GERMAN NAVAL “SECRET”

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 205, 25 May 1921, Page 5

GERMAN NAVAL “SECRET”

The relentlessness of German justie*. when it is a question of naval or military integrity was seen in a case at Hamburg recently, when a workman named T.indinger was sent to prison for 18 months for stealing the plans of the Glocben before she was built and trying to sell them. The alleged crime was thus nearly ten years old' at the time of the trial.

The fact that Lindinger did not succeed seemed to count-for nothing in the eyes of the Court. The accused was employed in the Bloom and Voss works nt Hamburg in a humble capacity, and got into touch with another employee who had obtained the plans of the battleships Goebcn and Moltko. T.indinger 'took thorn to Antwerp, and in a quayside seamen’s grogshop tried to dispose of them. Here he met a. man who offered to buy the plans for dC2S. Lindinger took him for an ’Englishman, and completed the deal, but he was really a clerk in the emiploy of Blnem and Voss responsible for the security of the plans,- and was only too glad to pet them back. Lindinger used the money to get to England, a.nd there lie lived till the war broke out, when he was interned for four and a half years. In March, 1919, he was sent back to Hamburg, where he believed himself to be safe owing io the political amnesty. This belief, however, proved false. He unrecognised, and was arrested on July 8, 1920. The fate of the Gocben and Aloltke nre now sufficiently well known, but the law ran its course when Lindinger received the above sentence.