SPIES BEFORE COURT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 157, 3 June 1940, Page 8

SPIES BEFORE COURT

GERMAN WOMAN’S CLAIM. EARLY CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) LONDON, May 31. “The Germans will be in England within three weeks. The Royal Family and Cabinet will be publicly executed. Sir Oswald Mosley will become ruler of Britain under German control.” This statement is attributed to the German wife of an R.A.F. sergeant, Mrs Marie Louise Augusta Ingrain, when she, together with William Swift and Archibald Watts, was charged- at Portsmouth under the Official Secrets Act. '

The prosecution said that Mrs Ingram was employed as a domestic by a senior officer on important duties for the Admiralty. She urged a man to jom the British Union of Fascists. She confided that her brother-in-law was a member of the staff of the German High Command, whom she was supplying with information. The police arrested defendants on May 23. If the offences had occurred less than a week later tfiey would have been before the Court on charges punishable by death. Defendants were committed for trial at the Old Bailey. A spokesman stated i that Fifth Columnists were very active throughout the evacuation and embarkation of the B.E.F. Spies were everywhere. If headquarters occupied a house it would be bombed within a few hours. A man in a British uniform, speaking pei feet English, instructed an officer to move his men two miles along the beach. The officer later remarked to a naval observer: “It seems foolish to embark us there.” The naval officer replied: “We have no intention of so doing.” An hour later the place to which the men would have been moved was “bombed to blazes.”

A message from Calcutta states that 85 Germans, including women, have been arrested for internment.