THIRTY YEARS A SPY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18234, 30 October 1922, Page 7

THIRTY YEARS A SPY.

FRENCH TRAITOR UNMASKED. ALSATIANS BETRAYED. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Reed. 5.5 p.m.) PARIS. Oct. 28. Lucien Courtois, a 73-year-old man, who is deaf and almost blind, has been sentenced/ to ten years' imprisonment, on a chargo of espionage. He had been a spy in the employment of Germany since 1888. Before the war he posed as a staunch patriot, and the confidence of his compatriots helped him to serve his German paymasters, on whose pay he lived wholly for 34 years. On the outbreak of the war he ceased relations with Germany, but his treachery was discovered as a result of the failure of the Germans to destroy confidential papers when driven out of Alsace-Lorraine, including a complete record of Courtois' work.

Tho charges dated from 1912 to the outbreak of the war, and referred notably to information concerning French troops in Morocco, the denunciation of French officers who discovered secrets of German aviation, and a description of the inhabitants of Metz and Haguenau who had relations with the French. Several Frenchmen and Alsatians whom Courtois denounced were imprisoned by the Germans.

Courtois alleged that the information ho gave to th« Gennans was false and valueless, but a German report described him as a trustworthy spy. When he was sentenced, he exclaimed: —"If I am not dead when the sentence expires I shall be totally blind."