LATE HERR BEBEL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXV, Issue 11755, 19 August 1913, Page 5

LATE HERR BEBEL.

IMPOSING FUNERAL

Press Association—Electric Telegraph—Copyright.

(Received Tuesday, at 8.5 a.m.) BERNE, Monday. One hundred and fifty thousand people witnessed Herr Bebel's funeral. There was an imposing array of Socialist delegations. Mr Keir Hanlie delivered an address.

Herr August Bebel, tbe leader of the German Socialists, who died at Grisons (Switzerland) from paralysis of tlie heart, was a native of Cologne, and was born in 1840. He was imprisoned for two years in a German fortress for protesting against the annexation of Al-sace-Lorraine in 1870. Bebel was a fine speaker, and an equally line writer, the best known of his books being "Women: Past, Present and Future." This work has reached its fiftieth edition, and has been translated into a good many languages. He sat for over 33 years in the Eeichstag, and was a pronounced anti-militarist, although ho believed, with his party, in a citizen defence force. At the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam in 1904----he said: "Even in Switzerland .

in this short summer only, the citizen army has been called out six times against the workers, who were making use of their right to combine and associate, even in very small strikes. What is the army to-day, if not the best of instruments for the maintenance of class domination?" He was small, spare framed, and soft voiced, and gave not the slightest indication of the fierce fires which were burning within. Herr Bebel was one of those intense, explosive, magnetic men, who are orators by nature, politicians by instinct, and leaders by sheer commanding ability."