GENERAL BOULANGER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9445, 16 August 1889, Page 5

GENERAL BOULANGER.

STARTLING DISCLOSURES. Pakis, August 9. The prosecution of General Boulanger before the Senatorial High Court opened yesterday. Up to the present very little new evidence has been adduced. General Boulanger's manifesto relates some startling incidents which occurred during his term of office as Minister of War. He asserts that he was fully justified in incurring the large expenditure in the spring of 1887, when the Schnabel incident created such a sensation, and maintains that France and Germany were never nearer war. He then proceeds to describe how the authorities discovered an attache at the German Embassy in Paris was conducting a large system of espionage, especially over the Foreign Office. Efforts were made to discover the place in which the attache secreted the documents before forwarding them to Germany. The police were successful, and at a favourable opportunity the documents were abstracted, copied, and replaced during a single night. The information thus obtained induced the French authorities to alter their plans of operations, and by this means checkmated the enemy. The discovery of this espionage led the French Government to pass a law for the punishment of _ spies. The manifesto lias created an immense sensation.