ORDERED TO SERVE

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3032, 20 March 1917, Page 6

ORDERED TO SERVE

GERMAN EX-CONSUL'S SON TO JOIN LABOUR'UNIT. The son of the German ex-Consul at Sunderland applied for temporary exemption recently. The ex-Consul, E. H. Ahlers, was the central figure in a sensational trial soon after the outbreak of war, when he was sentenced to death. On a technicality, on appeal, the sentence was quashed, and Ahlers, adopting the name of Andorsen, moved to Surbiton. The fact that he was living near the main line of the London and South-Western Bailway was mentioned in the House of Commons, with the Result that Ahlers was subsequently interned, and also his wife, j The appellant is the eldest -son of Ahlers, and is a clerk employed in Cheapside. He had appealed on domestic grounds, and also "because I had to register as an enemy alien, although I am a British-born subject of naturalised English parents of Q«ri>i*-n birth; and on account of a clause b«ing ridded to my. registration paper saying, 'He shall not associate with any members of His Majesty's Naval or Military Forces without the permission, of a competent naval or military authority.' " - ' . The clerk at a previous hearing had been instructed to communicate with the Home Office, and he now read the following rpuly: "With reference to the case of 0. E. Andersen, or Ahlers, I am directed by the Secretary of State to say that he has had occasion to jeconsidor'the ense. and in consultation with the 1 -War Office ho has_ doe Wed to revoke the Order made against Andersen under the Defence of the Boalm Regulations 14 (h) to enable him to be called up for military service and placed in one of the Special Labour Batf.nlions to which, under +hfi recent Army Council instructions, British subieota of enemy origin are posted. . . ."

Andersen applied for temporary exemption "to enable him io find a comnetent man to take-ovr his father's ■business, and o>>e month final exemption was granted. \