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Show TROTZKY DOES NOT TAKE THE WORD OF GERMAN MISSION PETROGRAD, Friday, Jan. 4. Leon Trotzky, the Bolshevik i foreign minister, issued a note today saying that Count von Wirbach, head of the German political politi-cal mission at Petrograd, had declared at a sitting of the conference which is considering the situation of war prisoners that he could refute by a telegram received re-ceived by his government the reported arrests of the minority Socialist party in Germany. Recently the count said only eight persons had been arrested for espionage es-pionage and these were not connected with the independent Socialist party. M. Radelc, a member of the Russian peace delegation, replied that the German Ger-man government apparently was misinformed, misin-formed, as the Cologne newspapers had announced the arrest of the Cologne committee com-mittee of tho independent Socialists. This, he added, dealt a blow at the work of peace. Heir von Eckert, in the name of the Ctrman delegation, withdrew its refusal to discuss the position of Polish workmen deported to Germany. A Zurich dispatch on December 27 said that more than 300 of the German minority minor-ity Socialists were arrested on Christmas eve at various towns throughout Ger- many. |