SECRET SERVICE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16949, 13 May 1929, Page 11

SECRET SERVICE

COSTS MUCH MONEY SPYING IS STILL ACTIVE FERRETING OUT TRADE SECRETS LONDON, March 23. "Despite the work of the peacemakers and the fact that the World War ended in 1918, Europe is still in such a jumpy, suspicious frame of mind about things in general and souje other things in particular that it is voting large sums again this year for secret service work. But no Government is prepared to give any information as to how such appropriations are to lie expended and only a few are willing to admit openly that State funds are being spent for such purposes. In the civil estimates of the latest British Budget the net expenditure on the secret service in 1929 is given at £189.000, a sum equivalent to that which was devoted in 1928 to the same ends. HUGE SUMS ALLOCATED. If Great Britain is spending nearly a million dollars a year to thwart the designs of espionage agents or fomenters of discord in her midst, what must some of the Continental nations, separated only by a frontier and not by a 21-mile channel, and much more deeply suspicious of one another, be setting aside for such purposes? For it is believed by many persons here who are stoutly opposed to allocating so much money for secret service 'work that Germany, France, Italy and Soviet Russia are sanctioning far larger sums lor it. It is estimated that between £3,000,000 and £4.000,000 annually is being used for such purposes by certain Continental countries. Since the war Great Britain cannot have spent much under £2,000,000.

Every year when the Civil Service estimates come up for discussion in the House of Commons several members of the Labor and Liberal parties have tho temerity to ' risk bow the money for secret service work is expended. Every year they are told that it is not in the interest of the nation to divulge such information, that a secret service cannot remain secret if all the world knows what it is doing. It is generally assumed, however, that a 'considerable proportion of the secret service grant in this country is expended in directions where it stands the best chance of keeping out undesirable aliens, and also to prevent subversive activities here ahd in other parts of the British Empire of foreign agitators, mainly Russians. SPY SYSTEMS RESPONSIBLE.

But Europe has' its spy system also to take into consideration. The spy game is really responsible for the huge sum which the Old World is spending on secret service work to-day, and which could be much more profitably expended in the relief of distress or in the general work of rehabilitation. There have been three or four sensational spy scares on tlie Continent in recent months. In Czecho-Slovakia and Poland two spies were sentenced to life imprisonment in the month of February. Soviet Russia has just come forward with the fantastic suggestion that “Baptist” spies in the Ukraine have been revealing military facts to Poland.

In Spain and Portugal the spy fear has its source in the belief that emigres resident in Paris are working to bring about the downfall of the existing political regimes. The touchy state of the present relations of France and Italy on the one hand, and Italy and Jngo-Slavia on the other, has given an impetus to the espionage game, which ordinarily thrives well throughout the Balkans and the Central European corridor. Since the war Franco has imprisoned several alleged British spies. The idea that Britons were engaged in espionage work in France or against France was repudiated in official quarters here, bub the French believed otherwise. Britain herself lias sent' several men to prison for being in possession of information likely to he of service to a foreign Power. IN INDUSTRIAL FIELD.

During the post-war period the espionage game has come to be practised in the industrial field. While some spies have been engaged on jobs in which the chief prizes have been naval, military and air force secrets, there have been others pursuing the much more unromantic if almost equally perilous task of extracting the secrets of manufacture of purely utilitarian goods. Germans have been accused and prosecuted for selling such secrets to the French From time to time industrial Germany has become agitated over reports tliat French agents were doing a hit of Paul Pry work in dye manufacturing establishments and in steel and iron works. Tile abnormally large sum which Germany has voted for the use of its secret service was recently the subject of sharp comment on the part of the French Premier, M. Poincare.