COMMITTED FOR TRIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 135, 4 December 1935, Page 11

COMMITTED FOR TRIAL

SUSPECTED SPY

CASE FOR OLD BAILEY

(Received December 4, 10 a.m.)

LONDON, December 3.

Dr. Gortz has been committed for trial at the Old Bailey in January on charges of spying in the interests of Germany.

According to evidence given at Margate last week, Gortz went to Mildenhall and took a bungalow at Broadstairs on September 14, accompanied by a girl, Marianne Emig, who was stated to be his niece. They went to Germany at the end of October, and Gortz ■ returned alone and was arrested. Kenneth Lewis, a young aircraftman in the Royal Air Force, told how, while at home on leave from Lee-on-Solent, he met Marianne, who offered to help when he was having motor-cycle trouble. He had tea with Gortz and Marianne next day. Gortz told of experiences in the German Air Force. The conversation worked round to the Royal Air Force, and their information in that connection surprised him. Marianne said she was a glider, and asked him to send her photographs of Royal Air Force machines, telling him to remember that in event of another war Germany would be on the English side. He sent her photographs of machines, a semi-aerial view of the Lee-on-Solent air station, and a few newspaper cuttings which were of no value. When he wrote he used Royal Air Force notepaper at her request. Cross-examined, Lewis said he did not supply any secret information. The photographs were obtainable at a shop. Major Similey Cook, of the War Office, produced notes relating to aeroplanes, also cipher and cither documents and notebooks, one containing the address nf Dr. Thost, a German journalist recently expelled from London. Gortz, in a statement to the police, said he was merely collecting material for a novel. His movements were not secret, and he went to Germany only because he was short of ready money.