NEWS IN BRIEF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1824, 9 May 1918, Page 1

NEWS IN BRIEF.

/ IP HUNS HAD GOT TO PARIS.

The Matin publishes the text of a message received on the evening of September Bth, 1914, by Mr Herrick, then American Ambassador at Paris, from his colleague at Berlin, Mr Gerard, as follows: —“Extremely urgent. The German General Staff recommends all Americans to leave Paris via- Rouen and Havre. They will have to leave soon if they wish to go.—Gerard.” This message shows that the German General Staff did not know on the morning of September Bth that there was an unbeaten French Army in front of them. It also shows the sinister designs of the enemy on the capital. Why should all Americans be advised to leave if nothing inhuman or illegal was to be perpetrated?

A grim story is told of the air raid on Paris, While the work of rescue was going on by candlelight in one of the houses which had suffered most the crowd were suddenly horrified by the defiant notes of the “Racoczy March,” blared out apparently by a strong brass band. Everyone was aghast at so brutal an insult, till the tenant of a flat in an upper floor said that he had an orchestrion which played that particular tune. The explosion must have sent it in motion. At the risk of their firemen managed to reach the machine, but in the dark, and not knowing anything about its mechanism, they could not stop it. It went on till the floor on which it stood collapsed.

Secret Service officers have arrested in New York a German named Eugen Schwerdt, who for two years past .has successfully posed as a patriotic Belgian engaged in the wool business. Schwerdt is known to have been provided by Heinrich Albert, the financial agent of the German spy machine, with .£(100,000 with which to replenish the Gorman .wool supply from allied and American sources. Born in Munster, Westphalia, Schwerdt lived lor 28 years at Antwerp and protended to (lee with the Belgians when the Germans captured that port. He came to the United States where, as a Belgian, he Ims ever since worked for ; , German interests. Schwerdt used his son to further the German cause, despite the fact that the boy had served in the Belgian army and had sworn allegiance to King Albert and the Belgian cause. He managed to get the boy out of the Belgian army, bring him to the United States, and send him to South America armed with Belgian credentials to pose as a friend of the allies anfl work for Germany.