FRENCH SPIES IN ENGLAND

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 160, 8 July 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

FRENCH SPIES IN ENGLAND

A "Daily Chronicle" correspondent in the course of a description of the ■French general staff relates the following remarkable story: Iv the Fashoda crisis France.began to fear the worst ,aud the headquarters 'staff was taken unawares in the event of a declaration of war on the part of England. Nothing was known of the topography of Great Britain and Ireland," safe" such knowledge as could he obtained from maps and English reports, which no one ever read. The {War Office did not possess a single officer sufficiently acquainted with the English language to undertake the task of surveying the coast from Sheerness to Penzance without betraying his nationality. The whole "■arrison of Paris was ransacked, the provinces were examined, but the "rara avis" was not forthcoming. At last the prophet was found in the person of a non-commissioned officer in the artillery, the son of a Communist refugee in London, where the youth had acquired a thorough knowledge of English and of England. The ].on-commissjo!ied officer was appointed the head of a mission, consisting of- three captains and nine lieutenants. The work was accomplished in a. fortnight; the coast between Sheerness and Penzance being carefully mapped out.