FORGED DOCUMENTS

Northern Advocate, 4 February 1928, Page 9

FORGED DOCUMENTS

SINISTER PURPOSES

PRECIPITATING A CRISIS.

PERPETRATORS PUNISHED.

(United Press Assn. Copyright.) (Received: 9 a.m.) BERLIN, February 2.

The Court, in pissing, judgment on Johann Schreck, described his activities as coming within a hair ? s breadth of creating a-’inoSt serious international complication.. . ; ‘

The charge was that of selling forged military documents to a foreign Power. These suggested a military conspiracy in Germany, to, defeat the disarmament" provision of the Treaty of Versailles.

The Polish General Staff accepted the documents as . genuine, while submission 6f photographs thereof to other Powers is believed to have hampered the negotiations .at Locarno and Germany’s-entry into the League of Nations,

‘ The trial proved that Schreck was the instrument of a sinister force whose purpose was to prevent European reconciliation. .

The Public Prosecutor did not believe that j tHe conspiracy was of German origin, but who used Schreck %s a puppet would probably never be revealed.

Koeh waA sentenced to 20 months 7 imprisonment, aiid Schultz,, another associate, to 4s'years.—A. and'N.Z.

At the hearing of the case last week Karl Mertens, a German, pacifist, who, is living in Geneva as a political fugitive, an who was granted a safe conduct and immunity .from arrest in order to attend the trial, created a sensation whenrhe said,fn evidence that a Polish-spy, Paciorkovski, who was employed at the Embassy in Berlihj had ‘ forged the Zinovieff letter. -Schreck said he was then living fin the same boarding bouse as-the PolCj an d; helped him to draw up the letter, while he was committing his own; forgeries. : K'- ■'