TWO KINDS OF JUSTICE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 56, 20 October 1911, Page 7

TWO KINDS OF JUSTICE.

It would be hard to find a more striking contrast between British and foreign methods of justice than that afforded by the cases of Lieutenant Max Schulz, arres.ted at Plymouth as a supposed spy, and Mr Max Schulz arrested at Hamburg for a similar reason. Lichtsnant Schulz, who is an officer in’the German Army, was arrested on August 18th, taken before the Magistrate in open Court on the following day, and a few days later committed for trial. Immediately after his arrest the lieutenant was allowed to communicate with his friends, and the whole of the evidence was given in open Court and published in the press. Any day now wo may receive word of his trial in the higher Court. Now take the case of Schulz, the British subject. Mr Schulz is a dealer in old ships, and in March last, while he was engaged in this industry in Hanibiiig, he was arrested on a charge of espionage. The article in the “Standard” to which we are indebted for this information, \vas written at the end of August, and up till then Mr dchulz had not been brought into Court. After his arrest lie disappeared from view for a week*, and although he claimed to he a British subject he was not allowed to communicate with anybody, and but for a leakage of information through an unguarded channel, the world 'would .iot have heard of the arrest even then. Since then nothing definite .ms been heard of the progress of his ■asc. But there have ’nen le-lcr-mces in correspondents’ messages to private examinations of the prisoner py a Magistrate. This is where the German system differs most from the British. Day after day the Magistrate visits the prisoner, and sefeks, by- cross-examining, denunciation, irow-beatiug, and cajolery, to extract i confession from his. As they are sometimes conducted, these exani'iiaions produce an intolerable 'train, md the accused, from sheer mental fatigue, falls into a carefully laid map. When the Court trial comes, bs admissions or confessions are produced as evidence against him. It ■s useless for him to say that he did iot mean what he is reported in have ■■aid; the evidence of the Magistrate s believed. The English system is •used on the principle that every man s innocent until he is proved guilty. l'he German assumes that a man is •iiilty unless ho can prove his inno“cnco, and attempts by remorseless nothocls to make the accused supply 'ho evidence of bis guilt. It is this mediaeval system in whose clutches Mr Schulz has been for Over six uonths. t