GERMAN SOCIALIST'S TRIAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11892, 29 December 1916, Page 4

GERMAN SOCIALIST'S TRIAL.

GOVERNMENT DENOUNCED.

From the official documents in the trial of the German Socialist leader and deputy, Dr Karl Liebknecht, the Zurich " Volksroclit" publishes a letter which Dr Liebknecht addressed to the military tribunal by which he was condemned, fiercely denouncing the German Government and its conduct of the war (says a Keuter message from Zurich). He writes that the German Government is, in its social and historical essence, an instrument* for the oppression and exploitation of the labouring masses; serving at homo and abroad the interests of Junkerism, Capitalism and Imperialism. It is the ruthless representative of political expansion, the strongest instigator of the race in armaments, and thereby one of the mightiest exponents of the causes of the present war. In conjunction with the Austrian Government it plotted this war, and so bears the burden of the chief responsibility for its direct outbreak. It began the war by misleading the people, and even the Reichstag, and seeks by objectionable means to maintain the warlike feeling amongst the people. It conducts tho war according to methods which, regarded from the hitherto ordinary standpoint, are monstrous—attacks on Belgium and Luxembourg, poison gases (meanwhile adopted by all the belligerents}, the nilsurpassing new Zeppelin bombs, which destroy every living person within a wide cirle, combatant or non-combat-ant; submarine commercial war, torpedoing of the Lusitania, etc.; postage and contribution system, especially at the beginning, in Belgium, deliberate compulsion of Ukraine, Georgian, Baltic Provinces, I'olish, Irish, Mohammedan and other' prisoners of war in the German cam pa to traitorous war service and treasonable espionage for tho Contral Powei's; agreement be-

tween the Un del-Secret ary of State., Zimmerman, and Roger Casement of December, 1914, regarding the formation, equipment and training of the captured British soldiers, the " Irish Brigade," m the German camps; attempts in Germany to compel enemy civilians there to engage in-treasonable war service against their own countries under threats of imprisonment. The Government to-day holds fast to its war aims of conquest, and thereby offers 'the chief hindrance to peace negotiations on the basis of renunciation of annexation. By illegal means, such as the censorship, it prevents the publication of unpleasant facts and the Socialist criticism of its measures. The present war is no war for the defence of national unify? or for freeing oppressed nations, or for the welfare of the masses. Regarded from the standpoint of the proletariat it signifies only the extremist concentration and increasing of political suppression, of economic exhaustion, of military slaughter of the bodies and lives of tlTe working classes for capitalist and absolutist advantage. Dr Liebknecht then goes on to urge the Socialists to wage incessant war against such capitalistic government, .and declares that he will continue to do so, cost what it will.