WANTED BY GESTAPO

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 260, 1 August 1942, Page 3

WANTED BY GESTAPO

New Zealander’s Coolness And Courage

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, July 30. The outstanding coolness and courage of Mr. Norman Davis, former Dunedin Rhodes Scholar, when living in peril of death from the Gestapo was remarked on by Mr. Patrick Maitland, war correspondent in the south Pacific for the London "News Chronicle,” who has arrived in New Zealand. Mr. Davis, who from the outbreak of the war till March, 1941. was Press attache to the British legation at Sofia, was subsequently one of a group of prisoners which included Mr. Maitland taken by the Italians in Yugoslavia. During the period of their detention lhe German Gestnixi was staging treason trials in Bulgaria and Mr. Davis was indicted as lhe most criminal spy of all. Though Davis's peril was obvious—he was in fact sentenced to death in abseniin—he showed lhe most exemplary courage and good humour, said Mr. Maitland. lie owed Ills eseajie cither to the Italians failing to identify him with the man for whom the Gestapo was advertising or to lack of Italian enthusiasm for co-operatiofi with the Germans.