MILITARY HOOLIGANS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 8410, 9 January 1899, Page 4

MILITARY HOOLIGANS.

THINGS THAT MAKES ONE GLAD HE IS A BRITISHER. Vienna. Nov. 20. Two more outrages committed by armed officers on unarmed civilians have come under my notice. Near St. Poelten on Friday a laborer was driving a wagon along a country lane, when he met a regiment of infantry, and forthwith reined in his horses and halted while they marched past. The whole of the regiment passed without difficulty, except one detachment, under Lieutenant Swoboda, who ordered the laborer to clear the road for his men. The lane was too narrow for the wagon to turn round, there were high hedges on each side, and the laborer could only obey the officer by backing his horses half a mile to the next turning. This he naturally declined to do, as the remainder of the regiment, with all the superior officers, had passed the wagon without difficulty. Lieutenant Swoboda, enraged at the laborer's opposition to his silly caprice, attacked him savagely with his sword, .smashed his check bone, and wounded him i so severely in the arm that amputation was necessary. Subsequently the cowardly officer offered the unfortunate laborer 2os compensation, which the latter indignantly refused-' Theviotim of this brutal outrage is an old soldier, who served with distinction in j the Bosnian campaign, and only escaped injury there to be mutilated in his old age by a young bully who was never under fire. . . Another officer of the same regiment recently attacked and wounded an actor for some imaginary slight to his " honor in a cafe". When the actor endeavored to obtain, redress from headquarters, all the ; officers of the St. Poelten garrison banded together and threatened to boycott the local theatre unless the charge against their comrade was withdrawn. As this would have ruined the theatre, the actor had to endure his injuries in silence. He was disfigured for life, and lost two months employment. Later.— l have another bad case of military Hooliganism to add to the budget I recently sent. Lieutenant von Ruedingen was recently standing in the Mariahilfer Strasse, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Vienna, talking to two ladies, when a driver of an approaching omnibus warned him iv rough tones that he was obstructing the traffic, and requested him to move on. Lieutenant von Ruedingen, resenting this mode of address, drew his sword and dashed at the driver, and nearly cut his right hand off. The driver was disabled, and the military authorities, compelled by public opinion, sentenced the officer to two months imprisonment, expelled him from the army, and made him pay his victim a small sum monthly aa compensation. When public indignation had cooled, Lieutenant von Ruedingen received a free pardon on the ground that he had defended his honor in a justifiable manner, and he was reinstated in his regiment. Lieutenant von Ruedingen, with unexampled meanness, therenpon ceased paying his victim the monthly allowance, leaving the poor man destitute. The driver is now suing the officer in the civil courts.