FUNDS SUPPLIED BY JAPANESE

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 34, 4 November 1942, Page 6

FUNDS SUPPLIED BY JAPANESE

Purchase Of Magazine

THREE MEN ADMIT BEING ENEMY AGENTS (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received November 3, 8.45 p.nt.) NEW YORK, November 2. Two Americans and one British subject pleaded guilty to charges of acting as unregistered agents for the Japanese Government. They were Joseph Hilton Smyth, journalist, formerly foreign correspondent of the Chicago “Tribune,” Walker . Grey Matheson, former news analyst in the Ofiice of Co-ordination of IntraAmerican Affairs, and Irvine Harvey Williams, British subject, an accountant. Defendants admitted the purchase with Japanese funds of the magazine “The Living Age” which, from June, 1938, to August, 1941, published material furnished by the Japanese. The prosecutor alleged that defendants agreement with the Japanese ViceConsul at New York included the adoption of a favourable policy toward, the Japanese on all questions. Defendants Were remanded for sentence.

Smyth, according to an American Press report, four years ago suddenly emerged from abscurity and bought the wellestablished magazines "Living Age and “North American Review.” Later he bought an interest in “Current History and the “Saturday Review of Literature. He also founded a weekly newsletter called “The Foreign Observer and a Press service, the Negro News Syndicate. In September the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Smyth and his two colleagues. Matheson, who was educated partly in Tokio, was writing short-wave nroaacasts about the Far East for Latin America. The F. 8.1. claimed that he was hired in J93< by the Japanese to spy on the United States Communist Party. Williams, who became “Living Age’s” president, was educated in Japan and Germany.