Reichstag Inquiry Into Arms Scandal.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 23, 1913:
Commission to be Appointed, but It Will Not Have Power to Subpoena Witnesses.
SOCIETY LEADERS INVOLVED
Son-ln-law of Adolphus Busch Director of Accused Company and Prince von Donnersmarck Another.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    BERLIN, April 22.— The Budget Committee of the Reichstag voted today to appoint a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the armaments scandals.
    The Socialist Party made a fruitless attempt to have the commission clothed with similar interrogatory powers to those possessed by the Senatorial Titanic and Congressional Money Trust Committees in the United States. A majority of the Budget Committee voted down the proposal, it being asserted that the power to summon witnesses and compel testimony could not be conferred without a special law.
    It would begin to look, therefore, as if the commission's inquiry were already destined to be a nebulous affair.
    The country is staggered by the scandals involving the Krupps and the Deutsche Munitions und Waffenfabrik. It is the latter concern which is specifically accused of attempting to influence the Paris press to print false reports of French military preparations in order to exercise "moral pressure" on public opinion in Germany.
    The owners and managers of the Munitions und Waffenfabrik rank as high socially as the heads of the Krupp concern. One of the managing directors, who signed a letter seeking to "inspire" the French press, is Dr. von Gontard, son-in-law of Adolphus Busch of St. Louis, who was raised to the Prussian peerage in 1911 by the Kaiser. The Gontards' home in Berlin is a meeting place of the aristocratic social set of which royal Princes are leaders.
    One of the Directors of the same company is the multimillionaire Silesian magnate, Prince Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck, a great friend of the Kaiser, who has often visited the Prince's country house as a guest.
    The newspapers are publishing figures showing that in the year in which the company began its agitation in France its dividends increased from 20 to 32 per cent., and the price of its shares rose from 290 to 575.
    The position of the Imperial War Minister, Gen. von Heeringen, was further shaken to-day by the action of the Budget Committee of the Reichstag in rejecting the War Office's proposal to erect a new building for the Kaiser's Military Cabinet. It came to light that Gen. von Heeringen had made a private deal with a banker named von Winterfeld to put up a building in exchange for some property owned by the War Office before the latter had gone through the form of obtaining the Reichstag's sanction.
    The Budget Committee denounced the deal as a brazen flouting of the Reichstag's prerogative and refused to sanction the transaction. The banker concerned will probably sue for damages.