Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 151, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1918 — ‘MERRY WIDOW’ TO DIE [ARTICLE]

‘MERRY WIDOW’ TO DIE

French Woman Found Guilty by Court-Martial. Sold Military Secrets to the Germans in Letters to Her Children. Paris, France. —Brief announcement has Just been made that a Paris courtmartial has condemned to death as a spy Mme. M thirty-seven dd Her son. Noel, sixteen years old, who was accused of being plice, was ordered to a penitentiary Colony until he comes of age. The court believed he was too young to be held responsible for his acts. As the case was hot heard in public only a few details have become known, such as that Mme. M.’s husband was killed at the front in March, 1916, and that the wife soon started a life that earned her, in the circles she frequented. the name of “The Merry Widow."

She soon ran through the money she inherited, and, to obtain more, communicated with a Greek living in Spain, an agent of the spy bureau established in Barcelona by thb Germans. When mother and son were arrested, the boy was just about to engage in the aviation service in order to obtain information to be supplied to Germany. A writer in the Paris Midi identifies the Greek as the head of German propaganda in Spain and director in particular of the service for arranging explosions in factories. He was a regular visitor to the girls’ school at Barcelona, where he went to see three little girls whose guardian he was supposed to be. One of the youngest, about eleven years old, banded over to him, on each visit, several letters, which be carried away. These three little girls were French, being the daughters of Mme. M. The “Merry Widow" used to pass op any information that she obtained to her nd, who wrote it to his young sister, placing it In the middle of his letters, which were never really examined, when it was seen that they were let-

ters from a brother to a little sister at school.