THE GERMAN SPY PLAGUE.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 20 March 1917, Page 2

THE GERMAN SPY PLAGUE.

Notwithstanding the summary way the French dispose of persons caught spying, they have all their work cut to cope with the plague. The favourite guise' of the Bbche intelligence agent is to don a dead Poilu’s uniform and simulate shell-shock. In this way he is carried back with the real French wounded. He has no identity disc, and doesn’t remember anything As time goes on he walks around, and then at a convenient moment endeavours to slip away. But the French sentinels are now very wide awake, and it is seldom the spy escapes being shot. Women, too, have been caught quite recently doing their best to obtain information for the Germans. One pretty girl —not mor e than twenty-one—-speaking French like a native, got into France through Switzerland, and eventually managed to get right into the war area in a town occupied by the staffs of two Army Corps. But her flagrant amours with officers who knew things aroused suspicion, and she was arrested. A minute search revealed tracings of trenches under her two big toe nails, which were false, but fitted into the toes like a cap. Needless to say, she was shot.