The libel action brought by Dr. Carl Peters against Herr
Griiber, the editor of the Socialist Ithinchener Post, came to an end in the Munich Court on Tuesday, when Herr Griiber
was sentenced to pay a fine of five hundred marks or go to prison for fifty days. The trial, which has reopened the public discussion of Dr. Peters's treatment of natives in the Kilima- Njaro district in 1891 and 1892—conduct for which he was dismissed from the Imperial service—caused much excitement, and Dr. Peters was threatened in the streets more than once, and greeted with such cries as "Flogger of women ! " The Munich Court, however, declined to express any judgment as to whether the executions of the boy Mabruk and the girl Jagodja by Dr. Peters were justifiable. "Dr. Peters," they said, "was not conscious that he was committing an illegal action." But though they held, according to the Times corre- spondent, that "sexual motives did not enter into account in the execution of the girl Jagodja," they considered it" possible that Mabruk's attempts to approach the native girls [who had been presented to Dr. Peters] were a contributory cause of his being condemned to death." There seems to have been much immoderate writing recently on both sides ; but though Dr. Peters has gained a verdict, the charges of inhumanity on which be was convicted in 1897 remain. To regard the latest judgment as a "rehabilitation" is ridiculous. This, we are glad to see, is the view taken by one of the most important organs of German opinion, the Cologne Gazette.
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