Big Salary Bait Lures English Officers To Join Up And Train Red Army.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18016, 29 November 1926, Page 1

Big Salary Bait Lures English Officers To Join Up And Train Red Army.

WHISPERED APPROACHES BY AGENTS HEARD IN DRAWING-ROOMS OF MAYFAIR. By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.—Sydney “ Sun " Cable. (Received November 29, 11 a.m.) LONDON, November 28. The “ Dispatch ” states that the Soviet is secretly offering salaries of from £IOOO to £ISOO yearly and other inducements to unemployed, discontented British ex-officers, principally gunnery, aviation and gas experts, to join the Red army’s headquarters at Moscow, where a sort of Foreign Legion is based. The recruiting campaign is conducted quite apart from the activities of Soviet missions abroad. This is doubtless the outcome of a decree signed by Trotsky’s deputy, Skiliansky, ordering agents to encourage the enlistment of foreign nationals by every means in their power. The result has been whispered approaches to ex-officers in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, the hotels of Chelsea, and the coffee houses of Soho. An ex-Regular officer informed the “ Dispatch “A Soviet agent, aware that I have been an outspoken critic of the War Office and also the author of a confidential memorandum on gunnery instruction, intimated that I would be paid a substantial sum in Paris, where a contract would be signed for the purpose of evading the Foreign Enlistment Act. The two essentials were to speak French and to be unmarried.” The “ Dispatch ” learns that 100 Englishmen are serving in Russia, but the pay does not exceed £4OO yearly. They are liable to all kinds of unpleasantness if they return to Britain. , One of the Soviet’s most prominent air experts is an Englishman. The Soviet is principally using British and Italian aircraft, but chemical warfare is chiefly in the hands of Germans. The Soviet badly needs staff officers, the Czarist school having been almost entirely wiped out. ■'