HUMAN BODIES AS TARGETS

Evening Star, Issue 14554, 1 May 1911, Page 6

HUMAN BODIES AS TARGETS

In the course of a debate on tho Army Estimates in. the Roiclistag, Major-general Wandol, Director of the War Department, «Lv;iai-t.<l, in ivpiy to a qucstu.il whether it was true that corpses had been shot at by soldiers at Spaudau, that sonie years ago firing experiments were carried out at Spaudau on corpses with tho object of ascertaining the penetrating power of modern rifles. These experiments, which, moreover, were made on anatomical exhibits, not on n.;kcd corpses, were, said Msjor-general Wandel, essential in the interests of army surgery. None of the who were shooting saw anything of the exhibits, which were wrapped in linen or hidden behind linen. The Minister of War also insisted that tiie asperiments were necessary in the cause ox humanity, and tho same point of view was taken by speakers of the nonSocialiet parties. The Socialists, on the ether hand, severely criticised the experiments, on the assumption that they were undertaken with the object of accustoming soldiers to firing at men, an assertion which waa denied by the Government.— 1 The Times s ' Berlin correspondent.