A note on the German General von Ravenstein, to whom
I referred last week. His advent in Canada, where German generals were credited by repute with a ferocious aspect, as a prisoner-of-war aroused high expectations. There was disappointment when von Ravenstein stepped unobtrusively ashore carrying—a canary in a bird-cage
Altogether, German Generals are rather in the public eye ; memory of the trial of Von Manstein is still fresh, and Rommel has been given a still more recent coat of varnish. But there is one who has been all too completely forgotten. That is von Falkenhausen, who is at present, I am told, in a Belgian prison at Liege. Why is he there ? I suppose because he was the German Governor of Belgium during the war. But by all accounts he was a good Governor as German Governors go, being particularly firm in holding the Gestapo in check. He is in prison nearly five years after the end of war without ever having been tried. Indeed he has been in prison longer than five years, for at the end of the ware he was found in the Dachau concentration camp, where the Nazi regime—for he was no Nazi himself—had put him. It sounds as though a good deal of injustice was being done here.
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