GERMANS AND DISEASE GERMS

Wairoa Bell, Volume XXXI, Issue 215, 11 January 1918, Page 3 (Supplement)

GERMANS AND DISEASE GERMS

Mr. Lansing, .Secretary of State-, added to-day (says the New' York correspondent of “The Times” on September 24) another chapter to his amazing record of German Government crime and treachery. With the aid of five newspaper columns of documentary evidence he conclusively proves that the German Legation at Bucharest-, before the participation, of Romnania in the war, were nothing less than a hand of poisoners. Briefly, the horrible story told by Mr. Lansing is this. When the Roumanian authorities, with Mr. William W. Andrews, American Charge d’ Affaires in Bucharest, searched the garden of the German legation, they found buried 1 there boxes of explosives and microbes. On a box of disease germs, which ibofre the seal of the German Consulate at Kronstadt, were the following inscriptions:— By Messengers. Quite secret. Not to be roughly handled. For M. Kostoff, Bucharest. The Colonel and Military Attache at Imperial Bulgarian Legation, at Bucharest, M. Sainargieff. Under the first envelope was another envelope of white paper, andl written on it in red pencil:— Quite secret. Through T. E. L. A. To the Royal Colonel and Military Attache. Herr von . The name was scratched out with an in eraser, hut examinaion revealed races of the letters H. M. T. I. ( ? Hammerstein) In an inside box above a layer of ootton wool this typewritten note in German was found:— Enclosed four small bottles for horses, four for cattle. Utilisation as formerly stipulated'. Each phial suffices for 200 head. If possible, to he administered directly into animals’ mouths, otherwise into their fodder. We ask for small report about successes obtained thei'e, and in case of good results the presence for one day of M.K. would) Ibe required. The excavation of this damning evidence was witnessed by Mr. Andrews, United States Charge d’Affaires at Bucharest. The boxes and phials had been 'removed from he German consulate to the German legation on the eve of Rouma.nia’s declaration of war, after rue United States Charge d’Affaires bad been asked to take charge of the German legation. “The protection of the United States was in this manner shamefully abused and exploited,” says Mr. Andrews in his official report; and he adds —“In this instance!, at least, the German Government cannot have recourse to its usual system, of denial." In his report, Mr. Andrews says Dr. Bernhardt, former German confidential agent, who had been left at the legation, admitted his knowledge of the microbes placed in the gar-djfcn, .asneti “ told me .more was in the garden than, had (been found : tihat a still larger quantity bad been burned in the house of the legation; and that still worse' things than this box of microbes wea-e contained in the legation, and insinuated that they would have 'been found’ even in the cabinets of the dossiers which were sealed 1 .”