Old Ludwig

New Guinea is not a part of the world where white men can readily afford to execute one another. In all that wet island jungle, whose northeastern, German segment was put under Australian mandate at the end of the War, there are some 4,000 whites scattered among 700,000 blacks and numberless pigs, rats, butterflies and birds of paradise. Until last week the ruling Britons had hanged some 45 black men, not one white. But the elderly German gold prospector, Ludwig Schmidt, had gone too far.

"Old Ludwig'' and three others had raided a native compound for women. As they chained the squat, tattooed booty, the clubhouse of Papuan men spewed out a phalanx of rescuers. Schmidt raised his rifle, shot and killed three. On trial at Rabaul on the neighboring island of New Britain, Schmidt's sole defense was that he had planned to frighten the blacks and what was so bad about killing a few Papuans anyway? Old Ludwig was sentenced to die.

That would have been the end of Old Ludwig except that the Australian Labor Party is theoretically opposed to capital punishment and is actually and vehemently an enemy of black men because they are a source of cheap labor. Labor members of the Australian House of Representatives ignited a blaze of protest against the execution of Old Ludwig. To Labor the ''Sane Government" coalition of Prime Minister Joseph Aloysius Lyons replied that capital punishment is Australia's law, sharply adding that Labor seemed to want one law for blacks, another for whites. Finally the Government Ministers pointed out the fact that for reasons unknown to anybody but himself, Old Ludwig had refused to appeal his sentence.

Last week after a sound night's sleep Ludwig Schmidt walked firmly to the gallows in Rabaul, was hanged.

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