SPIES SENTENCED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 29, 4 February 1928, Page 9

SPIES SENTENCED.

Climax To Dangerous

Plotting.

USED BY SINISTER FORCES

BERLIN, February 3,

-At the trial of Jnhann Schreck, Koch and Schultz, on charges of betraying military secrets to a foreign Power, the accused were found guilty. Schretk was sentenced to imprisonment for two years and six months, Koch to imprisonment for one year and 10 months, and Schultz to imprisonment for four and a-half months.

The Court, in passing judgment on Schreck. described his activities as coming within a hair's breadth of creating most serious international complications. The charge was that of selling forged military documents to a foreign Power. These suggested a military conspiracy in Germany to defeat the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Polish General Staff had accepted the documents as genuine, while the submission of photojrraphs of them to other Powers is believed to have hampered the negotiations at Locarno, and also Germany' 6 entry into the League of Nations.

The trial proved that Schreck wns the instrument nf sinister forces, whose purpose was to prevent European reconciliation. The Public Prosecutor taii ho did not believe the conspiracy was of German origin, hut who used Schreck as a puppet.? That would probably never be revealed.