The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 1916. ENEMY ESPIONAGE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 92, 24 March 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 1916. ENEMY ESPIONAGE.

One of the great side-issues of tJio war, and one which has seriously handicapped the Allies, has been the utterly unscrupulous but wonderfully far-reaching system of espionage carried on by Germany. In neutral countries the work that has been done in the nature of misrepresentation and the stirring up of strife has been amazing. Great efforts have been made in Switzerland to damage England in the eyes of the people, hut to some extent this has now been frustrated, and the dirty German tricks exposed. There is now an agitation for the expulsion of an unscrupulous mischief-maker in the person of Major von Bismarck, a Military Attache. Some information regarding him and his doings is supplied by a special correspondent of the Christchureh Press in Switzerland, and in commenting on this, the Press says: This rascal; some of our readers may perhaps remember, was mentioned by our correspondent in Switzerland, Mrs' Julian Grande, in a communication we printed last September. In her account of the wa\ in which Germany was working the corruptible section of the Swiss press, Mrs Grande remarked; "A UH Bias who had walked over the roofs of some German-Swiss newspaper oib'ces lately would have seen, I believe, the .Military Attache of the German Legation Staff, suitably named Bismarck, busy telling ■<; German naturalised as a Swiss uii.it ti: write and: bow to write it. in order to put England in a false light and cause ill-| feeling against her in Switzerland."! What has doubtless brought to a' head the anger of patriotic Swiss against the German intrigues is the "affair of the two Colonels," as it has been called. This affair was causing intense excitement :a Swit-

zerland in January. The Colonels are dc Wattenwyl, head of. tlio Svu;-> Staff Intelligence Department, ami Egli, sub-chief of the General Stair. The former, in the course of his service, receives from the Swiss frontiers reports which mention the movements of troops on the French. German "ami Italian frontiers, and he is accused of having forwarded each day a summary of these reports to the German and Austrian Military Attaches at Berne. Egli is accused of having had deciphered in his office a telegram from a Russian source and of having communicated the contents to the German Legation! Towards the end of last year there began to grow a general public desire that the Federal Council should deal with the case, and should resume the powers which on the outbreak of war it surrendered to the General Staff. In January the Council decided to send the two Colonels to trial before a military tribunal. The Federal Council acted very unwisely in investing the military authorities with their extraordinary powers, and, according to the correspondent of "The Times," the people and the Council itself have for some time realised that the military oligarchy should be ended. The correspondent, while writing in mosti generous terms of the sincere desire) of the Swiss people to remain really neutral, does not hesitate to say that there is a general belief that some of the members of tire Swiss Etat Major —the military authorities—are "not only pro-German in their sympathies, but are directly under German influence and even control." The opportunities of these traitors to inflict injury, on the interests of the Allies have obviously been important ones, but there are other dangers than espionage while German influence iv at work in Swiss military circles, if Germany should, in a fit of desperation, try to force a way through Switzerland so as to turn the French right in front of Belfort, the Swiss Array could retire and let them through. It is much to be hoped that the demand for the expulsion of von Bismarck means that the Swiss Government and people are going to set their bouse in order.