Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/133

 Rh stag debates, which lasted from February 15 to 17, 1892, was mainly responsible for the effect which the Social Democratic criticism exercised. After the usual "due considerations" and scufflings the reform of our procedure in military trials was brought about in 1898 with a great amount of painful exertion. True, the reformed procedure still permitted the courts to a large extent to exclude the public and thus to cover the terrible secrets of the barracks with the cloak of Christian charity, but it succeeded (in spite of all the orders which almost suggested the most sweeping use of the powers of excluding the public and in spite of the much discussed disciplining of the judges in the Bilse case) in bringing down such a hail of appalling cases of maltreatment upon the heads of the public that all objections against the Social Democratic criticism were simply swept away, and the existence of the maltreatment of soldiers as a settled institution of "state-conserving" militarism was acknowledged almost everywhere, however reluctantly. More or less honestly the authorities attempted to grapple with this repelling institution