REPORT DENIED.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 9

REPORT DENIED.

Germany And Plague Bacilli In War. AMBASSADOR'S STATEMENT. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, March 1. Dr. Friedrich Stahmer, the German Ambassador in Britain, on behalf of the Onr' T < nn Government, states that Sir Ber ley Moynihan's statement that plague bacilli were dropped in bombs during the war, is without foundation.

WITHDRAW NOTHING.

J STATEMENT CONFIRMED. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, March 1. Sir Berkeley Moynihan, in a letter to the Press, says he has nothing to withdraw in connection with hie statement that the Germans tried to spread plague bacilli. He draws attention to passages in the second volume of the British Official History of the War, stating that it was rumoured on the Western Front in 1916 that the Germans might use plague bacilli, though it was regarded as Improbable. Instructions were given to have rats' examined at the laboratory, and later, in January, 1918, the medical officer of the Fifth Army reported that the mobile laboratory had examined material dropped from a German balloon and bacilli, resembling bacillus pestis, had been isolated. Increased attention was thereafter paid to rat destruction. I