MASTER SPY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 225, 17 May 1932, Page 2

MASTER SPY

COULD NOT HAVE ASSISTED IN SINKING OF THE HAMPSHIRE. LORD KITCHENER'S DEATH It is stated by the Daily Express that the following is the truth— t'old for the first time in a London drawing room in February — of Fritz Joubert Duquesne, the strange flambouyant personality who claims to have been a master spy responsible for the . death of Lord Kitchener. A sensation has been caused in the United States by the recent publica- i tion of the hook which purports to be the life story of Fritz Duquesne. Colonel Norman Thwaites, who in 1917 was head of the British Intelligence Service in the United States, says he knows all ahout that strange war-time figure Fritz Duquesne. "Certainly Duquesne was a spy, and ! a good one from the German point ;j of view," says Colonel Thwaites. "But j| whatever else he did, he certainly could not have had any hand in the loss of the Hampshire and the death of Lord Kitchener. My records show that in June, 1916, when the Hampshire was sunk, Duquesne was in America. I had him arrested in New York in .December, 1917, and held for extradition and trial in England on suspicion of being concerned with a bomb explosion aboard a British ship in which three English sailors were killed. "When Duquesne camje if(to my hands he was passing under the name of Captain Claude Staughton, of the Australian Light Horse. He was in British uniform, with a string of medals up — the D.S.O., the M.C., the Croix de Guerre, the Boer war ribbons, and four wound stripes. When I cross-examined him it was soon clear that he was an impostor. We had his rooms searched and among an extraordinary mass of papers was a docUment in German, signed by the German Consul-General of a South American Republic, which stated: — " 'It is a pleasure for me to recommend to my countrymen the bearer of this, Mr. Fritz Duquesne, captain of engineers in the Boer army, very warmly. The same gentleman has on many occasion given many notable services to our good German cause.'

"We traced Duquesne's record axter that. He had had a remarkable life. He was a Boer, and had fought against us in South Africa. During the world war he acted as a German agent throughout South and North America. At different times he passed under the names of Fordham and Niacud (Ducain spelt hackwards). "We had evidence that Duquesne was implicated in the explosion aboard the British ship Tennyson. A tin box supposed to contain films was loaded aboard the Tennyson. Delayed action bombs were concealed in that box, and when the ship was at sea they exploded. Three sailors were killed, and the ship was terribly damaged, but managed to reach port. Suspicion also attached to Duquesne in regard to a similar explosion aboard another British ship." i