Two Blonde Hairs

Triumphantly the French secret police produced two blonde hairs last week and public attention suddenly switched from Stavisky to the Switzes. Suspected of military espionage, U. S. Citizen Switz & wife have been held in Paris jails since last December.

Robert Gordon Switz was born in East Orange 30 years ago, the son of Theodore Switz, a naturalized Russian. His brother Paul was a star footballer, Yale 1929. Brother Theodore is a chemical economist, employed until recently by Lehman Corp., an investment trust sponsored by the New York banking firm from which Herbert H. Lehman resigned when he became Governor of New York. Robert attended Mercersburg Academy, did not go to college. In 1922 he shipped as a seaman on the S. S. St. Paul in a pair of white linen knickerbockers with $5 in cash. Landing in Hamburg at the height of the inflation, he changed his $5 for 115,000 marks, toured Germany on it, returned to the U. S. on the same ship and left in a tantrum when his discharge card did not give him as high a rating as he thought he deserved. Later he went abroad again, acquired a French aviation pilot's license, returned to train at Roosevelt Field. In 1933 Rob ert Gordon Switz married a quiet intelligent Vassar girl named Marjorie Tilley. Soon they went abroad again. Aviator Switz representing a U. S. aviation instrument company. Said J. N. A. Van Ven Bonwhuizsen, president of the MacNeil Instrument Co. : "Mr. Switz was our representative in Europe, but he never made any sales." In Europe the Switzes traveled extensively and lived very quietly, registering at such eminently respectable institutions as the University Union in Paris. They had a small apartment in the Rue de la Chaussee 'd'Antin near the Opera. Into that apartment French detectives broke last December to find, so they said, a pile of strange documents hidden behind a bureau, 19,000 francs in cash, and a chronometer and two magnifying glasses bound together.* Crying loudly that they had been framed by the French counterespion age service, the famed Denxieme Bureau, the Switzes were led off to separate jails, he to La Sante, she to La Petite Roquette. Since then they have met seldom. They were together briefly last week when police brought them to the Chambers of Magistrate Benon to cross-examine them separately on some new evidence. A package of films brought from Switzerland showed Robert Switz's thumbprints, and two blonde hairs that under a microscope matched hair from, the head of. Marjorie Switz. In Manhattan Mrs. Switz's mother, Mrs. Bertha Tilley, was greatly upset. ''I gave my daughter a Vassar College education, I baked pies for the Woman's Exchange for 16 years to do it," said she. "I am sure she cannot be a spy, Marjorie was so carefully raised. She was never allowed to play on the city streets." P:In peace or in war all nations employ spies--more often to discover prosaic matters of policy than to hunt out exciting military secrets. The U. S. State Department has a secret fund which never appears in the budget and for which no accounting is made. With it the Government pays for its spies at secret work the world over. Because all nations are equally guilty of espionage, there is in Europe a definite technique and etiquet about arresting a foreign spy in peace time. It is not polite to charge a friendly nation with direct complicity. Secret service agents talk largely about "international spy rings," give a series of conflicting but highly colorful stories to excited reporters, arrest a number of other suspects of different nationalities and when pressed, blame everything on Soviet Russia. The nation caught spying plays its part of the game by making no effort to extricate its unfortunate agent. There was a great deal of talk about "international spy rings" when the Switzes were first arrested. At least eight other people, including a Rumanian by the name of Bercowitz and a Polish medical student called Moses Salman, were arrested. French agents dropped fascinating hints about a rival spy known as La Belle Sophie who secreted an entire French machine gun of the latest type among her lingerie. As the weeks passed French police appeared to pay little attention to Bercowitz, Salman or La Belle Sophie but concentrated almost entirely on the Switzes. As soon as they were arrested the U. S. Consul, Robert D. Murphy, hurried to their aid, announced that he was convinced that they were being well treated and withdrew. U. S. Embassy officials said no visit to the Switzes was contemplated since they had not asked Embassy aid. The Switzes may not be U. S. spies but U. S. officials in Paris were behaving suspiciously as if they were. The films produced last week were interesting. They came from Geneva, where a Swiss citizen, asked to deliver them in France, had handed them instead to the French consulate. Brought to Paris, they were developed in a police darkroom and showed a most complicated grillwork of dots, holes, and cross-hatchings, another section of topographical contours, and incidentally a great many fingerprints of Robert Switz. The two blonde hairs were in the wrapping.

Admitting that he had handled the films, Robert Switz insisted that they had just been handed to him by a stranger in a cafe who asked him to make a package of them.

The Switzes were grilled from 3 p. m. until midnight, when the prosecutor announced they had given him the names of an alleged spy ring which he described as the "greatest since the World War." More he would not say.

*In U. S. Navy codes used during the War, Greenwich Mean Time was all important. Several codes were used in each message. Translators had to have the exact time a message was sent to know with which code to begin translating.

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