Sir,—The Bulgar and atrocities are synonymous, but, although the Bulgars treated the Serbians with brutality beyond words, they appear to have behaved fairly well to some, at any rate, of the English, French, and Italian prisoners.  It was not till the German came on the scene that the reign of Prussian frightfulness began in Serbia.  An English lad who witnessed the following episode was nursing in a Red Cross hospital largely used by the Bulgarians for sending prisoners to whom by ill-usage they had brought to death’s door.  Six Serbian prisoners were sent to the hospital—such living skeletons as my informant had never seen even in the famine-stricken districts of India.  Whilst they were waiting outside for admission, she ordered a cup of tea to be given to each.  The blonde beast, in the form of a Prussian officer, came upon the scene, and inquired who had given them the tea, and when told by my friend that she had given it, he stormed at her for daring to break rules, inasmuch as, though the men had been sent down to the hospital, their papers of admission had not yet been signed.  “Somebody will have to be punished for this,” he said, and “you Englishwomen make such a fuss about being punished.”  Whereupon he ordered 10 lashes to be given to each of the dying, emaciated skeletons, and in his merciless brutality mercifully hastened their end.  When the full story of the blonde beast is written, the book, so far as our women and children are concerned, will have to be kept under lock and key.

(Times, 29 October 1918, p. 8)