GERMAN GUILT PROVED

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 49, 27 August 1917, Page 7

GERMAN GUILT PROVED

INDIGNATION IN SCANDINAVIA.

(FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDED.) LONDON, 29th June. Last Saturday the 'Christiania police made known the fact of an extensive organisation, busied with bombs and explosives likely to be used against Norwegian ships. At the same time, they p,rrested Baron Rautenfels, just arrived from Germany, and seized his luggage, which was in the nature of a small arsenal. The discovery aroused great indignation, and even the Swedish papera demand an unconditional excuse from the German Government.

Bautenfels has been examined by the Norwegian police, but ho is an. official courier of the Kaiser, and will probably be handed over to Germany. It was on 2nd June that the Christiania police warned the police authorities at all the, Norwegian ports of the existence of the conspiracy. On 15th June Rautenfels arrived, and was arrested at ■ Christiania, with two typists and one tailor, besides a typist at Porsgrnnd, a small port about 60 or 70 miles south-west of Christiania. In the tailor's lodging, a room hired of a workman's family, who were temporarily absent, they found a complete bomb store stocked in four big and threo smaller trunks, besides a large heap of bombs and! other explosives carelessly strewn about a loft. The whole collection proved to consist of 211 bombs, of which 94 were large, 12 smaller, and rectangular in shape, and 104 smaller cylindrical bombs; there were also nine "bunker-coal pieces," 269 detonators, 33 "chewing-tobacco rolls," 32 "cigarettes," 31 "chalk-phis," and 270- acid tubes, the total weight being about one ton.

It was also ascertained that the storing of explosives had begun as early as February, and that Rautenfels's trunks were despatched by the Foreign Office in Berlin, bore the address "German Legation, Christiania," and were sealed with the Imperial seals. The German Legation was invited to send a representative to the police station to attend the opening of the latest arrived trunk. ' No one appeared. This trunk contained 55 bombs. The opening of the trunk took place notwithstanding the menacing protest of the German Minister.

One of the arrested persons confessed that the bombs were intended for American steamers leaving Norway, while the German version is that the bombs were intended for revolutionary purposes in Finland.

The one thing clear is that the German Government through its complicity in the transport of bombs and t-xpio-sives via Sweden and Norway has violated the neutrality of both countries. The Tidens Tegn (Norway) reports that on Wednesday a man was arrested while photographing a. rail-' way bridge. Immediately he was discovered he destroyed his photographing apparatus. He explained that he was a Russian estate owner, but it was found that lie was unable to speak Russian. He then tried to speak English, and at last got so excited that he broke into German, which he spoke fluently. He has been expelled from Norway. The Norwegian Shipping Gazette learns that a fire on board the Norwegian steamer Amis a few days ago was caused by an instrument obtained from a German explosive store. The Morgenblad states that a German wireless station has been discovered at Hisoe Island, outside Arendale, on the Skager Eak. Throughout Norway in the course of the last, few days a great number of Germans have been arrested. Most of these have been released, but a number have been expelled from the country. As soon as the great bomb plot was discovered two Stockholm newspapers known for their pro-German sympathies

published a. story to the effect that a Swedish mate named Wennerholm had placed explosives on board a British steamer in Stockholm harbour. They stated that Wennerholm got the explosives from the British Legation, and that the idea was to destroy a British, steamer so as to provoke public anger against Germany. ..Both the British and French Ministers at Stockholm made sharp protests against these insinuations. Socialdemokraten (M. Branting's paper) says the explosives were undoubtedly German.