July 29.
ALTHOUGH we have already twice referred to the case of Mr.
Scherer at Mukden, who was sentenced to seven years imprisonment with hard labour on a charge of causing the death of Chinese school boy, our readers will, we hope, forgive our returning to it. The case is undoubtedly one of great importance, certainly for the unfortunate Mr. Scherer, for all foreigners, and for the Chinese, whose chances of getting extraterritorial rights abolished are by no means improved by incidents of this kind. We have received further details from an independent source, which not only confirm the first impression that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice, but also indicate that there was a good deal of propaganda by northern Chinese newspapers which must be corrected. For: example, the "North China Star" stated, on the authority of some message from Peking, that the Ministry of Justice has received the report that the foreigners in Manchuria seem to be well satisfied on the whole with the working of the Manchurian courts saessathe District Court at Mukden conducted the entire trial (of Scherer) in the open and to the obvious satisfaction of all the foreign residents in the city, who were interested to see how 'a foreign national, deprived of the consular jurisdiction, would be treated in a Chinese court.
In passing, we can see no possible' yeason why the Mukden Court should not have "conducted the entire trial in public": the suggestion of the quoted statement that the Court acquired merit by. doing so is absurd. But the mischievous statement is that foreigners in Mukden (though it is admitted that they thought the verdict too severe) were well satisfied with the working of the Court. They certainly were not} and we do not see how they could have been.
To recall the case in broad outline, Mr. Scherer, who has been an employee of the Mukden arsenal for some time and speaks Chinese fluently, lost his temper with a small boy who called insulting names after him, jumped out of his riesha and ran after the boy with the intention of hitting him with the stick he carried. There is no trustworthy evidence that Mr. Scherer ever actually touched the boy. The latter fell into a ditch in his flight and struck his head. This was on May 19 and on May 28 the boy died. We understand that Mr.
Scherer maintains that, shortly after the boy was hurt, he paid the family $600, and we have not seen this statement deni and his case is that the boy died of blood-poisoning due to the cut in his forehead having been washed with dirty water and rags. The coroner's report was against accused, who was sentenced as stated above.
So far from foreigners being satisfied with the conduct of the trial, one writer has not hesitated to describe it as a travesty of justice. In the first place no doctor was ever called to give evidence either at the inquest or at the trial, as having attended the child, although it is a fact! that on the sixth day after his injury he was taken to the Japariese Red Cross Hospital by his relations, treated by a Japanese doctor and taken away again immediately. There was only one witness at the trial against Scherer, namely, an aunt of the deceased; who swore that she saw the assault. Scherer on the other hand declared that no one was present but hisGtiesha coolie and a waterman, who both corroborated this statement. Scher-er, however, admitted under eross-examination that he had been informed by the German consular authorities that there was a.witness for the prosecution, This statement is, of course, valueless unless the German Consul were called to prove it, which does not seem to have been done. But the Court immediately argued with great perspicuity that "as it was admitted that there was a witness and as the woman was the only one who had come forward as such, she must be the witness admitted by Scherer." The stick with which the assault is alleged to have been committed was never produced in court. But great emphasis was laid on a ruling in an ancient Chinese law book dating from about 1200 A. to the effect that anyone who has been assaulted by another and who subsequently dies within reasonable time, no matter for what cause, may justly claim to have been murdered by the person who committed the assault.
This ruling, says our correspondent, appears to have been the principal basis on which the unfortunate Mr. Scherer is to be sent to prison with hard labour for seven years, unless a new trial can be obtained. It may be added that Mr. Scherer has the reputation of being a humane man, kind to children, and that the occasion when he ran after the boy was by no means the first on which the latter had insulted him.
It has been suggested that German merchants, if not, officials, are to blame for trying to curry favour with the Chinese and to get business by too openly declaring that they are quite satisfied to come under Chinese Jaw, as it is from China that they get their bread. But this has nothing whatever to do with the case. Whether true or not, the Germans could not help themselves. The treaties with Chile in 1915 and with Switzerland in 1918 are the last that contain extraterritorial rights and it is unlikely that these will ever be granted again. But the fact that China has got jurisdiction over Germans, Austrians and Russians, and is most anxious to get it over others still outside her courts, should make her doubly careful how her judges proceed towards foreigners who come before them. She is on her trial in such instances at least as much as they. The facts as related above in Mr.
Scherer's case have reached us from a source we believe to be absolutely trustworthy; and if, we are sure they may be, those facts can be believed, they set up an irresistible case for a new trial. Incidentally, Marshal Chang Tso-lin is ' undoubtedly anxious to govern, and does in many ways that contrast strongly with other parts of China govern Manchuria well. he be satisfied that the court in his own capital city of Mukden should remain under the slur of having allowed such a miscarriage of justice?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.