Mr. Stanley Washburn, the Times correspondent with the Russian forces,
has a very interesting account in last Saturday's issue of his interview at Luck on July 28th with a captured Austrian General, one of a group of officers who had remained with their troops till their own escape was impossible. The General, a hard-bitten veteran, was aggressively confident in Austria's unshaken moral, firmly and defiantly sceptical of Russia's ability to retake Lemberg, and fully convinced of Germany's capacity to hold out until England had been punished for her crime in starting the war, even if it took several years. Austria had never wanted the war. As for the opinion of Americk and Japan, it had been bought by English money spent on munitions. He spoke bitterly of England's employment of " niggers," but knew nothing of Germany's use of natives in Africa, demurred to Mr. Washburn's statements as to the kindness with which Austrian prisoners were treated by the Russians, and in reply to the assertion that Germany had made the bitterness in the war declared that the Germans were lied about on all occasions, especially by the British Press, winding up with the assertion that "the Germans never lie." Mr. Washburn adds that during all the time he has been in Russia he had never seen a single Austrian officer treated with the slightest harshness, and that his own observa- tion has been repeatedly confirmed by the testimony of the Austrian prisoners themselves.
Previous page
