FRENCH WAR RUSE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2494, 22 June 1915, Page 15

FRENCH WAR RUSE

GERMANS LED ASTRAY. The Paris "Correspondent" publishes an interesting account of the way in which the German Intelligence Department was' tricked at the time when the 75 gun was being constructed. It was in 1893 and 1894 that Major Deport was perfecting at Puteaux the 75 gun which he had invented, and General Deloye, Director of Ordnance at the Ministry of War, set to work to put tho Germans on the wrong track. The head of tho German Intelligence Department, Colonel von Schwarzkoppen, succeeded after great difficulty in bribing a foreman at the Puteaux works, who provided him with a series of plans of the gun which was being prepared. He was convinced of the value of these plans when he found that they were entirely confirmed by information purchased from other sources. As a matter of fact, the foreman was "betraying" his country under orders, and had provided Germany with documents which were perfectly authentic, but which had nothing to do with tho 75 gun. They were simply the plans of the Ducros gun, which had been rejected. General Deloye set to work to con. firm the impression thus produced, and he arranged that tho German military attache sliould learn from a variety of sources information which suggested that France had adopted the _ Ducros pattern. The German authorities were entirely hoodwinked, and they at once set to work to make their 77 gun, which was superior to the Ducros pattern, and by the end of 1896 the greater number of their active regiments had been providod with it. It was then that the French army was suddenly provided with the far superior 75 guii designed by Major Deport, which had been constructed so secretly that even the reporter of the War Estimates believed that the Ducros gun had been adopted.