NAZI MADHATTER COMMANDER BOASTS TO DUTCH CARDINAL OF NEW ORDER

From Our Correspondent formerly in Belgium
Nazi technique in Belgium is truly a topsy-turvy tissue of contradiction. Whilst ruthlessly persecuting the clergy, restricting the petformance of their Divine office, arresting them for discharging their sacred duty to the dead, seizing abbeys and expelling the monks. the Nazi authorities in Belgium appeal for the support of Belgian Catholics on the plea that Bolshevik Russia must he conquered. To the credit of the Belgian clergy it is officially recorded that they turn a deaf ear to this appeal, and maintain their status as the corner-stone of resistance to Nazism.
Cardinal van Roey, the Primate, and the Belgian Hierarchy recently protested to General von Falkenhausen, the German military conunandant, against the Nazi deportation and other measures forcing Belgian miners to work on Sundays and Holy Days of obligation, thus rendering it impossible for them to attend Holy Mass.
" If Germany hopes to maintain irktercourse with our country alter the conclusion of peace, she must not anticipate it by rendering such intercourse inipossibte through measures that grievously wound the mass of our people," wrote the Cardinal to the German General,
General von Falkenhausen's reply is a clumsy German effort to cover his hypocrisy with a cloak of sincerity. He writes:
" Eminence,—Permit .nie, with respect. to remind you that the war the Axis Powers have been constrained to wage against Bolshevism concerns in the highest dcgice all civilised peoples and, foreniost of all, the Catholic people, whose Supreme Chief y'bu are in Belgium,
" It behoves your Catholic fold, therefore, as all other folds, to exert every effort to contribute to the annihilation of an abject and atheist regime.
" Instead of calling into question the measures I have ordained, would it not be more fitting for Your Eminence to use the faculty you enjoy by dispensing certain classes of workers from attending Mass on Sundays so as to enable t hem. to co-operate more closely in our common aim of defending Christian civilisation?
" The deportation measures under discussion do not exist in reality. The contracts to work in Germany are quite voluntary ones. We use force only to deport such turbulent elements as do not deserve a more severe punishment at the hands of the occupying authorities.
" In fine, I cordially thank Your Eminence for the solicitude you )cave deigned to show towards the interests 1 represent. Permit me, however, by way of conclusion, to state that when peace has been concluded with a triumphant Germany, the peoples will he happy and proud to maintain contact with our country. We have no misgivings on this score, for should any nations show themselves refractory to collaboration with the New Order, they would simply he wiped out and would disappear from the face of the New Europe."
Meantime, the Belgian clergy and people are maintaining a united and heroic front of resistance against' the German occupying authority.
Priests in numbers are,being arrested on the charge of having celebrated or authorised religious services to the memory of patriots executed by the German firing squads. German decrees forbid churches to be draped in black during Requiem or funeral services. Sermons and allocutions must treat only of strictly religious matters. No more than 20 persons may attend the service for an executed patriot; these must be the nearest of kin. The time fixed has to be notified to the German authorities, one of whom attends in uniform or in multi to superintend the carrying out of the German decrees. Priests are even forbidden to bless the graves of executed patriots.