CONSTABLES ATTACKED.

Taihape Daily Times, 28 May 1919, Page 3

CONSTABLES ATTACKED.

INCIDENTS T MELiBDURNEI

MAN SHOT IN THE BACK

While on duty in St. Kilda, Melbourne, at half past eleven o'clock one evening recently. Constable Stephens saw three men approaching him. He heard the remark, "Here comes the John," and each of the men pulled pickets off a fence and made a rush at him. Constable Stephens, who is a relumed soldi'cr, warned the niton tio stand off. as he had a revolver. This momentarily checked them, but, with a shout, of, "Let us kill the swine," they separated, one man approaching the constable from the rear. As matters

were assuming a serious aspect, for Stephens, he drew his revolver and fired in the air. This frightened the men who ran away. Stephens called or che-r, to stop, but they refused to do so. and he fired a shot in theindirection when they were about 50 ya/rds away. As they had dashed up a dirk lane he was not aware thai one of them had been hit until he walked up ."b? "nine and found the man lying on the «ionnd. This man had been sho; in the back below- the shoulder. He w;s removed by the constable to the Alt'r'd Hospiral, where his name wa.s asc.-:-tained to be John Stewart, aged 27 years. The St. Kilda police slate that three men ham shortly before the attack c.n Constable Stephens, mobbed Constable Smith, as he was taking a man to the watch-house on a charge, of offensive behavio-ir. In the course of an exciting scuffle the prisoner cscapxi from custody. NEW EX-KAISER STORY o - GENERAL MADE TO EAT SALT. The Munich Post reproduces some extracts from a remarkable book written by Count Hoensbroech, the wellknown militant Pan-German, which has just been published in B'erlin, and gives an account of Wilhelm's abdication and 'flight, says the Central News' Geneva correspondent. Count Hoensbroech declares . himself

still n convinced adherent to the mon

arehist system, in Germany; but this does not prevent him from depicting Wilhelm as "the grave-digger of Germany," and he declares that he regards it as his duty to assist in the extirpation of the Hohenzollerns. Here is his portrait of the ex-Kaiser:— "Superficial, frivolous, proud, despotic, fastidious, scornful, incapable of making friends, a poser, a playactor, and, what is still more serious, cowardly, and completely lacking in any form of moral courage." To illustrate his views, the Count relates an incident which he declares he witnessed one day at the Imperial dinner table, when the ex-Kaiser, he declares, emptied a salt cellar into the plate of one of his generals —and not the least distinguished of them — and ordered him to swallow all the salt. The general, after a momentary and not unnatural hesitation, obeyed the Imperial behest.

The Post, in commenting on this incident, asks which is the most remarkable of this trio—the imbecile emperor, the docile general, or the enraged monarchist, who, fully conscious apparently, of the idiocy of his former imperial master, still has the courage (o suggest that Germany should have