MAY DAY IN GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3072, 7 May 1917, Page 6

MAY DAY IN GERMANY

SOCIALISTS AND STRIKERS

COWED

London, May 4

A wireless report from Berne states that the closing of the German frontiers is partially explained by the refusal of the Independent Socialist leaders to promise that there would he no interruption of work on May Day. The military authorities informed them on April 28 that they would be arrested for high treason and would l probably be shot unless they gave the required pledge. The "stalwarts" collapsed, and the pledge was given. Thereupon the military, on April 29, arrested a thousand of, the most unruly of the local leaders in Berlin, Leipzig, Breslau, Magdeburg, Halle, Dresden, Stuttgart, and Kiel, where May Day strikes were threatened. The rank and file of the party, left without their leaders, found placards on Monday staring them in the face, warning, with the full penalties of martial law, all strikers. The whole movement collapsed, and the Independent Socialists went meekly to work on Tuesday.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. / A PROPOSAL REJECTED (Rec. May 6, 11.5 p.m.) Amsterdam, May 5. //The Reichstag Constitution Committee rejected the Socialists' proposal that the Kaiser should not have the right to declare war, conclude peace, or make alliances without the consent of the Federal Council, and that the Chancellor should be liable to the Reichstag's dismissal, but accepted a conservative motion declaring more generally the Chancellor's responsibility to the Kaiser and the Federal Council.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. •