SPY ARMY AT WORK

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20926, 4 January 1938, Page 11

SPY ARMY AT WORK

ASSASSINS USED HUGE COST INVOLVED Behind the army of secret service agents sent by European powers to spy on their neighbours there is a more sinister army of secret political police agents working on behalf of the four dictator countries —Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Nationalist Spain—Spying and informing on their countrymen resident abroad, says “The People.”

The French Government has completed a census of these secret police, who often employ organised bands of assassins to inflict punishment on their nationals they have betrayed. The following table shows the French official estimated numbers and cost of maintaining these spies. No of Annual Nationality Agents Cost

German 3,100 £2,000,000 Russian 2,700 £1,000,000 Italian 2,600 £1,000,000 Nat Spain .... 1,500 £lOO,OOO These figures do not include the ordinary secret service agents engaged on espionage, hundreds of whom are employed to-day where tens were employed before the war. The German Gestapo has well over 20,000 Informers operating abroad to keep the secret police at home constantly apprised of their countrymen they are paid to watch. Exhaustive inquiries by the French Government reveal that these secret police have their own tribunals for the trial of persons acting contrary to the wishes of the home Government. Such persons are first invited to return home. If they refuse judgment is carried out on them in their adopted countries. French authorities are certain that many recent "executions” of foreigners in France were the work of these tribunals. Two members of the sinister organisation of hired assassins who do the “executions” for the a result the French police are aware of secret police have been arrested. As their organiser.