§ 3. Sir EDWIN CORNWALLasked the Secretary of State for India whether he has any official information showing that German agents have been active in Afghanistan; and whether any German agents have been captured by the Russian or British authorities?
§ Mr. CHAMBERLAINThe House will perhaps allow me to answer this question somewhat fully. In the spring of 1915 the German Government decided to send a mission to Afghanistan, and for this purpose they selected from among a number of Indian anarchists in Berlin a young landowner from Oudh, who posed to them as a ruling chief, and as such was received in audience by the Emperor. This person was accompanied by a party of German officers, some Turks, and another Indian anarchist—a Moslem. The principal German officer, Lieutenant von Hentig, was the bearer of a letter from the German Chancellor to the Amir, in which the latter was invited to advise the pretended Raja how best India might be liberated from British tyranny. Von Hentig was also charged to make important revelations to the Amir regarding the relations which the German Government hoped would in future exist between Afghanistan, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey.
308 The mission broke up in Persia, and succeeded in making it way in small parties into Afghanistan in the late summer. They were arrested on arrival and eventually conveyed to Kabul towards the end of the year. There is reason to believe that the Amir and his people quickly appraised these Germans and the Indian adventurers by whom they were accompanied at their true value. It is true that the intervention of Turkey under German influence created a complication and placed His Majesty in an exceedingly difficult position. But at the outbreak of the War His Majesty gave the Viceroy the most solemn assurances of his intention to preserve the neutrality of his country, and it is with great satisfaction that I acknowledge, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the loyalty of the Amir to his pledged word—as sacred to the true Moslem as to ourselves. His Majesty has firmly refused the inducements—as seductive as they are unrealisable—held out to him to induce him to forsake his Ally, and has used his influence to prevent disturbances on the frontier.
The Amir dismissed the Mission in May last. It would not be in the public interest to state what has become of the various members, but some of them have been captured by the Russians and the British after leaving Afghanistan.
The estates of the Indian landowner have been sequestrated by the Government of India.
Letters were also addressed by the German Chancellor to a number of ruling chiefs.