THE SPY.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 5 April 1917, Page 2

THE SPY.

ITS OWN BETRAYED IN BRITAIN LIFE STORY OF CAPTxVIN VON DEE GOLTZ. PLOT THAT FAILED. New York. Captain Horst von der Goltz, alais Bridgeman Taylor, dynamite plotter and self-confessed German spy, whose avowed leadership in the plot to blow-tup the Welland Canal in Canada is on* record in the files of the United States courts, describes in a signal article" in th» World how he became an accredited secret agent of the German Government. Incidentally,, he declares that, following his arrest, and detention in Brixton Prison in 1915 on suspicion of being a Gterman spy and the seizure of Captain von Papon's papers, which showed the connection between the dismissed German military attache at Washington and the silent prisoner in Brixton Gaol, ho escaped death by insisting that he was a major in the Mexican army, thereby outwitting the Home Secretary. A portion of his letter to the Home Secretary, dated "H.M. Prison, Brixton, June 1, 1915," is reproduced in an article in support of this astonishing statement. "BETRAYED.' 7 Captain' von der Goltz, says tho World, ii not a fakir or a fictionist. He writes his autobiography because he feels that he has been betrayed and abandoned by the German Government, and that he feels himself absolutely of fealty to its service. He explains how he first became a secret agent, at the age when most boys are playing marbles, by the accidental discovery of a document among his dead aunt's papers mentioning "occurrences connected with personages very highly exalted, some in Germany, and some in uussia." He confided the contents of this document, he states, to a retired general, a close friend of his father, under a pledge of secrecy. The Hun general, however,, broke faith, and went to Bcrin with his information.

Young von der Goltz was promptly visited by an agent of the German Chancellor, who tried to secure both rhc document and von der Goltz's pledge of silence/

The future spy, acording to his story, ran away to Paris, and then to Nice and Monte Carlo, where a supposed woman German spy advised him to go with his information to Petrograd, by way of Italy, Constantinople, and Odessa. Ae Petrograd, h e says, he discovered that this woman was a Eussian secret agent. He was driven by a Eussian political agent in a closed drosky to the residence of Count Witte, but being advised that Germany would not only pardon his indiscretion but offer him a career, he fled back to the Fatherland, u-here he began his spy-training in a cadet school for Germany's future generals. A "DOUBLE." Soon afterwards he became a page at the German Court, and it was discovered that he bore a remarkable resemblance to the youthful head of a certain grand-ducal house, by blood part Gerraan and part Eussian. The striking resemblance A\-as seized upon to substitute him for his "double" after he had been carefully instructed in minute details of Ms "double's" career, and his French had beer, perfected. He was then informed that his apparently pro-German "double" the prince, had been invited to visit his Eussian relatives, but that he, von der Goltz, would, go in his stead with a tutor and two new valets as his retinue. His duty was to report to his "tutor" everything his "relatives" said.

After three weeks of "playing prince/' his tutor informed liim that a high Russian diplomat was about to leave Petrograd with definite intsructions to draw up a Eussian agreement affecting Germany's interests with a third Great Power, that delay was imperative, and that, under pain of disgrace, he must visit the diplomat's house that night, in the diplomat's absence at the club,, set back the clock in the diplomat's study with the connivance of a member of the diplomat's household and secure the diplomat's document of instructions.

He secured the papers, he states, and was recalled the next day by his "family," on the pretext that cholera had broken out in Petrograd.

When he returned to 'Berlin he was told that he had Avon his spurs, and his espoinage education in the cadet corps proceeded.