IMPRISONED AIRMEN IN GERMANY.

BRITISH REPRISALS.

The outrageous sentence of ten years’ penal servitude passed on two British flying officers by a German court-martial for dropping leaflets over the German lines is to be made the subject of reprisals by the British Government unless the gentlemen in question are released from prison and treated as ordinary prisoners of war. This announcement was made yesterday afternoon by Reuter’s Agency in the following statement: The German Government has been informed that his Majesty’s Government do not admit that any breach of international law has been committed by Captain Scholtz and Lieutenant Wookey, the British air officers who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment for distributing leaflets from the air. It is pointed out that this has been repeatedly done by German and Austrian airmen. It has been intimated that unless these officers are released the British Government will be compelled to resort to reprisals in accordance .with the arrangement arrived at by Lord Newton’s Mission at The Hague. This provided that a month’s notice of reprisals should be given. This warning has been conveyed through the usual diplomatic channel, that is through the British Legation at The Hague, to the Dutch Government, and the Swiss Legation in London has also been informed. As a matter of fact, the practice of the German and Austrian airmen alluded to in the above note is being continued on the Italian front at the present time, as is shown by the following telegram which reached us from our Special Correspondent in Milan yesterday: MILAN, Tuesday. – A despatch from the Italian front, from Signor Luigi Barzini, describes the latest Austrian attempt to shake the moral of the Italian troops by an extraordinary campaign of deceit, describing alleged riots in Lyons and other Trench towns, murderously repressed by M. Clemenceau’s legions; riots in Italian towns, Milan, Turin, Rome, and others being passed through fire and sword. An English officer is represented sitting on Rome with a revolver in his hand, and under it is written “English kommandatur,” Salonika is being burnt by English troops, English troops are represented as committing all the horrors in Italy of which the Germans were guilty in Belgium. Leaflets and pamphlets are dropped wholesale over the Italian lines containing these absurd lies and inventions. Instead of the effect intended they only supply amusement to the soldiers in the trenches. Upon inquiry at the Prisoners of War Department of the Foreign Office yesterday morning as to what form the reprisals would be likely to take, an official said that he could not indicate. The present was not the time to make any statement upon the matter except that the Foreign Office are now awaiting a reply from the German Government as to their intentions. In the House of Commons, yesterday, Mr, Butcher asked the Under-secretary for War whether he had any official information to the effect that hundreds of British and French officer prisoners of war had been sent to Stuttgart and other places, in order to be subject to the risks of air raids: and whether he would take stops to inform the German Government that, if and so long as they indulged in such practices, German prisoners of war would be brought from Donington Hall and elsewhere to London and other places where they would share with women and children and other non-combatants the dangers of attacks from the air by Germans. Mr. Macpherson: Information has been received which leaves no doubt that the German authorities have placed officer prisoners of war in localities which are specially subject to air raids. Similar notion is contemplated in this country. (Cheers.)

AIR RAID “HOSTAGES.”