GERMAN NAVAL MUTINY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16036, 22 January 1918, Page 6

GERMAN NAVAL MUTINY.

AN OFFICER’S STORY. i ' FIGHT AT WILHELMSHAVEN. A description of the German naval mutiny, given by Second-Lieutenant Rudolph Glarfelder, who took part in. it, and who escaped to Switzerland, gives a better ulea of the extent of the mutiny, which involved 12,000 men and; I 25 ships, than any dispatch previously published. Glarfelder emphasises that the revolt was the direct outcome ol bad food, the tyranny of the officers, and general dissatisfaction, and that the movement was engineered by the social-democratic group, known as th( Marxian Internationalists, who ar< urging national strikes and - country, wide uprisings as the best means at securing a German revolution. Glarfelder only describes what tool place in the last days of July, and„th< beginning of August,; and he declarer that' other tragedies may have beeij enacted) since, if - the - German rulerl failed! to keep their agreements witl the sailors and marines, as undoubted, ly they would, if it was to their ad vantage. The revolt he pictures lasted frqm early morning to midnight, whei the men on land, recognising that loyal regiments were pouring into Wilhelmshaven to help the Government, wen! back to their ships. Glarfelder, himself one of the leader's in the revolt, says the revolutionists formed a central terrorist committee, which discussed whether the oentrs of the uprising they planned l should be the army, the civilian populations, oi the navy, and finally decided) that the navy, greatly embittered by bad food and despotic regulations, offered 1 the most promising ground for a start. Propagandists began work by entering the service of the naval hospitals, which gave a good base for operations generally in naval centres. He described the hospital to which he was attached as treating “9000 repulsive cases,” meaning men so horribly mutilated, but just alive, that the authorities dared not send them home, and! so failed to notify the relations of their exact whereabouts. He declares that there were 200,000 repulsive cases at least in Germany—mere wrecks of men, just breathing—and that there is a ship at Wilhelmshaven with nothing else to do except to make daily trips to sea burying the dead. . Within 24 hours the death ferry has taken 800 cases to sea for burial, and) not until then is the name of the victim published as- having died on service. As an instance of the spirit of the nav al men at Wilhelmshaven, Glarfelder mentions that when on a recent occasion the naval chaplain to the death ferry exalted the memory of the dead as having given their lives “for the Kaiser,” the mate interrupted by shouting, “But not willingly.” In the disorder which ensued most of the crew sided with the mate, and finally \it was necessary for the captain himself to .. arrest the mate. A few elkys later the ' crew of the death ferry were tried for mutiny and executed—an incident which'aroused resentment throughout - the service.

Glarfelder gives a graphic account of the way in which on© of the arsenal forts on the day set apart for the rising sided with the rebels and engaged eleven coastal forts with considerable success. Four uncompleted battleships, bridges, buildings, and fitting-out docks at Wilhelmshaven were destroyed. In the hangars fired were four new Zeppelins, which were (Kmpletely wrecked. Most of the mutineers man-, aged to return to the ships, but many were mown down by machine-gun fire.