AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXX, Issue 1785, 16 February 1904, Page 3

AN EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

Tho London Daily Express recently published a remarkable account of an alleged illicit gun-running in tho Thames. It was known that 'during the lust Curlist agitation an Knglish syndicate shipped very large quantities of arms to the toast of Spain near Eorrol. The Spanish Government complained, but nothing cwno of its representations. The same syndicate, according to the Daily Express, supplied the Doers with guns, rifles, and ammunition, which were snipped from the Lower Thames as general merchandise and landed at Delagoa Day, and is at present engaged in despatching large quantities of arms and ammunition to the Persian Gulf, en route to Somaliland. Tho headquarters of tho syndicate are stated by the London journal to be situated in the centre of the metropolis. Some of the guns and rifles are manufactured in England, but the majority are first imported from tho Continent or the United States. In its lower reaches the Thames opens into a broad estuary, on the shores of which the mud flats stretch in broad expanses, intersected by narrow creeks and channels. Small steamers, so the story runs, aro hired by the syndicate, and come down the river in the dusk of tho evening. They aro joined by barges, and quantities of cases, labelled "pottery" or "condensed milk," are quickly transhipped. Then the steamer slips out into the Channel. Tho Daily Express supplies a quite circumstantial account of the experiences of a gentleman who wanted i! 5,000 rifles nnd "no questions asked." By appointment he presented 1 himself at an apparently respectable city ollice, and was promptly shown a large assortment of sample weapons, produced from handy cupboards. lie chose a rifle, and arranged with littl'e difficulty for the 25,000 to be shipped within 1 a month. Tho representative of the syndicate laughed at the idea of there being any difficulty about getting tho rifles out of England without inconvenient questions, lie said that he could provide field guns and machine guns at low rates and get | them delivered a-s easily as he could tho rifles. The whole story resembles more the invention of a novelist than a states mcnt of twentieth century facts, but the Daily Express is emphatic in insisting on its truth, if such a syndicate is really in existence, the War Oflice must be rather more deeply asleep than oven its most hostile criti? has believed.—Exshange.