CRIMINAL GERMANY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 17534, 29 March 1919, Page 8

CRIMINAL GERMANY

By HENRY DE HALSALLE, Author of " Degenerate Germany," Etc.

In crimes of violence, in the number of those crimes, and in the savagery of their execution the <iriinina.l records of no oth«r country- can compete w fch Olermaiy. tVrticu«i»*iy is this v.iy <;ij>* as regards the. so-called "lust-murder.' a Teutonic species of crime. The detailed recital of this form of savagery has of late years formed;a prominent " feature" in most of the Berlin newsahegts.

Beyond this, eminent physicians and writers have "specialised" in the sub-ject—Krhfft-Ebing, Albert. Arridt Hofraann, Heschl, Maschka, Herbst, an.3 Klein, among others. < Significantly enough, some of these "specialists" when "detailing" these episodes have often to use the Latin tongue to veil the unthinkable acts under review.

The "blood-Inst" of the German peo- J pie. reveals itself in, many forms and in every class of society. Frequently among persons of high position it takes the form of delight in the spectacle of flogging—the flogging of a human being until the blood flows copiously. A few years ago a scandalous case of this kind: was reported from one of the minor German principalities. There, j children of both sexes who had been senteuced to imprisonment were pardoned by the prince on condition that^ they submitted +« a flogging—in whi jh the prince himself took an 'active part! In another barbarous episode—the Graubund scandal of September 1906 — girls and women were thrashed by an acolyte "until the blood flowed freely.' 5 Both these recent cases are confirmed by Profesor Moll. Flogging "until thd blood flows freely" is, of course., a we'.lrecognispd institution in the German Army, although it may be carried out more or less secretly and unifficiallv. ♦ • . *

" Girl-stabbing," is yet another axample of Teutonic blood-lust. Cases in which German men prowl about tiho streets at night and stab—and steal away—are of frequent occurrence all over Germany. A recent case is quoted bvDemme ("Buch der Verbrechen," vii., p. 281), in which a wine merchant had during a period of fourteen fears stabbed mo*e or less seriously fifty scirls and women with a sword-cane. Hi* Inst victim succunibed to her L.juries in frho street, r.nd

[the wine merchant was arrested. He ! confessed to having stabbed fifty-odd women an<j? girls, and said that these bloodthirsty actions had afforded him | "the greatest pleasure." He was i sound man of busines and considei'ed perfectly sane. '■'' Tlie frequenoy and persistency ' f "bloodlust" outrages by native Germans demand, that these crimes should j be taken into consideration in examining the national mentality:—the bloodlupt of the man with dagger or knif«, and also the " blood-'iust" of the Teutonic pen in prose and verse, i