TYRANNY AND TERROR IN GERMANY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 287, 1 November 1878, Page 7

TYRANNY AND TERROR IN GERMANY.

♦ (From the New York Yollts-Zeitung.') It i& impossible to publish all the reports that reach us from every part of Germany of numerous and cruel punishments inflicted upon those charged with " insults to His Majesty," and wo only give a few to show the fearful state of political affairs in our fatherland. The punishments already meted out aggregate over two hundred years of incarceration. Verily, indeed, a sad sign of the times. In Leipsig a man accused with this offence has hung himself in prison. The wife of a mason in Passewalk, upon being an'csted for words spoken against the Kaiser was kept Tinder surveillance in her own house upon procuring a doctor's certificate that she was enceinte. In the meantime her husband, who had been previously arrested, upon hearing of his wife's fate, became deranged, and committed suicide i^P -ison. Upon his body was found a letter to the Crown Prince puling him to older the release of his wife. The poor woman has, however, since been" condemned to six month?' imprisonment. In Hanau a meeting of the Social Democracy was broken up by the police. In Pomerania the imperial representative has issued a proclamation calling upon his subordinates to arrest and hold as prisoners all those uttering seditious language against king or country, religion or Church. All keepers of inns and saloons are held responsible for language spoken in their place of resoit, and the rigors of ihe law are to be applied to those proprietors who quietly listen to the remarks thus made by their guests. The Berlin Free Press warns people not to enter into conversation ■with strangers at public places. Often they are policeman in civil dress, who attempt to drag them into political discussions, and also to be on their guard against pedlars offering photographs of Hoedel and Nobilling. Bootblacks, painters, railroad employes cobblers, students, Testauiateurs, and even numerous women have been condemned to one, two and three years' imprisonment in Marienburg, Elbing. Gorlitz and other places. In Essen alone fourteen arrests have been made and several pupils of the gymnasium expelled. Three editors of the Berlin Free Press are now in prison. The authorities at Altona have discovered that several soldiers of the Thirty-first infantry regiment, stationed there, have visited the social Democratic meetings. No civilian is permitted to enter the barracks except under guard. Even the baker who furnishes, bread to the garrison is carefully watched. Oiders have l.een issued forbidding any soldier from reading newppapeis in any of the banacks of the Empire, and officers aie instructed to severely puni&h any one violating this order.