KITCHENER'S DEATH

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 155, 29 December 1925, Page 7

KITCHENER'S DEATH

CONTROVERSY CONTINUED

MINES ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN LAID. (UNITED MiESS ASSOCIATION—COPIKIQHT.) (SIDNEI SUN CABLI.) LONDON, 27th December. Mr. Frank Power, writing in the "Referee," asserts that the Hon. W. C. Bridgeman (First Lord of the Admiralty) made a futile effort to evade charges that (1) more than twelve j survived from the disaster to the armoured cruiser Hampshire (in which Ldrd Kitchener and his staff were travelling to Eussia, and which was lost off the Orkneys on sth Juno, 1910); (2) Lord Kitchener escaped in a small | boat, and survived two nights and a day in an inaccessible part of the Orkney coast; (3) Kitchener's body I was found elsewhere; (4) an infernal machine exploded aboard the Hampshire; and (5) the navy was guilty of slackness in the sending of rescue | parties.

Mr. Power declares that the Germans were aware of Lord Kitchener's mission sufficiently in advance of his departure to lay thirty-four mines in the vicinity of the Orkneys inscribed "Got strafe Kitchener,'? and that Mr. Bridgeman has failed to disclose that a trawler was mined and sunk in the Hampshire's path .three days prior to the disaster to the cruiser.

When replying to a series of questions in the House of Commons before Christmas, Mr. Bridgeman declared that it was untrue that the sailing of H.M.S. Hampshire with Lord Kitchener for Eussia was an open secret. The ship was not selected till ten days before-she sailed, and her course Was not fixed until the last moment. No mines had previously been reported to have been laid near the Orkneys, but the Admiralty had no doubt that the Hampshire foundered as a result of striking a moored mine laid by U75 in preparation for the Jutland Battle. Furthermore, Admiral yon Scheer 'a report of the battle showed that 1775 had been in that area. The statement that spies had previously been shot aboard the Hampshire was a wicked fabrication.