BRITAIN’S REARMAMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 May 1938, Page 11

BRITAIN’S REARMAMENT

HUGE SABOTAGE PLAN Three thousand spies are known to be working in Britain to-day. They are in the armament factories, they are at the aerodromes, they are trusted servants in the great Government departments. They have direct access to the most closely-guarded secrets of England’s national defence. Slowly and with infinite care, the ghostly British Secret Service —the 1 “S” men —are ferreting them out. But it. is a colossal task. At M. 15, the mystery room of the British Secret Service chiefs, an intensive drive is being organised in conjunction with the famous 40 0.8. headquarters of the Admiralty Intelligence Department. This year £450,000 will be spent by Britain's Secret Service Department — apart from the money spent by the Army and Navy Intelligence. For each member of the public this spy campaign is- a life and death matter. Now it only affects their pockets. To-morrow it will affect their life and existence. Foreign agents and spies can and do get into England easily. Numbers of day excursionists enter Britain each week and overstay the period stipulated on their tickets. In Whitehall, the contents of wastepaper baskets 1 of every Government department are collected each night by a responsible oiiicial. They are fed to the furnaces. The 120,000 employees 1 recently engaged at the “shadow factories” have filled in forms giving their complete history—names of parents, schools, personal details . . . And unostentatiously, this information is being checked by a special department.

Any inquisitiveness or discontent is noted.

During the recent Cabinet crisis, agitators, particularly in the west and the north, attempted to stir up strife. They suggested a “go slow” strike as a protest against Mr. Chamberlain’s policy. At one time 1 there was a danger that re-armament would be seriously delayed. Modern espionage does not stop at. getting information. There are wreckers at work.

PLAN OF SABOTAGE A huge l sabotage plan to delay Britain's re-armament has been discovered by the secret service. Disguised as munitions-ivorkers. speical detectives have been drafted into arms factories, and have now marked most of the wreckers down, recording their names in a secret Black List.

These agents of Foreign Powers work in two ways.

One class moves from factory to factory—all are expert workmen, and find no difficulty in getting jobs—stirring up discontent and making trouble.

The second and more sinister class tampers with machinery, imperilling scores of lives and the results of months of work.

Two examples, hitherto unreported, of their work were given to a special correspondent of the “Sunday Graphic” recently: — One: A new destroyer, built in a shipyard in the North, pulled up with a jolt during speed trials. A spanner had got into the engine. The jolt upset the whole adjustment of the ship, delaying delivery two months. Two: The blade of a special propeller constructed to give battleships an extra speed of two knots was ready for casting when a sudden and violent explosion occurred. No branch of Britain’s armament industry has been immune from their insidious attack.

Shipyards, explosive l factories, aircraft works, engineering shops, and even the premises of scientific instrument makers have been affected. Besides the incident reported' recently of R.A.F. planes “maliciously damaged” near Manchester and occurrences in warships at Plymouth and Chatham, there have been similar reports from Barrow-in-Furness, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Coventry. Sheffield, Newcastle, Glasgow. Typical instances are: — Interference with destroyers’ engines; Handful of iron tilings found in a 'plane engine; Minor explosion in propeller-maker works.

The Secret Service believes that it. has found in Scotland a well-establish-ed organisation centre for foreign espionage. Inquiries are made by the police and War Office throughout the country, and particularly at Roslyn and Invergorden dockyards. R.A.F, aerodromes, and points along the coast where oil storage tanks are being erected for defence purposes.

Officers of vessels plying between Scotland and the Continent arc being interrogated, the belief being that a person acting as liaison' between the spies and certain Continental Powers has been using these boats under the guise of an ordinary passenger.