COMING TRIAL OF GENERAL LUDENDORFF. PLOTS IN BAVARIA. SINISTER PORTENTS.

An the trial of Ludendorff, which is fixed to begin on the 18th inst., approaches, the political atmosphere in Bavaria is becoming very sultry. Every day portents of a fresh storm are signalled from Munich. All that is certain is that each of the two groups of Reactionaries who expect to settle accounts with one another at the trial is making feverish efforts to turn the proceedings in its own favour. To what extremes they are prepared to go is vividly illustrated by an incident reported to-day. It appears that a “higher official” at present left anonymous dropped, in a moment of convivial indiscretion, the remark that in the Fuchs treason case the accused, Machhaus, who was regarded as an “undesirable witness,” was “removed,” and that Poehner, who is one of Ludendorff’s co-defendants, would share his fate, or at any rate be rendered “incapable of giving evidence.”

To make clear the bearing of this remark several facts must be recalled. In the first place, that Machhaus, who was the chief ringleader in the Francophile Separatist conspiracy for which Fuchs was condemned, died suddenly on the eve of his trial, and was officially stated to have committed suicide. It was said at the time that this was a fortunate circumstance for the ruling powers in Bavaria, as his evidence might have shown that before the Ruhr occupation made Francophiles the main driving force of German reaction very prominent and influential persons in that country had been anything but adverse to accepting French help for the realisation of their political schemes. Consideration must also be given to the peculiar place occupied by Poehner in the past career of the Bavarian dictator. Von Ruhr, who is regarded as an incubus by the Cabinet which appointed him and by the Parliament which encouraged him, and as a traitor by a very large section of the public, awaits the trial of his former protégés and confederates behind a barrier of barbed wire.