A SPY'S CONFESSION.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13793, 14 June 1915, Page 6

A SPY'S CONFESSION.

EX-MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF

COMMONS

EMPLOYED AS A WAR OFFICE

INTERPRETER

A COUP THAT FAILED,

(Received midnight.)

London, Juno 12

The newspapers are giving prominence to the confession to New York newspapers cf Ignatius Tribich Lincoln, who was member of the Houce of Commons lor Darlington in 1910. Tribich is the son of a Hungarian Jewish shipowner, lie acted as a Presbyterian missionary, and was subsequently ordained in the Church of England in 1903. He became a . naturalised Englishman in 1909, when lie took the name cf Lincoln. He assisted in electioneering as an anti-Tariff Reformer who took parties of working men to Germany- to gain experience of life vndef Protection. Tribich was not again elected to Parliament, and he became bankrupt. He was then employed as a Hungarian censor at the War Office. At the outbreak of the war, as he had conceiv rl an abhorrence for England owing to alleged cruelty to aliens, he determined to act as a German spy. He was aHo to give Austria and Germany impoi'tar.t information owing to his having highly placed friends in England, but he wished to bring a coup.

He fruitlessly offered his ser. ri.v« to Sir Edward Grey and Mr. »'hutou Churchill. Finally, by bringing useiul information from Rotterdam, obtai iorl from the German consul, he won tho confidence of the British secret service. He propounded a scheme fcr luring part of the British fleet to a certain bay whero the Germans would bo within easy striking distance, but tho secret service refused to disclose the whereabouts of the British fleet to anyone.

Tribich describes the codes whereby German spies transmitted messages to Germany giving particulars of tho movements of the fleet.

Finally the secret service discovered the fraud, and Lincoln fled to America.