Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1921-06-12
German Law Provides
Officers Not Punish
able for Rough Acts.
Berlin Writer Says That
Those Responsible for
Orders Stand Trial.
By MAMMALIAN HARDEN,
Germany's Foremost Publicist.
Special Cable to The Tribune.

OOpyIlSuL 1C-1s ny LIZ AlAOuAS'
Berlin, June 11.-One must not be
lieve that the lenient sentences beint
meted out today in the trials of Ger
man soldiers and sailors at Leipzig
charged by the allies with violations Of
the laws Of the war, are due to any
bad will on the part of the judges
presiding.
Their task is not an easy one. The
accusers are the deadly enemies OF
yesterday. The accused are the de-
tenders of the fatherland. The judges
have had their education and bringing
up in a school of thought which
7scribes all virtue and power to its
wn people, and all faults and vices to
!. ne people toward which it is his
sayrically and bitterly hostile. This
: yends to make it easier for the judges
to believe their fellow countrymen
Fault Not With Judges.
But even if the judges have the
courage to Withstand this temptation,
they are bound to observe and uphold
the legal pronunciation of their coun-
APPROPRIATIONS which the strangers
do not know and have no wish to ac-
knowledge.
If there be fault to find at Leipzig,
IL IL uOL Will LuS JluRck.
It rather is idea of military disci
last two generations, and it is asking
too much that Germans be punished
more severely for offenses against for
eigners than they have been punished
in the past for similar offenses against
their own people.
1t is not a new story, this relation
of the ill treatment Of men at the pri-,
son camps. The boxing of ears, the
tying up Of men, the changing from
hot to cold shower baths. the throw
ing of small stones, the butting with
guns-these often have been the means
of enforcing military obedience among
German recruits in our own barracks.
Superior Officers Not Punishable.
According to the German military
penal code the deed of a superior Of
ence in case cannot be considered an
abuse of his military authority and is
not punishable.
This same rule holds true in the
case of subordinates obeying the COM
mand of a superior officer. Under the
code, danger to discipline" has been
suppressed, no matter the cost His
majesty's cabinet order of July. 1877,
during the kaiser's regime the or
ders of the supreme war lord always
were thus called) states that even
corporal punishment inflicted upon
subordjnetes is not to be considered
an offense, or i'll treatment or to be
punished Such punishment was to be
considered necessary to keeping up
the idea of military discipline"
That order must be taken into &C.
count in viewing the Leipzig trials.
Tho o1lioc toll fhaf fn oyorc0u
the military Idea" in Germany the
war was carried on. Prussian Ger !
many, we are told, has lost this Idea"
and for generations will have to pay |
dearly for it.
Punishments inflicted to Save Posts. |
However, it is consistent with com |!
mon sense and justice on the part Of |
the allies after victory and peace. to |
continue to carry on warfare against |
inconsequential persons who had be-
come inundated by the idea" Es-
pecially when the contamination was
wholly unavoidable and necessary in
order that the man might keep his
post.
The scandal and shame is that the
fate Of highly cultivated prisoners of
war often was confined to persons Of
much meaner station of life, such as
forms Of sergeants Angered or jaun-
diced under Officers were made COM
Tanders Of camps in which men of
brains of western Europe were mis-
erably fed and kept in long imprison-
ment. All this was scandalous
shame. u
But even the judge who shares these
views is bound first of all to the laws
IF the land-laws which, by the way,
still exist in our so-called most free |
republic of the world"
Idea" Drilled in For Years.
And the men who inflicted the pun
shments in camps had the Idea of
military discipline" drilled into them 1
or years before the war began. They t
lsed the same means against their t
pals in our own military prisons s
md were not conscious Of any abuse. /
What was the camp commander to t
10? If he had reported he could not n
orce the prisoners to work he would
ave been dismissed from his post as t
eing unsuitable and very nicely would b
ave been sent away to the front j,
where very many, even in 1917. did II
ot very Willingly 60. because it was n
to hero's death. Be 3