HAUL OF SPIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 169, 17 July 1916, Page 11

HAUL OF SPIES.

Sum DISGUISED AS OLD WOMEN. A remarkable story snowing the extraordinary versatility of tie German Bpy is related by a British colonial officer just home on leave (says the "Weekly Dispatch'). "On the part of the British front where my regiment was stationed," he said, "we were puzzled to know the means by which the German Intelligence Department was able to discover certain pieces of information, not of very great importance, but Etill important enough to worry us. "Now, at the back of our lines the peasants were ploughing the fields with the admirable nonchalance and indifference to shells which ha"re so won our admiration. We knew it could not be any of them, for they were all known to us—or at least we thought they all were. "This business was getting much too iwt to be tolerated any longer, so an officer was ordered out, but this thne he took tritih him half-a-dozen men. In the wnrse of their search they came to an isolated <f«trm through the door of which wag passing an old and bent peasant woman, whoee face was furrowed with She usual Bnes of age. "Our men were inclined to be suspieous about this woman, and promptly told her to hold her hands up. Having secured her, they marched inside the farm and found three other supposed peasants there with hoes in their ihands, ■who affected well-feigned surprise when we told them in turn to hold up their Ihands. "When all four had been marched up into line, we started giving their faces a good scraping, and, as we suspected, the age lines easily washed off, revealing the unmistakable physiognomies of Germans. Seeing that the game was up, they promptly confessed their real identity. The first one we had captuTed was a German officer, and the other three non-commissioned offir-ers. "They had cleverly disguised themselves as peasant women, painting the necessary lines, and, to make the deception even more complete, had actually worked in the field from morning til evening as hard as any of the genuine peasants. "The fate of our two misshrg officers was Boon cleared up. They had gone to the farm to reconnoitre, and been shot to prevent their mission being accomplished. It was generally admitted we tod made the best haul" of spies for ln aay weeks. After that the leakage of information ceased, and the Germans opposite out trenches were unable to post up notices saying what regiments were coming to relieve us, as they 'had been able to do before ><we located this spy nest."