wall with the inscription
"Vive la France," was condemned to a month in prison. The War Council
saw an aggravati