POLITICAL MURDERS IN GERMANY.

HERR ERZBERGER’S FATE. SERIOUS RESULTS FEARED.

FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. BERLIN, Saturday Night. Political extremes in Germany meet on the common ground of assassination. Not, however, on an equal footing, for reaction can boast a much longer list of victims than Communism. And it has now headed the list with the name of the most prominent and perhaps the most influential of its political opponents. For there can be no shadow of doubt that the life of Matthias Erzberger must be charged to those intransigeant monarcho-militaristic circles which have systematically represented him as the blackest traitor to the country, and, in transparent terms, called for a self-sacrificing patriot to remove him from the stage of public life. It is not yet known whether the murderers in this case were agents of one of those secret societies organised by the reactionaries in their Bavarian stronghold for the “removal” of their political enemies or merely two young men whose brains had been turned by reading the inflammatory extravagances of the Chauvinistic Press. But the character of the crime is so clear that it has had a very agitating effect on a situation which was already becoming ominously uneasy, and to-day people of all political groups are filled with vague forebodings that it may prove the signal for an incalculable disaster. Of the minor details of the tragedy a dozen different versions are in currency, but the main and essential facts have already been established. It appears that Herr Erzberger was was accompanied by his political and personal friend, the Reichstag Deputy Dietz, who, though himself wounded, is not seriously injured, and has been able to give a full account of what happened. They were walking out from Griesbach along one of these wonderful ridge roads which are the glory of the Black Forest. Their walk was in the direction of Freudenstadt, in Wurttenmurg, and took them on to the Kniebis Ridge, which forms the watershed and frontier between that state and Baden. As they moved forward they became aware that two well-dressed young men, apparently in their twenties, were evidently dogging them, always keeping them in view. The movements of these strangers became so suspicious that the two Deputies decided to abandon their outing and retrace their steps to Griesbach.