The Strassburg _Neueste Nachrichten_ for the twenty-seventh of September announced that the "_chambre correctionnelle_ at Kolmar had condemned by default one hundred and ninety men from the arrondissements of Guebwiller and Ribeauville to fines of six hundred marks or forty days in prison for having failed to perform their military obligations."
The _Oberelsaessische Landeszeitung_ for the eleventh of October, 1917, announced sentences of fines of three thousand marks or three hundred days in prison for the same reason against seven persons.
The _Haguenauer Zeitung_ from the eleventh to the twentieth of October published the names of seventeen soldiers, some of them deserters, the others guilty of rebellion in favor of the enemy or of treason.
On the twenty-fifth of October there was another list of deserters, nineteen of whom were natives of Strassburg.
In his book, "The Martyrs of Alsace and Lorraine," M. André Fribourg has fifteen pages taken from the lists of the debates of the German war councils. These pages are made up of the names of young Alsatians who have left their country rather than fight against France.
Besides, far from treating the Alsatians enrolled in the German Army like Germans, the government has accorded them a distinctly different treatment.
It has sent them to the Russian front and employed them at the most dangerous posts, as this secret order, from the Prussian Minister of War to the temporary commander of the Fourteenth Army Corps, proves:
All men from Alsace-Lorraine employed as secretaries, ordnance officers, etc., must be relieved of their duties and sent to the battle front. In the future, all the men from Alsace-Lorraine will be sent to the "General Kommando," who will send them at once to the units on the Eastern Front. This order to go into effect before the first of April, 1916.
FOR THE STELLVERT, GENERAL KOMMANDO RADECKE, MAJOR.
Finally, it was only on the ninth of October, 1917, that the Strassburg _Neue Zeitung_ announced the abolition of the special postal control to which the soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine were submitted at the front.
It is but just [says the _Freie Presse_ on that occasion] that the exceptional measures taken against the soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine be abolished at last. Among these measures we consider the interdiction still in force for a man to return to his native town. And [the same newspaper adds] from the moment that the bravery of our soldiers from Alsace-Lorraine is vaunted everywhere, it is absolutely wrong to reward them with scorn and insults.