SOCIALIST LIFTS THE GERMAN CURTAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 56, 6 March 1916, Page 5

SOCIALIST LIFTS THE GERMAN CURTAIN.

FREQUENT PEACE DEMONSTRATIONS AND FOOD-RIOTS. SPECIAL POLICE DEPARTMENT OPENED TO DEAL WITH THEM GERMAN CAPITALISTS' TREACHERY TOWARDS THE STATE. (Received 8.50 a.m.) '■ - AMSTERDAM,; March 5. Amid frequent interruptions and calls to order,~DrLiebnecht, the Socialist leader in the Reichstag, made a sensational speech in the Diet. He denounced i the censorship, and declared, that the newspapers were forbidden, to mention trials following peace demonstrations and food rioJs, with the result that the population was not aware of the vast increase of such trials. A prominent Lubeck Senator had been imprisoned for placing his Swedish-copper mines at Russia's disposal, and capitalist treachery in selling • munitions-i;o; the enemy through neutrals had so increased that the Government was-obliged to issue a warning that German soldiers had been killed by guns Krupps. Referring to the atrocities in. Belgium, he.said that the- German army contained many criminals. There were already 5,000 soldiers? in military prisons under Prussian administration, and the prisons under the"Ministry for the Interior were largely populated,-by -soldiersr-- — • -■"-■ ~ V;; The dearth of foodstuffs was one of the social' causes of.crinie;' and. one of the results of the degeneration of our whole kultur. After mentioning the case of a person sentenced to-death for a poem, the sentence being later commuted to five years' imprisonment, he denounced military justice towards civilians. The police had opened'a new department in Berlin to deal with peace propagandists. He predicted a.severer class war,, and increase of political precaution, and said that the cry from prisons and penitentiaries would soon become more audible and would.rouse mankind to the only holy war which Socialists knew. The situation in Austria was worse than in Germany." There the field court-martial was a regime of terror. One of his Austrian comrades was sentenced to death for a speech in December, 1915; on the ground. tha.t_ his remarks were hostile to the State.