SPY’S AMAZING STORY

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 5 March 1935, Page 6

SPY’S AMAZING STORY

Claims Responsibility for Lord Kitchener’s Death SECRET IN BANNED BOOK BOMB ON HAMPSHIRE (From Our Own Correspondent.) (By Air Mail.) LONDON, Feb. 16. A man who "was a German spy in Britain during the war has written a book in which he makes the astonishing claim that he was responsible for the death of Lord Kitchener by blowing up the cruiser Hampshire with timebombs.

The spy’s book, “One Against England,” was in circulation only a few days. This week it was suppressed by the German Government.

From the beginning, mystery has surrounded Kitcuener's tragic death. The official version is that the Hampshire sank off the Orkneys on her -way to Russia after striking a German piine, in June, 1916. But this ex-spy, Ernst Carl, tells a much more sensational story which he supports ’by a mass of detail. Carl states that, posing as a Belgian officer on leave in England, he was able to obtain an interview -with Kitchener at his London house on the pretext of getting him interested in some old furniture in his family’s possession. Kitchener, well known as a collector, agreed to give his decision about purchasing "before my Russian trip.”

This was the first intimation the spy received of the projected journey. The next link in his chain -was the information from his Irish informers in Belfast that the cruiser Hampshire 'was being overhauled and re-built there. Two days later Carl is in Belfast disguised as a Dutch seaman. He becomes friendly -with a young signalman of the Hampshire’s crew. The reason for this was to pick out Irishmen among the crew whom Sinn Feiners in Dublin, working with the spy organisation, could select to be taken into the plot. Meanwhile a violently anti-English Irish engineer, referred to as Captain X, was entrusted with making timebombs.

"This is not the first time ho has been called on to make bombs. I shall never forget the ardour with which he assured us that he would make the bombs with intense pleasure. There would be no doubt,as to their efficacy'.”

The bombs were completed and Carl was next introduced to two Irish members of the Hampshire’s crew, picked out because of their hostility to Eng. land. The two men hesitated at first., but were finally won over and agreed to place the bombs in tlio Hampshire at Kirkwall, in tne Orkney's.

The bombs were hidden in the ammunition magazine. The two Irishmen came ashore, and, with Carl, went to the White Horse Inn, perched on an eminence, and watched the Hampshire put to sea.

The spy claims actually' to have seen the ship blow up.