Singapote, Aug. 27.
The Colonial Secretary, Mr. H. Weisberg, today emphatically denounced rumours that the Netherlands East Indies might be incorporated into the British Commonwealth of Nations. the German invasion. Through various combinations of circumstances and the astuteness of clerks in the telegraph offices, the plot was circumvented. Today there are about 5,000 fifth columnists—2,000 of them German—in internment camps. Arrests are still being made, but many innocent persons, mostly Netherlanders, have been released, The fifth column threat is considered negligible.
Men and women here never make direct enquiries concerning relatives or friends in Holland, because authorities feel that such communications would reveal connections which the Nazis could exploit in the future to bring about either nominal or undercover control of the islands.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.