CAUSE OF THE CHARGES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 110, 10 May 1923, Page 7

CAUSE OF THE CHARGES

WHAT HAPPENED AT ESSEN.

The "Daily Express" published the story of the incident, which, led to the charges, iv the following words:—"Ths Sunday Easter calm was broken by a grievous oalamity at Essen. The French sent a handful of soldiers with machineguns to requisition a motor-car at Krupp's works. As they entered, sirens sounded, and 50,000 workers began to pour out of the works. One workman, seeing the danger, stood out conspicuously and begge3 his fellows to keep quiet. The French soldiers, ignorant of German, mistook the workman's intention, aiid fired a machine-gun belt into the crowd a few yards distant. The spokesman fell shot in the head. The bullets made a lane of dead and wounded in. the crowd. What might have been a vastly worse catatrophe was juet avoided. Two French engineers_ met the maddened crowd, and were in danger of being lynched, but they were rescued by Krupp's Fire Brigade. Several of the wounded are likely to die, as most of the wounds were in the head and upper part of the body, suggesting that the soldiers meant to fire above the heads of the crowd.

"It is a miraole a vast riot was avoided, but ambulances quickly carried off the dead, wrapped in white cloths, and, when a French tank appeared an hour and a half later, most of the crowd obeyed an urgent summons to go quietly to their homes. Krupps denied that any workers were armed or. that German police disguised as workers were employed to urge the employees to attack the French, and the German Government accused the French of firing without being attacked or menaced. The Note protested against the "frivolous massacre," and demanded full satisfaction for the victims and their dependents. The French reply emphasised the fact that the small band of French were goaded into firing in self-protection, and maintained that Krupps were largely responsible for the sirens being sounded two hours after the troops arrived, filling the town with an infernal din which goaded the nervei of the most tranquil to fury.i It pointed out that it was significant that all ths wounds were fiuatainod in tilt front of the bodies.