"
In fact, no less than fourteen thousand Alsatians, in the face of
manifold perils and difficulties, had rejoined the colors of their
true country. All the newspapers of Alsace-Lorraine still publish the
lists of them as citizens and of their belongings as "refractory
individuals."
The movement has never stopped. During the thirty-second month of the
war, on the fourteenth of March, 1917, General von Nassner,
commandant for the district of Saarbruck, published the following
extraordinary order:
"Whoever, after due examination, has reason to believe that a soldier
or a man on reprieve proposes to desert and who can still prevent the
execution of this crime, must without delay give notice of this fact
to the nearest military or police authority."
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.
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