GERMAN ARMY SCANDALS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 167, 8 April 1908, Page 7

GERMAN ARMY SCANDALS.

' A DUKE IN DEBT. BY TELEGRAPH—PJIK6S ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT, Berlin, April 6. Duko Hehirich-Bonvin, of MecklenburgSchworin, has been compelled to leave the army, owing to financial troubles. He owes enormous debts to money-lenders. high-pLaced officers suffer. The number of German Army officers who are victims to gambling' first and to moneylenders afterwards has been the subject of a scandal for; some ; time. Among the victims of tho gang are sucli well-known personages as Prince Henry,of Hanau and Count Po'cci. The money-lenders are described as being a motley crew. Several of them are brokendown _ officers, and they include a doctor of medicine, a privato inquiry agent, a jeweller, a dealer in sewing machines and bicycles, an architect, a milk-dealer, and a liouso denier. Ludwig Bock, who is one of them, was from 1892 to 1900 a lioutenant in the Third Eegisment of Field Artillery. He lived in great stylo, kept'a racing stable, and got deeply involved in debt. His own experience as a victim of usurers led to his taking up their-business when he left 1 the service. For this purpose, having no means of his own, ho employed the fortune of his wife. Jt'is alleged that defendants got extravagant cavalry officers into their power and sucked them dry. They aro said to have squeezed out of a Lieut. Boch nearly ,£33,000, out of Baron vou Lang-Puchof, who, at the time was with the Hussars of the Guard at Potsdam, ,620,000. In addition to pacing interest up to 100 per cent., officers were in many cases induced to accept, in part payment of bills which they signed, articles in which some of the defendants dealt. Baron von Horn, for example, had such .things as bicycles, oil paintings! gold watchcs, and a dogcart and horse foisted on to him in this way. ' The revelations aro the sequel of tho Bavariini military gambling scandal/ which led to the suicido of two young noblemen— Count von Preysing and Enron von Grieseilback—and the discharge from the army of Lieut, von Mueho. It was then revealed tliat these young men woro hounded to suicide by the same gang of usurers who had blackmailed Muolie into forging the name of brother officers belonging to tho Bavarian royal family.

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