BOYS LONG AWAIT TRIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 475, 3 October 1928, Page 9

BOYS LONG AWAIT TRIAL

MATE ACCIDENTALLY SHOT SCANDAL OF RHINELAND (United Service.) LONDON, Tuesday. The Cologne correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” says the inhabitants of Landau, a town in the French occupied territory of Pfalz. Rhineland, were last month accorded the spectacle of two French military police marching three handcuffed schoolboys, the eldest of whom was 16, from the station to the gaol. There the l>oys are still confiued under the ministrations of the German Red Cross Society. The fact that no public outcry lias been raised, says the correspondent, testifies to the stage of terrorism in which the inhabitants of Pfalz remain. Four youths from Worms, including the imprisoned trio, stole a French officer’s revolver and the fourth youth was shot in one hand while they were skylarking. The French secret police arrested the quartette. They detained the injured boy at Worms and sent the others to await a court-martial at Landau. The German law provides chitdren'3 Courts for children under 17 and avoids their arrest and imprisonment before trial. No military Court dealt with French or Belgian children in wartime, says the correspondent, and it is impossible to excuse the present delay or the fact that these three children were escorted 90 miles fettered.