IRISH AND GERMAN METHODS

New Zealand Tablet, 19 March 1914, Page 49

IRISH AND GERMAN METHODS

What is known as the Zabern incident, where German soldiers were court-martialled for insulting and maltreating inoffensive civilians, has had its counterpart, though in a more aggravated form, in the Irish Land agitation. To Irishmen who lived through the land war and the Coercion struggle the proceedings at the Zabern court-martial read like an echo from those stormy days, says the Manchester Guardian in its ' Miscellany ' column: —Lieutenant Schad arrested a bank clerk for laughing at him, but the Royal Irish Constabulary in Kerry during the 'eighties went one better than that. Two j>risoners were tried at Tralee on the charge of laughing and boohing at the police, and a constable in examination said the offence committed was ' not exactly a booh, but a contraction between a laugh and a booh.'

Children Prosecuted Under Coercion Act.

The Germans seemed to have confined their atten : tion to adults : in Ireland children did not escape the pains and penalties of the Coercion Act. There was a classic case in Cork, where Daniel Sullivan, aged twelve, ' who appeared before the magistrates crying,' was •solemnly indicted for ' having promoted a certain unlawful meeting contrary to the statute made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her crown, and dignity.'

A ' Don't Hesitate to Shoot ' Order.

Colonel von Reuter himself might have drafted the circular issued to the constabulary who formed the escort of Mr. Clifford Lloyd, R.M., during his famous regime in Clare. After directing that firearms should be used without hesitation to prevent any attack on the magistrate, it concluded, ' If men should accidentally commit an error in shooting any person on suspicion of that person being about to commit murder, I shall exonerate them by coming forward and producing this document.'