IN INDIA.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 3 May 1917, Page 2

IN INDIA.

GERMAN PLOTS IN EAST. SCHEME TO INVADE INDIA FROM SIAM.

A MYSTERIOUS CRUISE,

LAHORE, January '{s. An astonishing- story of German intrigue was disclosed in the judgment pronounced to-day by the Special Tribunal in the second supplementary Lahore conspiracy case. The voluminous judgment of the Commissioners states that the revolutionist headquarters in San Francisco did not confine itself to literature. One man, Mangu Rain, was sent to Tibet to collect arms ther e and despatch them to the Punjab, and several were sent to Germany. The German Consul in San Francisco, he was told, was paying all th e expenses of the emissaries, and those who were going to Germany interviewed the German Consul, who sent them to New York, Avher 0 Lie German Consul-General arranged for their journey to B'erliu through neutral countries. The main object in sending'them to Germany was that they should be used to print and distribute seditious literature at the front, and that they should accompany released Indian prisoners of war, seduced ro the “Ghadr” movement, to the north-west frontier, to attack the British Government from that side.

Help was sent to Siam, where a plot was hatched to invade India via Burma, Siam being selected as an excellent place in which to collect and to serve as a jumping-off ground. A NEW WITNESS. T-he most important new witness, say the Commissioners, was Jodh Singh, alias Hassanzada, who was sent from Germany to America, and arrived in San Francisco in the company of two Germans, en route for Siam. There he visited the German Consul, where he learnt of the arms’ scheme, and received money for his expenses. There is clear evidence that the plot to invade India via Siam Avas part and parcel of the “Ghadr” movement, in which German agents were concerned. Jodh Singh met Gupta, a wellknown revolutionist, in Nbav York, who adA'ised him to go to Siam, and introduced him to a German nameci Whede. He obtained a passport : through the Persian Consul in New York, for Persia via Siam . He then Avent to Chicago, Avhere Whede introduced him to other Germans, Jocobsen and Boehm, and the German Consul. Jacobsen informed him that he Avas sending men to Siam to fight for Germany, and that Boehm, as an ex-officer, was going to that country to give the Indians a military training.

Wliede, Boehm, and a man named Sterneck sailed for Manila, where Boehm met Jodh Singh and took him to the German Consulate. There he heard that Boehm was to collect 300 Germans in Manila for the Siamese I affair; and then he left Manila with letters of introduction to the German Consul in Amoy. UNDER SEALED ORDERS. A remarkable cruise in connection with the arms’ scheme is described. Jodh Singh said that about April, 1915, under an assumed name, he went on hoard a ship called the Maverick, at San Pedro. The ship, an oil vessel, was under sealed orders on revolutionary work. She was sailing under the American flag, was officered by Americans, and manned by Marshall Islanders, formerly German subjects, with Mexican firemen. They put in at a Mexican port, and thence sailed to Cigaro, an uninhabited isle, where they waited for a month and were visited by some Americans and Mexicans.

Here the time was spent mainly in watching for something- to turn up, and they received surprise visits from a vessel of the Australian Navy, from H.M.S. Rainbow, and from an American man-of-war, which all searched the vessel. From Cigaro they cruised apparently aimlessly about the Pacific, and went to the Johnson Islands, and Java, which they reached on July 22, 1915. There a Dutch torpedo boat seized the vessel, and it was apparently interned.

When we think of the apparently aimless wanderings of the' boat and connect it with what the Gorman Con, suls in San Francisco and Manila told Jodh Singh, comment the Commissioners, we think that it is not improbable that this vessel was employed for the purpose of running arms for the revolutionists.