The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-01
THE BREWERS MAY
 CAUSE TROUBLE
Said to Be More Threatening
 Than the Socialists
IN THE GERMAN EMPIRE
Emperor's Recent Utteerance Is Claimed to Have Injured Their Business-Ragging in
 Army and Navy


 Berlin, December 31.-(Special )-The brewers and saloonkeepers threaten to make more trouble for the Emperor than the socialists have made. His repeated utterances in favor of temperance they regard as tending to kill their business. One saloon keeper has gone to the extent of publicly censuring him. Another whose place of business is near the palace has hung up a placard announcing that he sells ''the same kind of beer that the Kaiser drinks"
 Nowhere is the practice of ragging more prevalent than in the German army and navy cadet circles. Tagging is just what hazing Is at West Point or the Annapo- lis Naval academy. The military author ities shut their eyes harder than most other official bodies to the practice. If anything they encourage 1t as the means of discovering the young officer-recruits g stamina In times of peace. The theory is, of course, wrong, as experience has often demonstrated, for many young man who will cheerfully face the risks of | battlefield under the influence of patri- otic ideals will shrink from the unmean- ing brutalities of his fellow cadets. The pranks tolerated are of low, vulgar, brutal order such as only men belonging to the mobility" could think of, or carry out. Of all the forms of hazing, the most brutal perhaps is the gauntlet of fire. The freshman upon whom that punish ment is visited is kept in dark room. In the next room his tormentors twist newspapers into imitation torches, which at signal they light. When the torches are burning, they form themselves in two lines; another signal Is sounded, the door of the dark room Is thrown open and the freshman Is ordered to ride between the lines, while he Is mercilessly lashed with flaming brands. However quickly he may run the gauntlet, by the time he has reached the end his hair, eyebrows and eyelashes have been snged to the skin, his eyelids are scared and swollen, his lips blistered his uniform ruined. One of the surgeons in attendance covers up the sores with bandages and sends the slnged plebe to the infirmary. The official report mentions the explosion of an alcohol lamp or some other accident of like nature. l More than once cadets have been crip- pied for life, and there are two cases on record where death was the direct re- suit of horseplay.
 A young fellow brought up on large | estate In little civilized section of Pom | ar nj cd If ba cio From the first day his lanky frame, red hands and awkward gait designated him as a target for the schools banter. He was constantly reproved for imaginary of lenses against a code of honor. He was made to shine shoes, to polish brass but tons. One day a cadet was expelled. Poor Fritz had nothing to do with the inci
 dent. He was nevertheless commanded to appear before "court of honor.'' There he was bullied into confessing that he was responsible for his classmates dismissal.
 The jury rendered a verdict of guilty on all counts. Theppenalty was to be death by decapitation. Fritz wrote under dictation letter to his family explaining that his death was voluntary
 Masked men then entered the room car rying a block and a sharp, glittering axe. Fritz, blindfolded, stripped to the waist, let the executioner place his head on the block He heard a noise as of man would have made lifting and swinging a heavy axe. A sharp, singing sensation on his neck, and with a cry of terror he seemed to fall into a bottomless pit. The executoner, still holding the wet towel with which he had lashed Fritz's neck, | picked him up and tried to revive him, while the crowd was bowling with glee. Fritz's pale and motionless countenance, however silenced the young savages for | the cadet was dead. Thus perished a youth whom Germany might need badly in a trying hour. Who knows, but that a Won Moltke, a Bismarck or another Frederick the Great was plotted by brainless gang of young noblemen, off | cers and gentlemen"
 1 A daredevil cadet was asked whether | on All Souls night he would jump the wall of a cemetery and, crossing the ave- some garden of death, come out at a gate the boys designated. He took the chal- lenge. That night the boys stole out of the dormitory escorted their heroic friend to place where the graveyard wall could | be easily scaled. watched him for while winding his way past the tombs and final ly ran to the other end of the cemetery, where he was to meet them. Hours elapsed; he never appeared, and the boys, some of them laughing at their friend s cowardice, which had probably prompted | him to flee back to the school The next morning Daredevil Jack failed to answer roll call. The leader of the group made clean breast of 1t to the commanding of- | f1cer A search was instituted. The boy was found dead in the graveyard, his face horribly convulsed. as though he had witnessed some terrifying sight. He bore a curious little wound on his neck. a l wound from which hardly drop of blood | had oozed and which looked as though | fieshless fingers had throttled him.
 The explanation was more materialistic than that. A piece of wire used as prop for creepers had become loosened and hung over the path followed by the young man; its hook-shaped end had cloched him under the chin, leaving the little marks like those of skeleton hand The boy, his mind filled with weird gob- lin tales, ready victim for any spoolxy phenomenon, had died from arrested heart action when that invisible hand had sud-