GERMAN USE OF NEUTRAL MAIL

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 100, 22 January 1940, Page 8

GERMAN USE OF NEUTRAL MAIL

Evasion Of Contraband

Control

EXTENSIVE TRAFFIC EXPOSED (British OUicial Wireless.) (Received January 21, 7.5 p.m.) RUGBY, January 20. Mention is made in the British reply to the United States concerning the examination of neutral mail of evidence of organized contraband traffic between German sympathizers in the United States and Germany. There is conclusive evidence that in this, as in the last war, extensive use is being made by Germany of neutral postal facilities for the furtherance of her war effort.

This traffic is not merely the outcome of isolated individual acts of generosity. It is a systematically planned attempt, for which the German Government may be presumed to be either directly or indirectly responsible, to evade the contraband control. Evidence of this is found not only in the impersonal character of the parcels, hardly one of which contains a letter, and in the fact that contraband from various senders is being dispatched to one addressee, but also iu the appearance in various neutral newspapers of advertisements_ printed iu tlie German language advising Germans or German sympathisers how best to send contraband material to Germany through the post. This recalls such incidents of bhe last war as the discovery of 400 revolvers in 69 separate parcels consigned to Germany on a neutral packet boat.

The extent of this traffic in contraband can be gauged from the fact that in the mail coming from oue neutral country alone over a period of eight days it was found that 86 per cent, of the parcels opened contained contraband. In one day 200 parcels selected at random for opening all contained contraband.