“FIFTH COLUMNISTS”

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 April 1941, Page 8

“FIFTH COLUMNISTS”

DEADLY. WEAPONS SEIZED

Writing to a relation in Dunedin, a Sydney man tells of his visit to a police exhibition recently. “They showed various articles found in the homes of foreigners resident in Sydney,” says the writer. “In the home of a wealthy Italian they found an invitation to a wedding in Mussolini’s family; also an autographed copy of Vittoria Mussolini’s infamous book. The flyleaf was inscribed over the author’s signature with a personal

message of goodwill. This man had arrived in Sydney with bank drafts totalling £39,000. He was an airman in the Abyssinian war, and his decor-1 ations were also on view. The police explained that, only a week earlier, I there had been an agitation supported ! by influential people, for this man’s release.” There was also shown in this ex-| hibition a “palm” pistol which had been seized —an assassin’s weapon. It' was shaped something like a small | oil can, and there was a small* circular magazine to take 10 .22 cartridges. The idea was to use these to create a panic in a crowd. They could be pushed up against a victim’s body

and the report would.not be sufficiently loud to be noticed in a millihg 1 crowd. . > | Another exhibit was an innocentlooking Italian walking stick, which I proved to be a concealed rifle, the barrel going right through the . core 1 of the stick and the trigger hidden I in the handle. The police spokesman at the exhibition complained that the efforts of ! the force to get such creatures as the : owners of these articles behind barbed wire were being hampered in many ways by those whom one would least expect to intervene. These “fifth cplumists” were not workers or Communists.