"Blow with Fist"

At Landau* a French officer was tried by a French Court Martial last week for killing a German citizen and wounding two others last September at Germersheim (TIME, Oct. 11) in the occupied Rhineland. The Court acquitted the accused, Lieutenant Rouzier, of manslaughter on the grounds that he had fired in self-defense when attacked by the Germans with canes. Said the Lieutenant with cold formality in speaking of the man he killed: "If I have committed reprehensible acts I regret them. I likewise regret if they have reflected on my country, my colonel and my regiment." The two Germans wounded by Lieutenant Rouzier were then sentenced respectively to two years and two months of imprisonment for threatening to assault him with their canes before he fired upon them. Four other Germans were also sentenced; but the French Lieutenant went scot free.

Naturally the German press blazed wrath. Cried the Tagliche Rundschau, organ of Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann: "This infamous blemish on French justice in the occupied Rhineland is a blow with the fist in the face of the German people."

After the German Government had officially protested to the Quai d'Orsay, President Doumergue of France pardoned the six sentenced Germans.

*Historians are divided as to whether the four-wheeled carriage with an adjustable divided top known as a landau was developed in the Bavarian town of that name or by the famed English carriage maker, Landow.