CASHIERED LIEUTENANT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 304, 21 November 1933, Page 7

CASHIERED LIEUTENANT.

THE BAILLIE-STEWART CASE. Received November 21, 9.55 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 20. Lieutenant Baillie-Stewart’s mother has written to the newspapers saying she will never believe that her son confessed and asks what could he gain by confessing after being sentenced to five years' penal servitude. She is applying to the War Office for permission to see her son privately to ascertain what actually happened. One of the army sensation*' of recent years resulted from the thlal of Lieut. Norman Baillie-Stewart, of the Se'aforth Highlanders, no was cashiered from the Army,.on April 13, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude, the court-martial having found him guilty on seven charges of collecting and communicating information which might be useful to an enemy. The King confirmed the findings on three counts. The others all related to subsidiary incidents. Baillie-Stewart was detained in the Tower of London, and amazing interest in the fate of the “prisoner in the Tower” was evinced bv the Press and general public at the time. Baillie-Stewart, it appeared, had a liaison with a mysterious German girl known as “Marie Louise,” through whom it was alleged that he communicated valuable Army information to German military headquarters. He had been to Berlin on several occasions, and was known to have accepted sums of money from the woman—described by himself as personal advances ) or loans. Considerable evidence was called to prove Baillie-Stewart’s integrity, but the Court adopted the attitude that the prisoner had made definite attempts to dispatch details of military defences and methods to a possible enemy: