[Sidenote: Barbarity of deportations.]
"It seems that the Germans had endeavored to get volunteers from the
great industrial towns of Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing to work these
fields; that after the posting of the notices calling for volunteers
only fourteen had appeared. The Germans then gave orders to seize
a certain number of inhabitants and send them out to farms in the
outlying districts to engage in agricultural work. The Americans told
me that this order was carried out with the greatest barbarity; that
a man would come home at night and find that his wife or children had
disappeared and no one could tell him where they had gone except that
the neighbours would relate that German noncommissioned officers and
a file of soldiers had carried them off. For instance, in a house
of a well-to-do merchant who had perhaps two daughters of fifteen
and seventeen and a man servant, the two daughters and the servant
would be seized and sent off together to work for the Germans in some
little farm house whose location was not disclosed to the parents. The
Americans told me that this sort of thing was causing such indignation
among the population of these towns that they feared a great uprising
and a consequent slaughter and burning by the Germans.
[Sidenote: Chancellor says that the military authorities ordered the
deportations.]
"That night at dinner I spoke to the Chancellor about this and told
him that it seemed to me absolutely outrageous; and that, without
consulting with my government, I was prepared to protest in the name
of humanity against a continuance of this treatment of the civil
population of occupied France. The Chancellor told me that he had not
known of it, that it was the result of orders given by the military,
that he would speak to the Emperor about it, and that he hoped to be
able to stop further deportations. I believe that they were stopped,
but twenty thousand or more who had been taken from their homes were
not returned until months afterwards. I said in a speech that I made
in May on my return to America that it required the joint efforts of
the Pope, the King of Spain, and our President to cause the return of
these people to their homes; and I then saw that some German press
agency had come out with an article that I had made false statements
about this matter because these people were not returned to their
homes as a result of the representations of the Pope, the King of
Spain, and our President, but were sent back because the Germans had
no further use for them. It seems to me that this denial makes the
case rather worse than before." James W. Gerard, _My Four Years in
Germany_, 1917, pp. 333-335.