ARRESTED AS SPY

Southland Times, Issue 22770, 21 December 1935, Page 3

ARRESTED AS SPY

FORMER RESIDENT OF INVERCARGILL. INCIDENT AT MALTA. The following story, contained in a letter to relatives in Auckland, concerns Mr Angus Mcßean, formerly on the literary staff of the Southland Times and latterly of the New Zealand Herald (Auckland). Mr Mcßean is a son of the Rev. Angus Mcßean, of Mount Albert (formerly of the Central Methodist Church, Invercargill), and recently travelled Home as publicity representative of the Clem Dawe revue company. It was while at Malta that he was surprised to find himself placed under arrest as a supposed spy. “I little thought, when I stepped out in the piazza in front of the Auberge de la Castile in Valetta, to take a snapshot of his notable specimen of the 16th century architecture, that in a few moments I would be placed under arrest as a supposed spy!” writes Mr Mcßean. “I had seen the historic palace, once headquarters of the Spanish Knights of Malta, reproduced on a hundred postcards; but—treasonably as it appeared—l decided to take a photograph myself. Arrested! “By the irony of fate, I had no sooner come to the conclusion that the foreground was too bare, and had shut up my camera, than I was hailed peremptorily by a Maltese soldier, and arrested. It was useless to show my passport as proof that I was a British subject by impeccably Scotch extraction; it was equally useless to protest that the building was not a fort; and it was more useless to affirm that I had not even taken the photograph. “I was informed that the Castile was Admiralty Headquarters, and that it was strictly forbidden to photograph it at the present time. Telephone messages were sent to half a dozen officials; a large crowd gathered outside the small guard-house where I was being detained; and finally a police car was sent to take me to police headquarters. “By the time I had been closely interrogated by several important personages and left in a small room (I should hate to call it a cell) with only a very religious engraving to look at, I was beginning to feel definitely guilty of some awful crime against the State. I began to wonder just what photographs I had taken, and from something I had heard I felt that if I had snapped any warships I would certainly be paraded at dawn the next day. “Finally, after an hour of valuable sightseeing time had been wasted, I was given my camera back, minus the only half-exposed film, and told that I would be communicated with in London and that the film would be returned if nothing incriminating was found on it. Warlike Preparations. “The incident was absurd enough in itself, but at least it formed a very apt sidelight on the warlike preparations we had observed right through the passage of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. The powder had been laid for an international explosion of the first magnitude. By the time these lines are being read the danger may have passed—or the fuse may have been fired. All that passengers on our ship know is that Italian troopship after troopship followed each other closely down through the inhuman heat of the Red Sea to the barren, glaring mountains of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland—and that guarding each approach to that long narrow gulf, was massed much of the most formidable strength of the British Navy. “It was a poignant sight to see, at

close hand as we did in the Suez Canal, the laughing and excited young Italians, no more than lads, who were crowded in their thousands on the Gange and Atalanta and a dozen smaller hastily commissioned vessels, on their way to conditions which can be imagined only by those who have passed along that sun-scorched littoral. Every second vessel we passed was either an Italian troopship or a patchedup tramp, loaded deep with guns, lorries and tanks. Seven troopships passed us in the Canal during the 24 hours we were in it or at Port Said, and it was common knowledge that 70 ships carrying either Italian troops or materials of war had been pushed through to Abyssinia in the previous fortnight. “Feeling against Italy was very high in Colombo and more particularly at Port Said, where the Egyptians and Arabs, with a freedom of language for which they are famous, expressed their opinion of Mussolini and the Italians in terms which do not bear repetition. Several parties from our ship, mistaken for Italians because of the Italian vessels in port, were spat at and execrated, until their guides explained that the visitors were English, whereupon voluminous apologies were made. The attitude taken up by England in protection of the native kingdom has undoubtedly raised British prestige in the eyes of all coloured races. A Spy Scare. “It was at Malta, however, that the tension was most acute. Here, it was quite apparent, is the key to Mussolini’s dream of an Italian Mediterranean. The possibilities of Italian conquest were openly spoken of among the inhabitants, and the most extraordinary precautions were being taken. A state of emergency had been virtually proclaimed over the island, and the fullest co-operation of the population was called for. A ‘spy-scare’ was in full progress during our visit, and it was to this that I owed my arrest. At ordinary times it would not have been thought of. “The strength of the present fortifications is an official and well-guarded secret, but one may be sure that they are as effective in relation to modern armaments as the colossal bastions of the Knights of St. John were against the Saracens. Cruisers and destroyers were lying in its landlocked inlets under the shadow of the towering forts, submarines passed in and out all day and mobile guns were drawn up on every hill. Submarine nets lay at the entrances to the Grand Harbour and the Marsamuscetto Harbour, ready to be drawn across at a few minutes’ notice.”