DENOUNCED AS A SPY

Evening Star, Issue 21744, 12 June 1934, Page 9

DENOUNCED AS A SPY

PRESS CORRESPONDENT IN GERMANY MR PAHTER’S POSITION Frew Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. BERLIN, June 10. On the strength of Sir John Simon’s statement that there was no question of Mr Noel Panter’s being expelled from Germany and nothing to prevent his return, Mr Pauter arrived .with the intention of interviewing the leaders of the Nazi Party. He duly reported his arrival at the Foreign Office, and was informed three hours later that he had been denounced as a military spy. Mr Panter sought the advice of the British Embassy, and was advised to leave the country. While he was en route to the frontier the police entered the train and endorsed his passport: “Expelled from Germany.” The chief of the Nazi Press bureau published an article asserting that if people like Mr Panter wish to be military spies, well and good, but they must not come as newspaper correspondents.

Mr Panter, who was the Munich correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph,' was arrested in Germany in October last. Upon his release he stated that during the last three days of his imprisonment he was allowed to leave his cell, which was next door to the one that Herr Hitler occupied after the Nazi Putsch in 1923. “Throughout the interrogations I denied that 1 was a spy or had ever seen military service,” he said. “ All the questions indicated that I was suspected of espionage, I emphasised that I had always acted solely and simply as a journalist, but refused to disclose the sources of my information, saying that this was the concern of the ‘ Daily Telegraph Subsequently Sir John Simon, in the House of Commons, said that he had made vigorous representations regarding the arrest of Mr Panter through the German Embassy in Loudon and the British Embassy in Berlin. He had now been informed by the German Foreign Minster that “ no order of expulsion had been made against Mr Panter, and he, therefore, is free to return to Germany, as no charge or other penalties are held against him.”