picked out a fellow worker and felt him out for a long period of time as to whether he would be safe as a confidant. This particular fellow happened to look like a German, and to talk like one. He also happened to be an A. P. L. operative. The accused, who is charged under the Espionage Act, does not yet know the identity of the man who informed against him.
"There was one old German in my district," says the report of a New York state chief, "who had spent thirty years in our region, surveying. He had been an officer in the Franco-German war, and was a recognized expert in real estate values, appraisals, etc. When we went into the war, he made public a little statement telling of his German origin and of his American citizenship. He came under the suspicion of some, and I looked into the matter. One of his men remembered hearing the German say, twenty years ago, when under the influence of liquor, that he had been a German spy in the war with France; he also remembered the German's story of a horse he had used, which he had trained to run, trot or walk at certain definite paces. By keeping track of the different gaits, as he jogged along in his buggy over France, he would measure certain localities and compute distances—information which proved valuable later. It was need of such information that made Germany send out secret surveying forces when she was preparing to attack France. We put this man under surveillance but could get nothing on him except that he tried to learn when transports sailed. Apparently he had done all his work before the war began, just as he had in France before the other war."
An ingenious and dastardly instance of spy work and sabotage was recently uncovered in Detroit. Anton G, a skilled workman employed in a factory making airplane fuel tanks, deliberately planned an aviation accident. He took a tank which had been condemned because the bottom sump casting had been riveted into the wrong position, cut the rivets, properly adjusted the casting and soldered it in place, replacing the cut rivets so that the tank appeared O. K. for use. It passed the plant's inspection, and was installed in a plane before its dangerous character was detected. G has given up the making
