ATHLETICS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1297, 4 March 1915, Page 29

ATHLETICS.

(By Telegraph —Dunedin Correspondent’ The following team will represent Otago at the New Zealand amateur athletic championship meeting, to be held at Welling 1 on on Saturday, March 13th (local athletes who intend to make the trip will be called upon to pay their own entrance fees and travelling expenses): —100yds., 200yds. and 400yds., F. M. Perkins; 440yds. and half-mile fiat, R. Swinney; 440yds., half-mile and one mile, G. Crimp; one mile and three mile events, J. Beatson; one mile and three mile walk, William Stewart; 120yds. and 440yds. hurdles, H. H. Burrow and A. M. Connor; broad jump, G. Austin and H. H. Burrows; high jump, R. T. Kirk and J. "Waddell; pole vault, J. Finlay and P. A. Treahy; putting the weight, J. Murray, M. J. McKeefry and J. M. Boyne- throwing the hammer, J. M. Boyne; hop, step and jump, J. Finlay.

ECHOES OF THE WAR. Lord Kitchener is a Suffolk man, the home of his family being at the village of Stonham Aspall, near Ipswich, but he was born at Ballylongford, County Kerry, on June 24, ISSO, where his father was then stationed on military service. Hans Braun, the Bavarian halfmiler, who won the English Amateur Athletic Association’s championship in 1909, 1911 and 1912, has been severely wounded. * * * * Mr. Roy Norton, an American journalist, who has lived for some time in Germany, tells us some astonishing things, showing how thoroughly Germany prepared for the war. All the arrangements were excellent —superexcellent. There were signs of this super-excellency on every hand. The military clique in Germany hoped for war, and wanted nothing more than a pretext. Not until last year were German military and naval preparations complete, and Germany was making ready for war cays before the situation warranted the supposition that she was in any way involved. As far back as 1908, says Mr. Norton, Germany was expending four millions of dollars annually on the espionage

system. There were, he was told by a French official, more than 30,000 men in France alone, stationed as workmen, shopkeepers, hotelkeepers, and reality agents, ready to act on signal. Among the duties of these men would be the destruction of bridges, to hamper French mobilisation, and to blow up the main arsenal. But some five months ago the French Secret Service discovered the key to these preparations, and was appalled by their thoroughness. It held a consultation, and made a counter-move by setting a spy to watch each of the German spies, but permitted the latter to continue operations, on the principle that it was easier to observe a known enemy than to discover a new one. “A week before war was declared, the G'ermans who were to perform destructive tasks were tapped

on the shoulders and arrested, and the mining beneath the great arsenal was removed and destroyed.” At Antwerp, Brussels and London, as we now know, Germany had nests of agents organised along the same lines. One German church in London was found to have been for a long time a considerable arsenal for German rifles.