UNDER ANOTHER FLAG

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21520, 17 June 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

UNDER ANOTHER FLAG

BRITON CHANGES ALLEGIANCE SENTENCED FOR SPYING Recollections of a spy trial in France six years ago are stirred up by the announcement that Captain Vincent Stranders, a former British staff officer, has become a naturalised German citizen. The necessary papers were granted by the Thuringian authorities. Captain Stranders, a former member of the British Disarmament Commission in Germany, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Paris in 15)27 for espionage in France on behalf of Germany. It was alleged that he supplied the German Secret Service with information concerning French aeroplanes and tanks. Stranders declared that he sought information only for commercial purposes. The French, however, took the view that as he had formerly been attached to the British Intelligence Service he could not have misunderstood the nature of a mission entrusted to him by one of the heads of the German spy system. After his release Captain Stranders travelled through Germany, delivering lectures in which he declared Britain and her Allies were responsible for the war. He was subsequently ordered to be expelled from Prussia for antiGovernment propaganda, but the sentence was postponed " to give him an opportunity to correct bis behaviour."

British official records show that Captain Stranders was born in 1881. After leaving school he was a clerk, commission agent and tutor by turns. When, in 1911, war broke out he obtained a commission in the Royal Engineers. In 1917 be was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and in 1913 became a technical staff officer of the Roval Air Force.