Zabern, where a brigadier-general had been sent by von Deimling
to restore civil government, had begun to quiet down. But the
Chancellor had hardly returned to Berlin when another incident
stirred Germany. While practising field service in the neighbourhood
of Zabern and marching through a village, Lieutenant von Forstner
had an altercation with a lame shoemaker and cut him down. This
brutal act of militarism caused a new outburst throughout Germany.
Forstner was tried by a court-martial for hitting and wounding
an unarmed civilian, and sentenced by the lower court to one
year's imprisonment, but acquitted by the higher court as having
acted in "supposed self-defence."
No less than three parties, the Centrum, the Progressives and
the Social Democrats, addressed interpellations to the Chancellor
about this occurrence at Zabern. I was present at the debate in
the Reichstag, which took place on the fourth, fifth and sixth
of December, 1913. Three South Germans, a member of the Centrum,
Hauss, a Progressive named Roser, and the Socialist deputy from
Mulhausen in Alsace, Peirotes, commenced by moving and seconding
the interpellation and related in vehement language the occurrences
at Zabern.
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