IN THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13107, 16 May 1911, Page 1

IN THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY.

In the course of a debate on tho Army Estimates in the Reicnshig (says Reuters Berlin correspondent on a recent date) Major-General Wandel, director of the War Department, declared, in reply to a question whether it was true that corpses had Iwn shot at by wildiers at Spandau, that some years ago firing experiments were carried out at Spandau on corpses to ascertain the penetrating power of modern rifles. These experiments, which, moreover, were made on anatomical exhibits, not on naked eorpr.OH, werii, said Major-Goneral Wandel, essential in tho interests of army surgery. None of the soldiers who wero shooting saw anything of the exhibits, which were wrawued in linen or hidden behind linen. The Minister of War also insisted that the experiments were necessary in the cause of humanity, and the same point of view was taken by speakers of the non-Socialist partips. The Socialists, on the other hand severely criticised the experiments on tho assumption that they were undertaken with tho object of accustoming soldier to firing at men, an assertion w!iic!> was, denied by the Government.