EXECUTION DILEMMA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 134, 15 September 1910, Page 3

EXECUTION DILEMMA.

i SOLDIERS OBJECT TO SHOOT COMRADE. I The French military authorities are worried over the case of the soldier

Gabyj who is awaiting execution after 1 having been convicted by a court-mar-tial of Mme. Gouih, the widow of a : former regent of the Bank of 1 France. Gaby anil another soldier attacked Mme. Gouin in'an express train; strangled her and took her money and valuables. Gaby was sentenced to death by the court-martial, aaid, being a soldier, he will have to be shot. It is the first execution of its kind that the Republic has had to carry out, and it is presenting extraordinary difficulties. Jtty whom is the execution to be carriea out? It is pointed out that the majority of the French Army are not soldiers by profession. They are not men who have volunteered or who have chosea a military career, but they are soldiers for the time being by the law of the land. .To call upon such men, there-

fore, to act as the public executioners of a criminal is to place them in an extraordinary and unfair position, and the military authorities do not hide the fact that if a firing party is taken from one of the line regiments some of the men will decline to fire their rifles or will fire in the air rather than for the rest of their lives have on ther minds the remembrance of the act in which they had been forced to participate. The arranging of the execution is within the province of General Brun, the .liinister for War, and it is understood that he will endeavour to carry it out more or less secretly. It is intended early one morning to transfer Gaby to one of the forts near Paris, and carry out the execution if possible before the Press have time to get wind of it. That portion of Gaby's regiment, the 31st, at present in Paris, will have to be present. It is the regimental greffier who will have to read the condemned man his' sentence, and then the full degradation ceremony must be performed, and when the man's uniform has been shorn of its'buttons and facings he will have to be surrounded by four soldiers and maTched before the assembled troops. This done, he will be placed against the wall, and the firing party will advance and carry out the execution, after which the troops must march before the body.