KING ALBERT'S ESCAPE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 271, 26 April 1915, Page 3

KING ALBERT'S ESCAPE.

GERMAN PLOT REVEALED. ASSASSIN'S IN DISGUISE. ■ How King Albert escaped a characteristically despicable plot against his life set in train by the Germans is told in a recent number of the Depeche de Toulouse. When the Germans occupied Brussels they found in the hospitals of the town 300 Belgian wounded, whose uniforms theiy seized. Their idea was to dress 300 of their own soldiers in' these uniforms and send them to Antwerp, where, passing for Belgian soldiers who had made good their escape, they would murder the King of the Belgians arid his staff. The fact that the ' murderers were wearing Belgian uni-1 forms would enable the German lie-mon-gering agencies to assert with a colorable pretence of veracity that the Bel- j gian King had been assassinated by his own subjects. j Fortunately the disappearance of the 300 uniforms did not pass unnoticed by the Bruxellois, who jumped to at least a partial divination of the plot. So 1 when the 300 assassins left Brussels en ' route for Antwerp a powerful motor-car preceded them to give the alarm. Some six- or seven miles from the defences of Antwerp the 300 were received by an advance-post of the Belgian army, greeted with a semblance of enthusiasm, and directed on their way. They advanced unsuspectingly till at nightfall they found themselves among barbed-wire entanglements and under a fierce fusillade. Not one of the would-be assassins returned to Brussels.