BECOMES A GERMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 26, 31 July 1933, Page 11

BECOMES A GERMAN

BRITON'S' CURIOUS CAREER

Recollections of a spy trial iv France six years ago are stirred up by the announcement that Captain Vincent Stranders, a former British staff officer, has become a naturalised German citizen. The necessary papers were granted by the Thuringian authorities.

Captain Strandcrs, a former member of the British Disarmament Commission in Germany, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Paris in 1927 for espionage in Franco on behalf of Germany. It was alleged that he supplied the Gorman Secret Service with information concerning French aeroplanes and tanks. Straudera declarea that he sought information only for commercial purposes. The French, however, took the view that as he had formerly, been attached to the British Intelligence Service he could not have misunderstood the nature of a mission entrusted to him by one of the he"ads |of the German spy system.

After his release Captain Stranders travelled through Germany, delivering loctures in which ho declared Britain and her Allies were responsible for the war. He was subsequently ordered to bo expelled from Prussia for antiGovernment propaganda, but the sentence was postponed "to give him an opportunity to correct his behaviour."

■ British official records i show that Captain Stranders was- bol^i in 1881. After leaving school he was a clerk, commission agent, and tutor by turns. When, in 1914, war broke out he obtained a commission in .the Eoyal Engineers. In 1917 he was transferred to the Eoyal Flying Corps, and \in 1918 became a technical staff officer of the Eoyal Air Porce.