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Herr Dittmann then dealt at length with the Socialist journalist named Kluhs, who has been in prison for eight months, also for his activity on behalf of the Socialist minority against the majority, and was prevented from communicating with his dying wife or attending her funeral,
It should be remembered in reading the following quotations that the whole subject has been discussed in the secrecy of the Reichstag Committee, and that what is now disclosed is in the main only what the Government has been unable to hush up or hide. In his famous speech on "preventive arrest" the Social Democratic Deputy, Herr Dittmann said:
Herr Dittmann gave the details of three cases at Dusseldorf and one at Brunswick, and then explained how the military authorities in many parts of Germany are deliberately offering Socialists the choice between silence and military service.
He observed that they owed it entirely to themselves and to their training if they had not been ruined physically and morally in their "royal Prussian prison." When they were at last released they were informed that they would be imprisoned for the rest of the war if they attended any public meeting. Herr Dittmann proceeded: "Here we have police brutality in all its purity.
Herr Dittmann then gave a terrible account, some of it unfit for reproduction, of the treatment in prison of two girls of eighteen whose offence was that on June 27th they had distributed invitations to working women to attend a meeting of protest against the procedure in the case of Herr Liebknecht.
The case of Mehring is classical proof of the fact that we are no longer far removed from the Helfferich ideal." Herr Dittmann went on to say that Herr Mehring's only offence was that in a letter seized by the police he wrote to a Reichstag deputy named Herzfeld in favour of a peace demonstration in Berlin, and offered to write a fly-sheet inviting attendance at such a meeting.
Mehring, who is over 70 years of age, was then locked up. Herr Dittmann continued: "How much longer will it be before even thoughts become criminal in Germany? Mehring is one of the most brilliant historians and writers, and one of the first representatives of German intellectual life known as such far beyond the German frontiers.
In reality they represent conditions under martial law, and this case is only one of very many." Herr Dittmann gave several instances of men declared unfit for service who had been called up for political reasons, and he ended his speech as follows:
Herr Dittmann said that this case had caused intense bitterness, and added: "The Military Command at Munster is surprised that the feeling in the whole Wupper Valley is becoming more and more discontented, and the military are now hatching new measures of violence in order to be able to master this discontent. One would think that such things came from the madhouse.
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