2. To provide all possible details with regard to the age, the

disposition and character and the personal and military reputation

of each commander, his possible successor in the command and other

superior officers. In respect of this provision, it is interesting to

learn that part of the report regarding the late General de Gallifet,

the cavalry leader and hero of Sedan, was given in approximately the

following terms:—"This officer is one who under Napoleon the First

would have held the highest rank. A real Frenchman, with his heart

in the war and a hater of all things Prussian. A fighter for the

initiative, by every instinct, a dangerous adversary and, for us,

better dead. Should be watched; has no thought for anything in the

present war but the success of the French arms."

3. Reports as to the political dispositions and temper of all districts

for twenty miles ahead of the advancing Prussian armies, as well as

the capacity of each district for supplying the commissariat.

4. To have available at every point of importance traversed by our

armies several persons of intelligence who can give directions as to

routes, sources of supplies and so forth. In other words, the purchase

of traitors.

5. To arrange that suitable persons shall be in residence at each

important point who are willing to accommodate such persons as the

Staff may designate.

When questioned by von Roon as to the likelihood of his being able

to facilitate their armies' progress by supplying commanders with so

much information, Stieber boastfully replied: "All this information

is not only ready; it is already printed. Remember, my army has been

entrenched in France for nearly two years." It was also at this time

that Stieber informed von Roon that _his_ army counted nearly 40,000

persons of both sexes—an army corps, almost. In the first three months

of the campaign the chief of police held a position which was as much

a puzzle to German generals themselves as to departmental officials

connected with the army. Stieber, when Bismarck and the King of Prussia

were not present, exercised a power which no general durst override,

since his own department was officially independent and in war-time

the existence of martial law added to his summary powers. It is not

surprising, therefore, to hear that the boastful sleuth displayed

a ferocity of disposition to the conquered populations which one

always suspects to be part of his base and treacherous character. As

an exponent of the arts of terrorism, he must have regaled the heart

of the bloodiest of Hohenzollerns. Children, old men and invalids

were flogged, spread-eagle fashion, and in the presence of their

parents and relatives, with the object of forcing the elders of

municipalities to reveal information. Women and girls were violated in

the same interests, while summary executions became the order of the

police-minister's passing. "Oppose me," he would cry to cowering mayors

and magistrates who begged mercy for their townsmen, "and I will hang

a hundred of your people." The successful mongrel was clearly in his

element in those days; nor did he omit any opportunity of adding to his

collection of orders and medals with all of which he was accustomed

to adorn his breast on every possible and impossible occasion. Not at

all a welcome guest at mess-tables, the spy was nevertheless invited

on more than one occasion to dine with Bismarck and his staff. We may

easily suppose that the diplomatic corps gave the man the cold shoulder

at all times. An official at one of these field banquets having just

observed that the German army was invincible, Stieber, on his own

record, jumped up brusquely and declared that the speaker should have

said that the German _armies_ were invincible. "My army," continued the

braggart, "has already preceded your army by six months." Bismarck,

who had noted throughout the evening the many slights put upon the

spy, thereupon rose from his seat and passed round to Stieber's, when

"without a word, but looking straight into my eyes, he held out to me

his left hand wide open, which I clasped tightly in both of mine," to

quote the Memoirs.

What Bismarck was wont to term "action on the Press" was undertaken

also by Stieber during the course of the war of 1870. For this purpose

the sleuth had in 1868 requested Bismarck for an appropriation of

£15,000 annually, in return for which he promised the Chancellor to

make many of the important provincial and other French papers "talk

Prussian," as he put it. In a large measure he may be said to have

contributed to the modern importance which has grown up around the

Press, and by 1870 he declared that he could control the opinions of

some eighty-five writers in the French daily and weekly newspapers.

He had divided his corps of writers into _home_ and _foreign_ bodies.

Writers, for example, who were able to influence the insertion of

articles favourable to Prussia and Prussian policies were paid several

times the amount which they commonly received for their articles

through the ordinary channels of remuneration. These foreign writers

were not confined to France, but were active also in Austria, Italy

and England. Well-known bankers, business men and the heads of news

agencies—many of them German Hebrews—were the instruments through

whom Stieber worked. Most of these individuals were able, through

acquaintanceship with professional leader-writers and journalists,

to procure the insertion into articles of views held by the Prussian

Government; such gentry were themselves receiving Prussian Orders and

decorations, while their particular private scribes were rewarded

in cash. It was by means of Germans occupying high positions in the

public life of European countries that in 1864 the world was prepared

intellectually for the partition of Denmark, in 1866 for the war with

Austria and thenceforth for the federation of the Germanic States under

the ægis of Prussia. It must not be imagined that this propaganda

ceased with Prussia's attainment of the headship of the Teutonic Bond.

Indeed, it may be said only to have been inaugurated with its early

successes under Bismarck, whose control of a venal Press in Vienna,

Rome and even London was hardly less effective in its day than that

which he exploited and subsidised all over Germany. By 1870 Stieber

had, he himself tells, assured himself of a Press in Lyons, Marseilles

and Bordeaux, which kept the Prussian view openly and permanently

before the inhabitants of those important cities.

There is a _naïveté_ about Stieber's autobiography which recalls Le

Caron. During a memorable evening spent in the company of Bismarck,

"the most beautiful of my life," says the spy, conversation turned upon

the question of opportunity as the condition of success in life. The

Chancellor sought to point the moral of his philosophy in the matter

by the following words:—"Just consider, Stieber," he said, "how far and

high destiny has led a tramp like yourself who was hated by everybody."

That conversation, writes the spy, may become historic; and he rejoices

to think of the good fortune which has enabled him to serve Bismarck,

"assuredly the greatest of modern men." Again, he is frankness itself

when he declares that his aide-de-camp Zernicki represented the

elements of courtesy and kindliness, while he himself had no thought

for anything but action and results and certainly no time to expend

upon formalities. In all his remarks upon his records and successes

we inevitably get the true note of the upstart who has achieved the

power of making other men fear him. Thus, at Versailles, the police

agent, for some minor offence, threatened to "hang ten members of the

municipal committee as sure as my name is Stieber," and wrote to his

wife recording the fact with much self-glory and glee. His part in the

execution of a young gentleman, Monsieur de Raynal, was especially

characteristic. This resident of Versailles, who had just recently

returned from his honeymoon, had been in the habit of keeping a diary

recording the daily occurrences of the German occupation. Stieber

could easily have settled the matter with a reprimand. "No," he said,

"I must have an example. M. de Raynal is a young man who writes very

interesting matter. I am sorry for him, but he will have to face the

rifles. If he escapes, I will allow him to go free." When told that the

young man had just recently been married, he replied with mock feeling,

"That makes my duty all the more painful," and Raynal was accordingly

shot. In truth the Prussian sleuth was an ideal type of the official

who would "hang the guiltless rather than eat his mutton cold," and

though there is no statistical record of the number of lives which he

sacrificed in the interests of his policy of terrorism, there can be no

doubt that it could only have been expressed in terms of scores.

On his arrival with the headquarters staff and the King of Prussia

at Versailles in September 1870, Stieber took up his lodgings at an

important hotel belonging to the Duc de Persigny and here he also

housed his corps of active-service agents, numbering altogether 120.

It is hard to credit the statement, but the authority, M. Paul Lanoir,

declares that the police-minister was successful in enlisting the

services of some 10,000 persons in Versailles who, in consideration

of the payment of one franc daily, agreed to "acclaim with cheers and

hurrahs the Prussian monarch and princes whenever they made their

excursions into the neighbourhood." Another first-class authority, M.

Victor Tissot, seems by his remarks to disprove the statement of Renan

to the effect that it is well-nigh impossible to find a traitor among

Frenchmen. Tissot assures us that Stieber's work in France was much

facilitated by the fact that the Prussian secret service was paying

large salaries to important men in French public life, in return for

information supplied. The same Paul Lanoir whom we have quoted above

also states that Prussian gold has been active in French political

life up till within quite recent times. He has met and still knows

men, he says, who entered politics without a decent coat to their

names who have become as if by magic possessed of splendid mansions,

and whose wives, formerly milliners or washerwomen, have now taken to

giving receptions on a lavish scale. These politicians would seem to

be political only to the extent that they represent a purely personal

policy of their own, for, says Lanoir, they continue to "champion the

cause of the people," the assumption being that they are paid _agents

provocateurs_ in the service of Germany whose duty it is to keep the

Republic in a state of such unrest that it must fall an easy prey to an

attack from outside. M. Lanoir's statements apply, it is only right to

add, to that period of grave unrest in France which succeeded upon the

Church crisis and the Moroccan difficulties, and which may be said to

have closed by 1911.

It is necessary unfortunately to follow this man Stieber to the close

of his career and for the reason that the modern system of espionage

in Germany, in regard to both its home and foreign relations, is based

wholly on the methods which he laid down after the Franco-German War

of 1870. He returned to Berlin a more important man than ever, with

several more decorations to add to his already heavily bestarred

chest. At this period he possessed a house in the neighbourhood of

the Hallesches Thor and was credited with the possession of about

1,000,000 marks or £50,000 sterling. His womenfolk proved a source

of some anxiety to him in a social sense, and not even the patronage

of the omnipotent Chancellor von Bismarck could induce the exclusive

classes of Berlin to look upon them with favour. Prussian vulgarity

possesses a brand entirely its own, and the House of Stieber appeared

to be afflicted with all its worst symptoms, including the inability

to realise that position, even supported by wealth, which owed its

existence to a talent for exploiting the basest characteristics of

human nature, must ever, except among the most servile and venal,

remain isolated and practically ostracised during at least the life of

its founders. We are therefore not surprised to learn that in order

to maintain some outward semblance of an important rôle in society

for his family, Stieber was forced to resort to a kind of blackmail,

in which he threatened persons of high social worth, who consistently

refused to meet his relatives, with the revelation of domestic secrets

of the most intimate nature. In this way, he effected some progress,

though it is also well known that he became instrumental in driving

several notable personages permanently back to their country estates.

Stieber himself made no secret of his philosophy in such matters. "To

hold a certain power over men who are my superiors, is the sweetest

power I have known, and accounts in many ways for my success," is a

remark attributed to the sleuth. Like many another well-known _nouveau

riche_ of modern days, whose rise to vast wealth has served only to

emphasise an elemental ineptitude for the wielding of public power,

Stieber feared the Theatre as a potential flagellant of his ignoble

self, and to this end exercised, through subsidiary agents, a veritable

censorship upon the German drama. In order to provide against this

possibility of seeing himself burlesqued upon the stage by some rising

Molière, he was at great pains to procure the position of censors for

members of his personal acquaintance, and even in the literary world

his secret influence was always at work. His ambition to possess

the "particle of nobility," _von_, the old Emperor William firmly

withstood, nor could the Chancellor move his master to include Stieber

in any list promoting the sleuth to Adelstand, as the Germans term the

condition of noble rank.

It was perhaps with some remorseful consciousness of the sorry tenor

of his whole career that Stieber, about 1875, decided to exercise his

talents in a more important branch of high politics than had been

possible up to that time. Perhaps, too, it was with his pathetic quest

of a patent of nobility in view that the sleuth thought out a plan

for the consolidation of imperial Germany, which in his opinion must

recommend itself to his omnipotent friend Bismarck. We do not, of

course, rely implicitly on all he says in his Memoirs; but there is

little doubt that his intimacy with the Chancellor was of the closest

kind and that Bismarck encouraged his police-minister's counsels to

every possible furtherance of imperial plans. It used credibly to

be said that Stieber, who was, of course, a man of good education,

especially sought out the historian Mommsen with a view to discussing

with that luminary something about the secret of Rome's predominance

in the world and of her hold upon her conquests. No records remain of

any such conversations if they ever really took place, but we may be

sure that if they did take place, Stieber was put in full possession

of those principles of "dividing in order to govern"; of the strategic

value of roads; of the garrisoning of subject countries by the troops

of races mutually antipathetic; of the value of blood-letting in

political combinations, to quote a memorable phrase of Napoleon. In

any case by the year 1880, Stieber had presented a memorial to Prince

Bismarck the political effects arising from which have been seen down

to the most recent times and have mainly contributed to the costly

militarism of the past generation. The railway systems of Germany

were to be developed in the main with regard to their strategic

military values, a consideration which had only been partly realised

in the earlier construction of lines. In the second place, large

appropriations for German Secret Service funds were annually to be set

aside with the object of buying, or placing, traitors in every great

country in Europe with which the German Empire, in accordance with its

plan of dominating the Western World, was likely ever to come into

conflict. As will be seen later, no country in Europe became exempt

from the operations of German emissaries whether as spies or else

as the agents of domestic unrest and revolution and all to the end

that the new _urbs sacra_, Berlin, should be to the modern world all

that Rome was to that of antiquity. It is not difficult therefore to

understand that the secret-service fund sanctioned by the Reichstag had

grown from £52,000 in 1867 to the sum of £800,000 in 1910.

XII

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_

The German railway system radiates from Berlin, not according to the

concessional plans of other countries, but in accordance with the

definite warlike designs and conceptions of the military authorities

whose ulterior aim is a confederation of all European States governed

from Berlin. Thus, the great network of railways is divided into

military divisions, the most familiar of which to us are Berlin,

Magdeburg, Hanover and Cologne, the first of the strategic lines of

attack which is directed like a pistol at the French frontier and

which co-operates with parallel systems with depôts at Coblentz and

Elberfeld. Along these lines German military authorities profess

to be able to transport, within twenty-four hours of the order to

mobilise, a number not far short of 1,000,000 men, together with

full equipment, commissariat and war material. At the head of each

of the railway divisions is a military officer whose functions are

much similar to those of a general commanding an army; under him is a

staff of officers, non-commissioned officers and men who in reality

"run" the system and are responsible for its working in regard to

freights, passenger transportation and time-schedules. And since

the railway systems are designed primarily for military purposes—as

were the old Roman roads—little if any consideration has been paid

in their construction to commercial or industrial requirements. In

every respect the systems are regarded as, first of all, the means

of military transportation, and accordingly, wherever any portion or

portions of a given line may appear to be exposed to hostile attack,

principles of ordinary fortification are adopted. The depôts are

mainly built with commissarial objects in view. The personnel of the

systems, guards, ticket collectors, engine-drivers, are all military

in every sense (including the worst) of that term, as no one who has

ever travelled over the German-Belgian boundaries at Herbesthal and

met the dictatorial German railway guard for the first time will

require to be told. Along these lines, which radiate from Berlin to the

French frontier, it has been laid down as one of the most stringent of

official German regulations that:

"No native of Alsace or Lorraine, even if performing his military

service in Germany, shall, under any circumstances whatever, be

recruited or admitted in any capacity, no matter how minor, for

employment on German divisional railroads."

On the other hand Stieber had seen to it that as many hundreds of

Alsatians and Lorrainers who were willing to enter his service should

be employed by the French railway systems at the other side of the

Frontier as _soi-disant_ Frenchmen. In accordance with their engagement

to serve Stieber, they were paid at the rate of twenty-five per cent.

of the wages they were drawing from their French employers, and until

1884 there were at least 1500 of them so serving both the French system

and the German espionage bureau. In 1884 the French Government was

roused to a realisation of the peril of allowing these men to work on

their railroads, and they were rapidly removed. It is on record that

in 1880 Stieber had promised the old Emperor William that on the day

on which Germany should again mobilise her armies, he himself could

guarantee for the railways of France over 1000 trusted agents who

were prepared, by destroying locomotives and other railroad stock, to

paralyse the French mobilisation to the Frontier in such a way that

German armies should have fairly approached the capital before the

Republic had got her forces decisively in hand.

In regard to the second part of his programme—namely, that which was

to create factions, unrest and revolutionary conditions in countries

which were to become the objects of German military aggression—Stieber

developed the ideas which still hold good in the plans of the German

Secret Service. The main principle underlying his plan of campaign

was the fomenting of industrial disorders. In each case a literary

propaganda was to precede action, which was first to be undertaken

by trained spies and _agents provocateurs_ who were capable, by the

common methods of political and industrial agitators, of promoting

class antipathies. German enterprise in this respect has not been

confined to France, but has been active in every country in Europe,

including England. In 1893 the successor of Bismarck, Count Caprivi,

signed an appropriation of £4000 for the purposes of "providing foreign

pamphlets and publications useful to the policy of the Empire." In

later years the sum was increased to £20,000, while a number of paid

agitators, inciting the great industrial centres of France, of Belgium,

of Russia and (it is recorded) of England, is said to have drawn

large sums from the German funds. The recent epidemic of industrial

strikes in France, Russia and England is declared to have been fomented

by paid agitators working on behalf of German authorities—some of

them unconsciously, and as a result of the influence exerted by

publications which had been subsidised by German gold. There are

French writers who still maintain that the Dreyfus agitation was

initiated and supported with the connivance of the highest military

authorities in Berlin for the purpose of destroying one of the most

potent forces in France—namely, belief and trust in the Army. Most

of us, at all events, will recollect how towards the close of the

momentous _Affaire_, when the Republic was already weakened by the

series of national and international crises attending on the entire

event, ominous threats of mobilisation were more than once made from

Berlin. Again, the memorable Associations Bill, which enacted the

disestablishment of the Church in France, was said to have owed its

conception to German secret-service agents. To this movement—bound

in any case to awaken the cupidity of venal politicians, in view of

the vast Congregational possessions involved—succeeded the era of

Syndicalist unrest, and finally the outbreak of the war of 1914. Nor

can Englishmen forget that the so-called Agadir incident of the spring

of 1911 coincided with one of the most devastating strikes Britain

has yet known. In view of what we now know, there can hardly be a

doubt that German plans and policies had meditated the paralysing of

our transport system and our coal-supplies. Nor is there, again, the

least possible doubt that for many years past German "philosophers,"

drawing pay from the secret-service funds, have been instructing

British as well as French and Russian workmen in the art of combining

"in defence of their rights" against the privileged classes. In Germany

such revolutionary doctrines never leave the theoretical stage, nor

could they do so, given the system of government which is in principle

and practice hardly different from martial law. Most people who have

been resident for any time in Germany will, in this regard, recollect

an old piece of advice which friendly elders are accustomed to give

their juniors—namely, that in the Fatherland every good citizen is

required to "pay taxes, build barracks and shut his mouth." When one

considers this pearl of civic wisdom in conjunction with the unwritten

law which requires that even the public portraits of all royal and

princely personages shall be criticised favourably, or not at all, one

is bound to admit that anything like Anglo-Saxon liberty of opinion

or outspokenness is still far removed from the ordinary life of your

German of to-day.

In order to indicate the operation of the German secret service in

regard to the spreading of revolutionary unrest among neighbouring

countries, we cannot do better than cite the publication which was

addressed to Ireland, the supposedly "revolted province," in the early

days of August 1914. Here are the terms of that historic manifesto

which moved all Ireland to mirth for many a day:

"IRISH FOOLS!

"Have you forgotten that England is your only enemy?

"Have you forgotten, Kathleen, that you are willing to shed your blood

to win England's battles?

"Have you lost your wits that you believe all the ridiculous lies

published against the Germans in the Jingo papers?

"Have you forgotten how the English treated the Boers?

"Have you forgotten Ninety-Eight?

"Have you forgotten the Manchester Martyrs?

"Have you forgotten the K.O.S.B. murders?

"Have you forgotten that the Future lies in your hands?

"Have you forgotten that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity?

"GOD SAVE IRELAND."

It is hardly necessary to say that so obviously crude and inartistic

an appeal had no effect upon an essentially acute and artistic race;

and its positive inartisticity bears the hall-mark of your Prussian's

incapacity for entering into the more intimate feelings of men of other

nations, a point which need hardly be laboured, having in view recent

and current bovine misconceptions on the part of German diplomatic

agents both in Europe and America.

A more serious attempt to "revolutionise" French railway systems was

made in 1893 some few months after the granting of £4000 from the

secret-service funds for the purposes of international pamphleteering.

In August of that year the Mesnard pamphlet made its appearance

containing an appeal to all workers connected with the railroad

systems of France and urging them to take advantage of their country's

dependence upon them in order to wring concessions in money from the

Government, failing which a general and permanent strike was to be

declared having the inevitable result of paralysing the country's

energies and exposing it to attack on the part of its traditional

enemy. The pamphlet was proved to have been issued from Geneva, a chief

centre of the German international secret-service body. It was promptly

disavowed by the labour unions of France, and it was well recognised

at that period that its appearance was timed to create an industrial

upheaval to coincide with the friction which the Dreyfus Affair was

then causing between French and German diplomatists. During the course

of several general strikes which have taken place in France within the

past twenty years, it has clearly come to light that the charitable

subscriptions made in support of the families of strikers by Frenchmen

have been exceeded by contributions coming from German "sympathisers,"

in the proportion of twenty sovereigns to one. In the famous strike of

boot-makers at Amiens in May 1893, for example, local subscriptions

amounted to £48. At least £1000 was sent direct from Frankfurt![2] "In

the last fifteen years," wrote Lanoir in 1910, "the instigation of

strikes in French industries has been raised by the directors of the

German Secret Police to the degree of a real principle of government."

The same authority states that in 1893 he heard an ultra-Radical

parliamentary candidate for the Seine Department declare that a German

admirer, whom he did not know, had sent him £100 towards his election

expenses. Stieber in his Memoirs affects to believe that this sum is

commonly sent to any French parliamentarian who advocates a policy

which is thought to be useful to German imperial interests.

Stieber died in 1892, being honoured with a public funeral at which

the highest personages in Berlin were officially represented. His

fortune amounted to nearly £100,000 of our money and he possessed both

a town residence in Berlin and a villa in the Hartz Range. He had been

successful in accumulating throughout his public career twenty-three

decorations testifying to his _Honour_, and as this would appear to

have been his chief ambition in life, there can be little doubt that

the sleuth died happy. It is customary to say that Stieber took with

him to his grave the essential secrets underlying his organisation of

a national system of internal and external espionage. Frankly we think

that this can hardly have been the case, since the operations of German

espionage have at all times clearly proved themselves traceable to

definitely ascertainable objects and plans. Nor do we think that the

German system holds anything more in the way of elemental secrets to

be revealed, and the excellent systems of counter-espionage adopted

by British and French authorities justify us in our belief. Price

Collier's pregnant statement that the Germans have organised themselves

into an organisation, ahead of which they are incapable of thinking

or planning, may well be held to apply to their organised espionage,

and Stieber's elaboration of its arts may be taken to have reached

the highest possible point. In bursts of friendly confidence, and

presumably as a matter of proving the ineluctable superiority of

the Teuton over the poor Anglo-Saxon, German lecturers in English

universities have occasionally permitted their patriotic sentiments so

far to exceed the bounds of official reticence as to throw a certain

amount of light upon this mystic bag-of-tricks which is going to assure

to the House of Hohenzollern the overlordship of the five continents

and the seven seas. According to one of these German professors whom

we well and, indeed, affectionately remember, the high priests of the

policy of Prussianisation have thought out the whole matter along lines

alleged to have been laid down by the Hebrew Elders in accordance with

their policy of recovering the world for the Chosen Race. According

to this interesting system of Jewish Eugenics, the racial stock of

Sem is to be permanently assured as to its integrity by enforcing the

marriage of all male Jews with Jewesses. Result: all-Jewish offspring.

The superfluous women of the Hebrew families are to be distributed as

far as possible among the Gentile males, especially among those who

possess means, with the object of ensuring that the resultant offspring

shall possess such an admixture of Jewish blood as to make it at least

sympathetic towards Jews and Jewish ideas. And as sympathetic qualities

come in the main from the distaff side, the eugenic results must

inevitably favour Hebrew propagandism. We might go further into this

matter and point out that the Jewish rite of circumcision was not meant

to be simply hygienic in its effects and reach. We will not labour the

point, however, but proceed to indicate the analogy—according to the

learned German lecturer.

Prussia, said our authority, had appropriated large sums from the

indemnity of £200,000,000 sterling which she had obtained from France

in 1870, for the purpose of establishing her "national missionaries"

in every quarter of the world. Men were chosen according to their

abilities to preside over the destinies of foreign commercial

houses, banking institutions, agencies of all kinds, commission and

money-lending businesses and contracting corporations. These men

were really in the pay of the Berlin authorities who were financing

the various firms in question and paying their agents large or small

profits in proportion to the turnover of each particular business.

It was, however, certain that every German, no matter what his

position, was really acting in the interests of Germany, and so the

ubiquitous German clerk was enabled to undersell the labour of the

British clerk for the good reason that the deficit was offset in his

particular case by a quarterly grant from official German sources.

The intermarriage of Germans with British women was not only smiled

upon, but a premium was actually paid in each case and unknown to the

women. The children were, as far as possible, brought up in sympathy

with German institutions and ideas and taught to revere the chief of

Hohenzollern as the potential overlord of every country which came

within the operations and purview of German ambitions and land-lust. In

the event of war and in accordance with this propagandism, "everything

went," as the Americans say. In the early days of the conquest of

Belgian territories in 1914 we saw how particular attention was

paid to the younger unmarried women, as in Louvain, to give but one

example. These women were interned in a sort of concentration camp

and systematically seduced, making it a last possible hope for many

a hapless victim to accept a German husband, who in his own turn was

offered either a premium or promotion, whether civil or military, for

marrying the lady, as the saying is. It is not necessary to pursue

this theme to the extent to which it is capable of being emphasised.

It is sufficient for us to reflect that the main principles upon which

German ideas of conquest are based are not only vicious and immoral in

themselves, but are openly admitted and encouraged by the German civil,

military and cultural authorities who have raised their apostolic

voices in the cause of Prussian propagandism. Those who possess even an

elementary acquaintance with the history of nations do not require to

be told that, with the object of forcing "sympathies," methods quite

as outrageous as those cited above have more than once been resorted

to and, notably, in the early days of Rome's founding. It has been

well said that Stieberism has had the result of demoralising the entire

German nation by putting a premium on treachery and immorality in the

pursuit of special information and so has made that trade a career open

to the talents of all who care to adopt it. Responsible ministers have

declared more than once in the imperial parliament at Berlin their

concurrence in the view that "all is justifiable" in the interests

of the future of the Fatherland, and in this regard we remember that

not so long ago Herr Richter, the leader of the Opposition, raised a

protest reflecting on the doubtful character of the secret-service

agents of the Government only to receive from Puttkamer the

now-stereotyped retort:

"It is the right and duty of the German Imperial Government to employ

all possible and necessary methods in order to secure for the State the

benefits of useful intelligence, and if the Minister of Police has had

success by employing doubtful persons for his purposes, I personally

express to him my satisfaction and thanks."

The particular methods to which Richter had taken exception included

the bribing of magistrates, politicians and wealthy industrialists to

give up information in their possession. Some of the most disreputable

night-houses in Berlin were protected by the police for the reason that

they had become the fashionable rendezvous of officers and diplomatists

who, in their cups, were easily induced to give up information

regarding their superiors, which the secret-service sleuths were

anxious to obtain with the object of creating situations that left

important public men at their own mercy or else at the mercy of men

immeasurably higher up. Much has been written about the "high sense

of virtue" which prompted the famous revelations which were made by

Harden in his publication _Die Zukunft_ in 1907. We do not personally

question the sense of virtue possessed by the German editor, but it

is certain that the opinion was current in Berlin in the succeeding

year that reasons of State had required the removal from official life

of many of the high social and political personages implicated in the

scandals, and that the apparently "private" information possessed by an

editor was selected as the easiest means of forcing them irrevocably

from public life. Knowing what we do of the exiguous liberties of the

Prussian Press, it is quite obvious that the life of an editor who

should venture, of his own initiative and authority, to divulge a tenth

part of the story which was printed in the _Zukunft_, would not have

been worth an hour's purchase in militaristic Berlin. And here we recur

to the statement once made by an old servant of Frederick the Great to

the famous Count d'Antraigues: "That day on which you begin to imagine

your services are indispensable to him will be your last day. He has no

heart, and the very thought that you possess a claim on his friendship

will suffice to destroy you."

It is essential before passing from Stieber to consider his methods of

covering a foreign country with a fully organised system of German

spies, and all the more so because the work done in modern days by

Steinhauer and his congeners is based altogether on the conceptions of

Bismarck's sleuth. We have seen that in 1870, when the German armies

crossed the frontiers of France, they had already been assured, through

the energies and foresight of Stieber, of the co-operation of some

36,000 spies in Northern and Eastern France who were to smooth the way

for von Moltke's advancing legions. Indeed, Stieber's work largely

discounts that of both Bismarck and von Moltke, if it does not wholly

supersede it. In his Memoirs the sleuth tells how Bismarck, when told

that Jules Favre was putting out feelers for the surrender of Paris in

1871, sent for his lieutenant, instructing him to keep Favre under the

closest possible observation during the course of the negotiations. The

Prussian and French statesmen met at Versailles, where Stieber had made

all necessary arrangements for lodging the visitor. He selected for

this purpose, and unknown, of course, to Favre, the headquarters of the

German Secret Police Service—Stieber's own office. The Frenchman was

given as valet a man whom the proprietor highly recommended. This valet

was Stieber himself, who, during Favre's whole stay at Versailles,

acted for the statesman in the most menial capacities, taking care

during his master's absence to ransack the latter's luggage and examine

all his voluminous correspondence entering from Paris. Stieber boasts

that much of the information he thus obtained formed the basis of the

negotiations on which peace terms were concluded. Moritz Busch in his

Memoirs makes no especial mention of the sleuth's services in this

regard, and we may dismiss Stieber's claim to have counted for much in

the peace negotiations as being characteristically overdrawn.

He was, however, active in the remapping of the invasion zones in 1871

for the operations of his _corps d'espions_, the members of which, in

regard to all French territories, were from that year chosen mainly

from among the French-speaking Swiss. He laid it down as a condition

of the "fixed-point" spy's employment that he should be the keeper

of a shop of some kind, a public-house, a tobacconist's, an hotel, a

grocery of an established character and certain to attract custom from

the townspeople. Each spy was to assume the character of an honest

peace-loving citizen, anxious to give public service and make himself

personally popular. He was to receive in payment some £4 a week besides

out-of-pocket expenses to Brussels, or Lausanne, or Geneva where his

particular reports were made and whence his salary was paid every month

in the form of business remittances. The system of counter-espionage

adopted in France during the past five and twenty years has undoubtedly

had the effect of neutralising the work of the fixed-point agent.

Nevertheless, it is certain that in August 1914 there were some

15,000 of them still operating throughout France. Paul Lanoir gives

a specimen of the remittance letters which pass between the chief spy

inspector and his agent, the fixed-point expert. In some cases they are

ordinary business letters; but in the larger number they affect to be

communications between relatives. Thus:

"MY DEAR GEORGE,—I am sending you the interest on your loan. We never

can forget your generous act in coming so promptly to our assistance.

Things are not going too badly; next year, perhaps, you may have a

larger share in our profits, and we are anxious you should have as

much as possible. But write more often giving us fuller news. Do

not abuse Uncle Charles; he is a very good man who is to be trusted

always. We are all well here, but have only just managed to pull

through a hard winter. My husband and the children send you our

greetings, as also do Charlotte, Charles and Frederick. Your loving

sister."

Occasionally a man is suspected of being a spy. He is asked to produce

his foreign correspondence, and does so, giving some such letter as the

above in token of his integrity.

"There!" he is certain to say, "that's the sort of spy _I_ am—a kind

and loving brother who has lent money to his relatives to keep them out

of the poorhouse. And this is a letter which encloses me the interest

on my loan." And then, of course, the fixed-point agent gives way to

tears. Nevertheless, the above apparently harmless message is well

understood by our spy who reads it as follows:—

"I enclose your salary for the past month. Your reports of last month

are not bad. On the whole your work is satisfactory and next year you

may get a better salary. Nevertheless, your reports are too few in

number; work harder, send more. Don't trouble about Uncle Charles;

we have all the information we require. We got through the last

inspection without loss of salary. Keep up your relations with your

correspondents."

It is obvious that our residential spy is not allowed to select his

place of business at random. His location is at some strategical point

in the line of military advance, mapped out some years ahead. Thus,

our agent can spy upon the local garrison, upon a military post, a

railway depot, a terminal, and at any critical moment he has his own

corps of agents—some of them, alas, unconscious traitors—ready, for a

few francs, to do his bidding, among them, perhaps, a poor charwoman

or an unemployed labourer. In country towns in France it is not hard

for a prosperous man of business to make friends with the officers

of the garrison. Sooner or later and after a series of visits to the

billiard-table, or the hotel bar, he discovers among his military

acquaintances needy young officers who are in debt, who have lost

heavily on the race-courses, and it is not long before he begins to

talk of his large winnings on the turf. The way is quickly opened to

a loan, and then the German Secret Service begins to find out things.

Naturally our residential spy keeps his book of expenses and is duly

recouped for his outlays on drinks, dinners, race-course visits and

loans, with interest at 5 per cent. And if the spy is unable to make

headway with a young officer, there is always a possibility of his

being able to bribe the officer's wife or mistress, and his allowance

of earnest-money is practically unlimited. So that, when we consider

how our agent is a man of leisure who fishes the local streams, and has

plumbed their various depths; how he keeps horses and knows the average

amount of forage available in his town at any given moment; how he has

shot over the outlying country and knows the lie of the land for miles

around; how he is on visiting terms with every local farmer and knows

his resources—why, it is not surprising that when German armies are

moved across the frontiers, they should know every step of the country

much better than the inhabitants themselves are likely ever to know

it. And so with Belgium and England, where there is not a farmhouse, a

strategic copse or upland, the depth of a river, or military capacity

of a given road, which is not as well known to the headquarters staff

in Berlin as to our own ordnance-surveyors.

XIII

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_

The strategic ideas laid down more than two thousand years ago by

Polyænus, of whom we have spoken in an earlier chapter, and to whom

Napoleon admitted some indebtedness, are evidently rated high among the

military authorities of the Berlin military academies. It is therefore

not surprising to learn that in accordance with the Greek's teachings

every foreign general or superior officer of note who is considered

likely ever to play a prominent rôle in European wars, is in each

case as well known to the German military authorities as he is to his

own military superiors. His personal character, disposition, virtues,

vices and foibles, once an officer reaches to high rank and acquires

a reputation as a possible commander, all form the subject of one of

those _dossiers_ with which the Dreyfus case made us so familiar. It is

a main part of the duty of our fixed-point agent to collect all sorts

of information regarding the chief garrison officers at the town in

which they are established and transmit the resulting data to their

inspectors by whom, when verified, they are forwarded to military

headquarters. The especial categories which claim the attention of the

German authorities are the following:—

(_a_) Generals and officers of superior rank and high repute.

(_b_) The staff-college professors at Saint-Cyr, the École

Polytechnique and Saint-Maixent, the disciplinarians, bursars and

superior employés of these institutions.

(_c_) The managers of all arsenals and military establishments.

(_d_) All aides-de-camp and staff-officers.

(_e_) All superior employés in the department of the Ministers of War

and the Navy.

(_f_) Special information as to the financial and domestic conditions

and relations of all those officers mentioned in the above categories

who are known or thought to be "unsettled" in their mode of life.

It is also stated that promising cadets from the military and

naval academies are at once registered at Berlin and honoured with

their respective _dossiers_. Lanoir is the chief authority for the

above-mentioned details, and as a trained journalist, he gives an

instance of the working of the spy in a case which came directly under

his notice. The fixed-point agent in question had found it somewhat

difficult to penetrate into the society of the superior officers at a

garrison town. He therefore decided to find out all he required through

certain subaltern officers who were accustomed to frequent his place

of business—an hotel, as it happened. Accordingly he called in the

services of an occasional visitor at the house—a commercial traveller

who was also a spy in German pay. Possessed of all those gifts of the

genial man of the world, the supposed commercial traveller found no

difficulty whatever in winning the confidence of junior officers whose

social talents were far in excess of their means and who were quite

willing to overlook the inferior rank of their new acquaintance when

they discovered that with him the spending of money was altogether

a small consideration. It was not long before one of the subalterns

had confessed that inability to keep up his position had necessitated

sending in his resignation, which had been duly forwarded to the

authorities. Expressing sympathy in a fatherly way, the traveller

requested the young officer to inspect his own military papers. "You

will see that I, too, have done my duty to France," he said, handing

over some forged certificates attesting military service, for the

manufacture of which Berlin has a special department. "Knowing me for

a good Frenchman, perhaps you will treat me with more confidence."

The commercial man goes on to propose that the subaltern shall enable

him to do business with the officers of the garrison. His particular

line of goods is hosiery, which he is willing to sell to officers,

since he is an ex-soldier himself, at almost cost price. The subaltern

is naturally interested, but declares that he knows nothing about

business. The tempter then tells his young friend that in reality he is

travelling for his own firm and can make a profit on the goods even

if he allows the subaltern 50 per cent. on everything sold. "For every

£4 worth of hosiery I sell, you shall have a cheque for £2. As for the

difficulty of introductions—just say I am your cousin; it is done every

day and all over France. It will be worth £250 a year to you." The poor

subaltern is not long in falling, and by the end of the next month the

commercial traveller has wormed his way into the officers' quarters,

has learned all there is to be known about the ammunition and ordnance

stores, together with personal details about superior officers, which

he could never have obtained in any other way. German money is making

up the deficit on hosiery sold at cost price, but in return Germany is

getting far more than her money's worth in military intelligence.

Lanoir also gives an instance in which one of the most promising French

officers of his generation was, less than a score of years ago, paid

£8000 by a supposed man of wealth, a casual garrison-town acquaintance,

in order to rescue his father from bankruptcy. The information had

come to the ears of the German tutor of a French General to whom

our young officer was acting as aide-de-camp; the tutor forthwith

informed the German fixed-point agent, with the result that the offer

of £8000 was subsequently made and accepted, the young officer in

question ultimately transferring his services to the _dossier_ bureau

attached to the Secret Police in Berlin. Another officer is said to

have been given a sufficient fortune by the German War Office to make

him an eligible _parti_ in the eyes of the daughter of a well-known

French General who was said to possess especial knowledge regarding

mobilisation plans and arsenal material. The officer, whose heart was

elsewhere, as they say, accepted the commission from Berlin, paid

half-hearted court to the lady in question, but was seen sufficiently

often in her company to justify the local agent's belief in the young

man's assertion that things were going on famously. On his promise to

supply Berlin with copies of documents belonging to his _fiancée's_

father, they consented to advance £10,000. He thereupon drew up plans

of mobilisation of his own, as well as details regarding artillery,

which he had himself thought out. Eventually the price was paid in

full, our officer promising to reveal much more when the wedding was

over. Then he went off with the other lady, and Berlin was badly

beaten, though not, it is certain, for the first time. Within the

past ten years it is well known that large sums of money have been on

several occasions paid for intelligence regarding French and Russian

fortifications, the plans and specifications having been drawn up by

individuals who had deliberately devoted themselves to military studies

in order scientifically to produce the "information" in question.

Such a set of plans was sold to Germany in 1909 by a Pole, for a sum

exceeding £4000. It is, however, not often that the German military

experts are caught nodding, their sources of primary information

being as a rule excellent. They take few risks, but then there is no

source of possible information which they overlook. This being so, the

extravagant wife of an army man is always an object of interest to

them, and many an officer has fallen, owing to his desire to shield a

venal wife, blackmail, in such a case, being invariably the method of

coercing the husband.

If ever a nation has proved to the world that she is devoid of

essential military genius, that nation is Germany. Her successful

campaign of 1870 was almost entirely due, as we have seen, to the

preparations and plans laid down by Stieber and his co-adjutors as

well as the fact that France had relied too much upon the traditional

ability of the French armies to cope successfully with those of

Germany. The same may be said of Germany's "marvellous advance" towards

Paris in 1914, which was really a triumph for organised espionage and

by no means a proof that military genius was inspiring the movements

of the Kaiser's hosts. This organised system of espionage has for

some years been in the hands of Major Steinhauer, the present chief

of the Berlin Secret Service, and evidently a worthy successor to

Stieber. Belgium, as all know who have studied German methods in what

has been long known as the "penetration area" of the Netherlands, was

so completely in the hands of German spies at the outbreak of the

war, that it was only the failure, by a rare miscalculation, of the

Berlin military authorities to have forwarded adequate siege-guns

to Liège which prevented the Imperial armies marching through the

country in a week and reaching France sooner. The entry into the

Belgian capital of 700,000 men, without confusion or mishap, has been

credited to the military genius of von Kluck and his lieutenants,

the fact being entirely overlooked that in view of the inevitable

war which Berlin expected to take place before 1915 (as a well-known

German newspaper-proprietor told American and Canadian reporters in

1910) the German Secret Service authorities had made an especial

appropriation from their funds for the purpose of placing some 8000

spies on the various routes of march between Aix-la-Chapelle and

Saint-Quentin. As a result, the very quarters of the various regiments

of German invading forces had been marked out for occupation by the

Berlin authorities at least two years ahead, while for the purposes of

lodging important personages, special hotel managers had been installed

several months before August 1914. In Brussels as well as in Paris

the city had been so well mapped out that, as American correspondents

reported, distinguished officers arriving by rail at the Gare du Nord

or the Gare de l'Est gave their instructions as couriers might have

done, without doubt or hesitation, to the cabmen at the stations. All

these preparations had been made by German fixed agents whose various

residences throughout the line of advance bore the familiar caricature

of "Kluck's cow." As the event proved in Belgium, such fixed spies

had become, from lengthy and normal residence in the various cities,

so familiar to Belgian inhabitants that these last supposed them

to be either the victims of the German billeting process, or else

compulsory agents under the terms of martial law. In Paris matters had

been prepared so far in advance that it had been decided to give a

representation of Sudermann's _Heimath_ at the Comédie Française, at

which the Kaiser and his Staff were to be present. That chronically

disappointed potentate was to reside, the German papers of the time

declared, at the Élysée, the President's abode, while the procuresses

of Paris, mostly Germans, felt, in view of the commissions already

distributed in advance among them, emphatically assured that their

financial millennium was to arrive with the German Staff. It had even

been arranged, by way of a spectacular _revanche_, that the so-called

War Lord was to visit the Invalides, where Napoleon's body reposes, and

there possess himself of the great soldier's sword, as the Corsican

had, in 1806, possessed himself of the sword of Frederick the Great,

saying as he took it, "Ceci est à moi"—this is mine. The military

set-back was in all probability the least which the Emperor William

suffered by his failure to "hit" Paris as a Westerner might put it,

seeing that the Kaiser can hardly be called a military man in any

practical sense of the term.

In regard to the fixed spies in Belgium, it has to be noted that

they were not all, as far as is known, natives. Competent Belgian

journalists declared at the outbreak of the present war that, at

the defeat of France in the war of 1870, Germany had already laid

down plans for eventually overrunning and annexing both Belgium and

Holland. With a view to carrying out her plans, she made in 1872

definite appropriations for the covering of both countries with a

system of what was known at Berlin as "Germanising influences." It

was based on a principle of giving to deserving minor tradesmen in

the Rhineland districts sums of money sufficient to set them up in

business in the so-called Belgian "penetration area." Preference was

given to couples with young children who had been born on German soil.

The people of the Rhineland and Westphalia are for the most part

Catholics; large numbers of them speak both French and Flemish, or

at least "Plat-Deutsch," while from a mental point of view, there is

very little difference between them and the populations of Liège and

Limburg. Once settled on Belgian soil, it was easy for them to adapt

themselves to the people and bring up their children as Belgians. It

was part of the agreement, however, that the children, after attaining

a certain age, should return to the Fatherland, there to undergo a

process of re-Germanisation, at the close of which, having resided

with close relatives and passed through German schools, they returned

to Belgium ostensibly pro-Germans. In the meantime their parents were

being helped to enrich themselves by acting as commission-agents for

large industrial houses on the German side. It was supposed that this

scheme—an invention of Bismarck—would prove the key to the conquest

of the Netherlands, for the plans were also put into operation in

Holland. As a matter of fact, the results of the scheme were far from

coming up to expectations, and if any proof were wanting to demonstrate

the elemental incapacity of the German for assimilating another race,

here it was. The Belgian and the Dutchman both proved their capacity

(and at the same time their racial superiority) for assimilating the

Germans to the point at which the latter became anti-German—even as is

the case with the German-Americans of to-day, who are Americans first

and Germans last of all. By the mid-nineties it was hoped that a large

nucleus of Germanophile Belgians and Dutch would be preparing for the

easy (and perhaps peaceful) conquest of the Low Countries. Bismarck

had realised, however, by 1890 that "the German is not by nature or

disposition a good coloniser," whatever virtues he may possess as a

colonist, and for that reason was opposed to his new Kaiser's ambition

to push the frontiers of the Fatherland farther than they had already

gone. At all events, the organised system of the Germanising influences

proved, to a large extent, a failure in the Low Countries. It is

precisely because it had not proved so to the whole extent that Belgium

fell so easy a victim to the German aggressive advance, once Liège had

fallen, in 1914. For as a result of the system of 1872 and onward, it

was hard for Belgians themselves to know who was in 1914 an agent for

Germany and who was not. In this connection, and as the analogy holds

in some degree, it may be stated that the main objection to the Oxford

Scholarships founded by the late Mr Rhodes was based on an argument

advanced by observant German professors who had seen Britain's system

at work—namely, that the German citizen was too easily assimilable by

stronger and superior types to allow of his passing three or four years

at the intellectual hub of the British Empire without detriment to his

German patriotism.

While discussing Belgium we are reminded of the fact that at the

University of Louvain many theological students from Germany were

in residence before the war and were, therefore, enabled to keep

their correspondents in Germany in touch with matters of importance

as to the feeling of Belgian professors and the Belgian hierarchy

generally towards Germany and German aspirations in Belgium. It is

not so commonly known, however, that every German army includes in

its ranks a number of renegade priests, or priests in minor orders,

who are sufficiently well acquainted with religious matters to be

able to impose upon villagers, or local parish priests and nuns.

The non-Catholic forces which arrived at Louvain in September 1914,

when they came into conflict with the Catholic Bavarian troops, were

entirely to blame for the mutilation of the historic city, since

reprisals on the part of the inhabitants—if any serious reprisals ever

took place—were said by American and Australian correspondents to have

probably been due to the fact that many of these ex-priests had been

given clerical attire from the military clothing department and sent

to visit the local religious houses, not as soldiers, but in their

clerical capacity. The result was a series of outrages both at convents

and colleges, the recital of which has already been officially given to

the world by Belgian authorities. Stieber placed much reliance on this

peculiar class of spy in the Austrian campaign of 1866 and again in

that of 1870. The German authorities continue to employ them and they

are ever willing to serve, since as a rule they belong to a class whose

poverty and rakishness are known throughout Germany. They are not, it

may be said, confined to any particular religion, and in the present

war their functions have been exercised mainly in ministering to the

wounded, from whom they are successful enough in extracting information

as to the movements of opposing forces. Readers do not require to be

told at this juncture of the unscrupulous use which German armies have

made of the Red Cross ambulances in the war of 1914. Not only have they

clothed the most notorious creatures of German towns in nuns' attire,

but in many cases youthful soldiers have been dressed as Red Cross

Sisters and have thus been enabled to pass through the enemy's lines,

ostensibly on errands of mercy, but in reality in order to spy out the

situation. That German commanders have little regard for the lives of

their men is better known, perhaps, than a common ruse to which they

resort when looking for artillery range. At nightfall two recruits are

invariably asked to volunteer for duty with the wire-coil. They advance

towards the enemy's lines which they are instructed to inspect, paying

out the coil of wire as they advance. Naturally they are shot as they

approach the other camp; their officer's object has, however, been

accomplished, and when his end of the coil ceases to "pay out" he is in

possession of the range.

The present war, experts assure us, has not developed anything new in

the way of cipher messages, and it is now generally admitted that man

has yet to devise a cipher which, given time to solve its principle,

will continue long to remain a puzzle to inquiring minds. Napoleon

adopted a cipher with which he communicated on many occasions with his

chief-of-staff, Berthier, whose only recorded witticism is that the

Emperor's handwriting was the hardest cipher he knew. By Napoleon's

directions, a certain pamphlet was to be employed according to the

day of the week or the date. The names of these were of course known

beforehand. The instructions ran: "The first figure will give the

number of the page; the second figure will give the line; the third

number will serve as index to the required word, or letter, and give

its position in the line indicated by the second figure; if the figure

denotes a whole word, it will explain itself; if it only means a

letter the fact will be shown." The whole system was found, however, to

be too slow for the most impatient of commanders, and as a result was

rarely called for by the Emperor. The Great War has disclosed the fact

that old Indian tricks of conveying information over long distances

have been resorted to, particularly the Red Man's signals by smoke

which ascends at various points along a given line and the different

readings of which are settled by agreement in advance among those

sending and receiving the signals. It is now known that information

as to "range," which, at the opening of the war, German artillerists

were able to discover with a rapidity and a precision which were not

less than miraculous, was being transmitted to the enemy by fixed

spies in towns behind the French and British positions by means of

smoking fires built upon upland territory according to indications

previously agreed upon and based mainly on the number and arrangement

of the different volumes of smoke. The ruse was quickly penetrated

however, and thereafter German gunners proved less expert in judging

distances. We also heard much at the beginning of the war, both on the

Continent and in England, of the "window-light" and the "window-blind"

system of communicating intelligence to the enemy on land as well as

on the coastline. All these tricks have been discovered, and as a

result of the most stringent exercise of precautions, as well as the

insistence upon martial-law regulations at nightfall in the fighting

areas, military spies have been forced to rely more largely on personal

adventure and its risks, than was the case in the earlier phases of

the conflict. Spies sent in advance of an army, disguised as peasants

of the countryside, can keep their friends informed of the movements

of the enemy by various signals also drawn from the Red Man's code,

such as the breaking of trees or branches, cutting up squares of turf

and disposing them in a certain order near trees, by chalk-marks not

very dissimilar to the "marks" used by English and American tramps or

by the placing of stones at certain distances—all signs which can be

read according to previous arrangement. In regard to these ruses it

may confidently be said that modern man is far behind primitive or

uncivilised man in the effective employment of them, and, in any case,

there were few of those now recently in use which were not commonly

practised by Napoleon and his commanders.

XIV

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_

The man who now occupies the chair at the headquarters of the Berlin

Secret Police is called Steinhauer. For the past two decades he has

been one of the most important officials connected with the bureau

and was responsible for the commissions given to Turr, Windell,

Graves, Lody, Ernst and a host of experts, the majority of whom have

engaged in espionage both in France and England and unfortunately

remained uncaptured. Steinhauer's contribution to the German system

of spying has been connected mainly with the adoption to its ends

of modern scientific inventions. At the outbreak of the War of

1914, for instance, it is certain that in Paris alone, his agents

were manipulating a round dozen of wireless apparatus concealed, in

several cases, on the roofs of hotels which were, of course, under

German management, and in other cases in private houses, as well as

on private yachts on the coasts of France. Much of Steinhauer's money

has also passed into the hands of British manufacturers of automobiles

and makers of British military uniforms who were, all unconsciously,

selling their goods to the Berlin sleuth's emissaries in Britain and

France, to be used for the purposes of espionage in time of war. A

writer in the _Petit Parisien_ has stated that the Berlin military

authorities possess uniforms of all grades capable of clothing an

army corps composed of all the different types of soldiers in Europe,

while their batteries of foreign-made automobiles can only be numbered

in terms of hundreds. Steinhauer is a firm believer in the arts of

"demoralising" by scares the non-combatant population of an enemy

country. Those notorious but substantial rumours, which occasionally

ran through England, of Zeppelin raids upon Newcastle and Colchester,

and which were subsequently proved to be groundless, all emanated from

servants of the chief of the Berlin Secret Police operating in Britain.

The French writer, Elme Caro, has drawn the attention of his countrymen

to this form of espionage in the following words:—

"There is above all one especial ruse in which our enemy excels, and

that is in spreading false reports and rumours. We are forced to

believe that this characteristic must have its roots deep down in the

traditions of Germans and the institutions of their race, since it

called forth the especial indignation of Immanuel Kant. Their methods

of applying treachery and bad faith to the arts of war are peculiarly a

Prussian talent and one which in the war of 1870 cost us more than one

bloody defeat. What is the process? We are given just that particular

brand of news which is likely to please us and lull us into a fancied

security, such news being, if necessary, invented for the purpose.

These experts in the arts of deceit and trickery are past-masters in

demoralising the enemy by conveying to him news which suggests the

idea that peace is close at hand. During such lulls, one's courage

begins to weaken, the soul of a great city begins to find itself

growing unaccustomed to the idea of war, our firm resolutions are soon

forgotten and we go back to the old routine of life with relieved minds

and hearts. Our will-power is broken and the enemy then seizes his

opportunity to attack us with many chances in his favour. To prevent

us from getting good news, to convey to us the worst, to invent it

if necessary—this is the policy of the leaders of German armies and

diplomacy. Bismarck possessed all this talent and carried it out with

the prescience of a master in the art of judging and estimating the

weaknesses of common human kind."

Steinhauer was also responsible for the rumours of 1909 and 1910 in

regard to the alleged nocturnal visits of aircraft to the east coast

of England, and his henchmen in the Press go so far as to declare that

in 1911 a Zeppelin visited the London area on more than one occasion

for the purpose of "taking time-distances," so that in the day of war

any given airship would know by the time schedule where to drop its

bombs, in such a way as to destroy buildings which had been previously

marked out for attack. By this method, it is said, a Zeppelin can

act independently of fog, and indeed, would be enabled to carry out

its work more effectively because of fog, provided it was favoured

by fair winds—a view supported by Mr Graves, who also maintains

that Zeppelins have already in peace-time "stood over" London. "A

mysterious sky-monster," says Graves, "which carried a complement

of five-and-twenty men and twelve tons of explosives, sailed across

the North Sea, circled over London and returned to Germany. This new

dreadnought of Germany's flying navy was aloft ninety-six hours and

maintained a speed of thirty-eight miles an hour in the face of a

storm-pressure of almost eighty-three metres." The German Press, in

November 1914, declared that its airship fleet was three times as large

as that which already existed in 1910, and through its confidential

writers in the Dutch papers, it asserted that the German General Staff

had produced Zeppelins which were "75 per cent. more air-worthy and

safe" than the passenger-Zeppelins which travelled over Germany in

1909—all of which claims are purely "scare-work" of the Steinhauer

bureau, for obviously enough, Berlin's military authorities would long

ago have acted against Paris and London had they been able to do so,

time being such a tremendous factor in their campaign. We pass over

the cases of Schultz and Ernst as being still fresh in public memory

to take up that of Lieutenant Turr, one of the most important spies

who has operated in Europe since Steinhauer has been connected with

the Berlin Secret Police. In regard to the man Ernst, the Islington

hairdresser, who received at first £1, and subsequently £1, 10s. a

month from Berlin, it is certain that the Berlin authorities showed

themselves, in modern times, as inept in their naval and military

espionage, as they proved to be in their diplomacy, for all the

information they obtained through the instrumentality of their North

London barber collaborant. Indeed, at this writing, it is rumoured

that Dr Steinhauer has been disrated in his Berlin office and is

about to take the road into retirement with many more of the Kaiser's

incompetent servants.

Hermann Turr was a subaltern in a regiment of the Prussian Hussars

who, owing to perversity of character and disposition, was removed by

the Kaiser's orders from the Army List about ten years ago. At the

suggestion of the then head of the Prussian Secret Service, who urged

the man's bad character as a point in favour of his being employed as

a spy, Turr was given employment by the secret police in Berlin, his

first duty being the watching of other spies in the same department—an

employment, it may be said, which is only given to a man whose social

and financial condition is in the desperate stage. It was in respect

of what we will call the "Sans Souci" correspondence—it was really

nameless—that Turr came into prominence, not only in Germany, but

in every country in the world. The "Sans Souci" correspondence was

published, without name or title, in Germany and contained accusations

of the most serious kind laid to the account of the Hohenzollern family

as well as to that of the highest official and court personages of

Berlin. The present Emperor, suspecting a member of his entourage whom

he had been forced to exile, called in the services of Turr, promising

him a large sum for proofs as to the identity of the author of the

letters. These appeared in 1905 in pamphlet form and were immediately

suppressed, severe penalties being threatened, as in the equally

notorious "Hotzé" letters of a previous generation, to all who should

be proved to have sold them. Turr proved his zeal within a month of

receiving his commission by giving alleged proofs that the letters had

been written at the instigation of a well-known French politician whose

Germanophobia is only exceeded by his remarkable talents in diplomacy.

It is certain that about this time, 1906, Germany was on the verge of

declaring war against France, and it was only when full proofs were

forthcoming that Turr's "evidence" was based mainly on forgeries,

that Franco-German diplomacy weathered the storm which threatened its

relations. Turr, it is understood, was imprisoned, but secured his

release on a personal appeal to the Emperor, promising to reveal the

real authorship of the forgeries in question. In accordance with his

story, the forged evidence had really been handed to him in Paris by

persons acting in the interests of the Berlin war-party which was

already anxious for a trial of strength with France and which chose

this means as likely to precipitate events, Turr being really the dupe

of their agents who were acting in conjunction with the Berlin Secret

Police in order to force the Emperor's hand. Another man who also

served the bureau over which Steinhauer now presides was Windell, who

once tended the French General de Boisdeffre as valet in Paris and was

taken by that officer all through France on his tours of inspection of

the military districts and fortresses, Windell, an educated man and a

trained engineer, supplying Berlin with plans and memoranda of all and

everything which might serve the interests of the General Staff.

In a large measure also to Steinhauer must be attributed the rigorous

methods which govern the production of the modern first-class German

spy. A full possession of those personal gifts which characterise

the man of the world is insisted upon by the authorities at "Number

Seventy, Berlin," as the headquarters in Kœnigergratzerstrasse in that

capital are invariably known to employees. A candidate for service is

not only expected to "look the part," as they say, he is also expected

to be able to act it. He is therefore required to be a man who has had

the advantage of good home training of a really superior class, one who

possesses social breeding besides decent scholarship, a combination

which is less common in Germany than in either France or England.

Apart, however, from the mere matter of scholarship and address, the

rule holds here as in every other business of life, that it is after

all character which really counts. A man is looked for, indeed, very

much similar, as to his mental capacities, to the really high-class

newspaper correspondent of our own day—one who is at home in all

capitals, who can talk intelligently and intelligibly on current topics

and has a good repertoire of languages at his tongue's disposal, who is

unquestionably master of his own language and who can associate with

men placed above his own condition without displaying the servility of

the flunkey, or the assurance of the man whose loudness is invariably

the measure of his own uncertainty of his social worth and standing.

As far as Prussia produces men of presentability, the Berlin bureau

has always succeeded in enlisting excellent agents for its purposes,

and, in any case, we have seen that it generally looks for them among

decadent members of the territorial families, or among officers who

have made false steps in the course of their careers, but who are

still sufficiently attached to life to be content to serve under the

double flag of the _corps d'espionnage_, despised by all who pretend

to imposing standards of honour, yet certain of a good living if they

perform their duties. The number and scope of the studies to which

they have to devote themselves, once they are entered on the books

of the bureau, will surprise men who recall the years they spent in

lecture-rooms studying for army or higher civil-service examinations.

Indeed, it is only a well-educated man possessed of really an advanced

kind of knowledge who is competent to engage in the curriculum which

goes to form the German spy of our own time. The average Sandhurst or

Woolwich cadet on "passing out" would only just about hold his own

with the men who "coach" in Espionage for the examination set by Dr

Steinhauer and his board of professors.

Once accepted as a member of the Secret Service of the higher grade,

the agent is entered on the pay-sheet at a fixed salary commencing at

£200 a year, with an added ten shillings a day for personal expenses

whether on active service or not. For each "job"—neatly executed, to be

sure—he is promised a bonus with an increase of personal out-of-pocket

allowance up to £2 daily. He is notified, however, that 33 per cent.

of all moneys coming to him will be kept back and banked for him at

5 per cent., the object of this measure being to assure the Service

a hold upon its agents in case they should be inclined to leave

without giving due notice. The salaries are paid monthly in advance.

Personal instructions are given verbally to each accepted agent, on

his initiation: he must report daily when not on active service at

Number Seventy; should he be on active service, he must telegraph a

certain number to indicate that he is alive and accessible; he must

observe absolute silence in respect of his missions, nor converse even

with high officials under whom he is not acting; he shall carry no

memoranda and no documents, but must trust to memory; he is to avoid

fellow-agents, is forbidden to drink, or associate with women; he must

never sign his name, but always his number; he is provided with a

separate cipher which he must always use for cabling and telegraphing.

It is only at this point, however, that the real "grind" begins for

your German Secret Service agent, who, whatever may be his moral

shortcomings, is certainly worthy of all respect when considered in

regard to his mentality.

His studies of a technical character may be said to be confined to

Topography, Trigonometry, Naval Construction, Military Fortification

and Drawing. His tutors are invariably taken from the ablest experts

in their subjects. Supposing a Secret Service be sent to Antwerp to

study the forts and report upon them, he must be in a position to give

correct estimates of heights, angles, distances, ground-lay; he must,

therefore, be a surveyor the accuracy of whose intuitions must to a

large extent cover the work of the theodolite or the transit-compass.

In the case of the spy, for instance, who reported to Berlin upon

the Forth Bridge, the work had to be performed without arousing the

attention or the suspicions of officials; the man in question effected

his measurements by pacing, by observing angles and by subsequent

triangulation, the result being highly creditable to his training,

for he judged the required measurements to within yards and feet in

distances and heights, respectively. It may be objected that this was

wasted time, since these facts are available to anyone. The General

Staff at Berlin was taking no chances, however. Its object in sending

its man to examine the Forth Bridge was solely to find out how many

men could be so disposed, in the vicinity of the structure, as to

blow it up at a given signal, what was the geological nature of the

foundation-shafts, how much dynamite would be required to destroy the

bridge. And Berlin wanted to _know_.

So too with regard to all matters military and naval, as we shall

presently show. There is, indeed, no time for leisure and no laggards

are allowed to remain very long upon the roster of the General Staff's

Secret Service College. Anything more complete or thorough, it would

be hard to imagine, and but for the sinister aims and objects of the

whole curriculum, it would be difficult to picture anything more

admirable or workmanlike in its organic perfection. The work entitled

_Secrets of the German War Office_ written by Mr Graves has, as most

people are by this time aware, been disavowed by the Berlin authorities

as being the work of what Americans call "a good guesser." This, it

must be seen, was the only course open to the German Staff, and their

disclaimers in no way discount the value of their ex-agent's story

when he touches upon purely departmental and organic details connected

with the Steinhauer bureau. He tells us himself that he served for

twelve years in the German Secret Service which has three distinct

branches—that of the Army, that of the Navy and the Personal Corps. The

General Staff of Berlin controls the Secret Service departments dealing

with both military and naval affairs, while the Personal department

is directed from the Foreign Office and is really under the direct

eye and touch of the German Emperor himself. The military and naval

sections deal with the procuring of hidden and secret information in

regard to armaments, plans, new inventions and codes. The Personal

Corps concerns itself with diplomatic affairs, details as to cabinet

discussions, royal and princely scandals and includes among its agents

men and women who are conducting inquiries on behalf of the Emperor

himself. Among its members are to be found princes, dukes, counts and

barons, lawyers, clergymen, doctors, actors and actresses, _mondaines_

and _demi-mondaines_, journalists, authors, money-lenders, jockeys,

trainers, waiters and porters. Mr Graves dismisses the waiters and

the porters as being nonentities who are never given commissions

except those of the most non-committal kind, and in any case are

never entrusted with the reasons underlying the little jobs which

they perform at a few shillings each time. After a successful series

of missions, men in the higher departments receive salaries from the

bureau varying between £600 and £2000 yearly, which sums are invariably

supplemented by generous bonuses—£1500 is not uncommon—as a reward for

good work in particularly perilous enterprises. The remuneration is,

however, mean when compared with the dangers undergone, and since no

official countenance is ever given (nor, indeed, expected) on the part

of an agent's employers, once a spy falls into the hands of the enemy,

the game is far from being worth the worry and strain it entails.

Moreover, a time comes in the case of the very successful agent when he

has learned so much about the "policies" of his highly placed patrons

that his existence becomes a source of anxiety to them, and his removal

is often effected by means which recall the time of the Borgias or the

days of the _oubliette_.

XV

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_concluded_

We have emphasised the German Spy System to the extent of devoting

five chapters to an exposition of its methods and the principles

underlying its origin, development and application. Our object has

been mainly to show not only to what extent a nation may become

demoralised by allowing a system of espionage to assume the proportions

of a constitutional principle, but more especially to indicate how

ineffective its operations must ultimately prove when opposed, not

necessarily by counter-espionage, but by the ordinary legal safeguards

which foreign governments can at all times put into force to neutralise

such operations. At the outbreak of the War, for instance, the

British authorities were able, by the simple process of internment

and registration, to destroy in these islands the bulk of effective

German influences on which Berlin had long relied for the consummation

of its insane dream of "making Britain a German province." Again, the

comparative ease with which eleventh-hour systems of counter-espionage

have proved themselves capable of defeating the elaborate and far-flung

organisations of fifty years of German master-spies must have the

result of teaching Germany that a military establishment which puts

its first trust in its external spy systems as providing the royal

road to warlike successes, really admits its own lack of military

genius. Indeed, it is impossible to read the story of Stieber's

exploits and not realise that Stieber, rather than von Moltke, won

those strategic successes of 1866 and 1870 which laid the foundations

of the modern German Empire. And just as Bismarck has had no successor

in the business of German diplomacy, so is it certain that Stieber's

mantle has fallen upon no modern exponent of German espionage capable

of adding to the original system. We have heard much of the triumphs

of the Berlin Secret Service; the results of the War must disclose

its total failure, though we may even now confidently predict that

the blunders of its present directors have not been less glaring than

those of Berlin diplomats. Like everything systematised in Germany,

its organisation of espionage was systematised to the point at which

independent and original action became impossible, so that when faced

with conditions which Stieber had not known and provided for, it at

once revealed its impotence and ineptitude, as well as the incapacity

of its organisers for attaining practical results.

We propose in this present chapter, which concludes our account of

Germany's system, to show how complete is the training of agents for

the work of military and naval espionage. The German military spy,

it must be premised, is rarely an officer on the active or retired

list, but almost always a civilian who has, of course, had military

training. Turr and Windell had both been military officers who had

practically been cashiered, while Lody had been a minor officer in

the German merchant service. The German military agent must know all

units of foreign armies at sight and must also be able to memorise the

code words by which such units are indicated in the Berlin bureau.

In respect of code words, indeed, his memory must, in all military

matters, be of a Napoleonic capacity, and when corresponding with his

head office as to the work of any particular pattern of gun on which he

is instructed to report, it will go badly with him if he fails to quote

his code accurately. Since, by the regulations, he is not permitted to

carry documents, his task is obviously not an easy one. And so, again,

with classes of explosives and types of shell. Furthermore, he must

be so intimate with the science of fortification as to be competent

to produce a map of any required fortified place, its maximum content

and capacity for resistance. No Woolwich cadet of two years' standing

is expected to know half as much as your German military spy, while

his periodical examinations are conducted on a scale which would be

sufficient to make studious officers of the Staff College doubtful

as to their ability to "floor" the papers. Any error transmitted in

the way of information as to guns, man-capacity of fortresses, new

ideas in strategy and tactics, ballistics, plans and military maps,

are dealt with in Berlin on the American plan—that is to say, the

offender is never given a chance to offend twice. Nor is the art of

generalisation, so common in journalism, ever permitted to pass muster

at Number Seventy. Particularisation is insisted upon, for Berlin

wants facts first, last, always and everywhere. To ensure complete

accuracy, the General Staff will employ, if necessary, a dozen spies

on the same mission; they operate unknown to each other, their reports

are compared and discrepancies mean the sending out of supplementary

agents on the same mission, until by a process of exhaustion, and

perhaps after several years of observation, the mathematical truth is

finally arrived at. In the meantime, perhaps, the structure of any

given fortress has been radically or partly altered; still the process

goes on, for Berlin's General Staff never sleeps, is eternally vigilant

and alert and possesses the only financial stocking in the Empire which

knows no end. All this is in accordance with a rule laid down by the

Bismarck-Stieber combination—namely, that the German Intelligence Staff

shall know as much about any country in Europe as that country's own

Intelligence Department could possibly know. In Austria in 1866 and

in France in 1870, events proved that it knew far more. In whatever

other way a high-class German secret-service man may fail to please

the critics, there can be no question as to the degree of sheer

intellectual ability required to enable him to reach his position—and

retain it.

In regard to Naval espionage, the course of study and the mental

discipline exacted are, if anything, more severe. Fundamentally, of

course, the system differs but little from that just dealt with, just

as the winning of a battle involves the employment of strategy and

tactics which are not fundamentally different from those employed in

the taking of a fortress, as Napoleon said. The majority of accepted

secret-service agents on entering upon their studies in Berlin, Kiel

or Wilhelmshafen, rarely know enough about naval matters to be able to

distinguish a torpedo from a torpedo-boat destroyer. After a course

with the instructors the agent not only distinguishes easily between

the large variety of types of torpedoes, submarines, mines, he can also

tell by the peculiar whistle it makes whether a torpedo when being

discharged is a Whitehead or a Brennan, as the case may be. Then his

work in naval dockyards and on coastal defences has practically no

limit. Naval construction he must be as fully versed in as the best

informed of naval commanders. All sorts of naval war-craft are set

before him for the purposes of study, and the candidate for advancement

is required, before he passes out with a certificate, to be able to

tell at a glance, and from their silhouettes, all known war-craft in

existence, big and little. After months of study, a quick learner will

be able to say at once the type of any given war-vessel shown him and

what its nationality. Add to this a perfectly accurate acquaintance

with flag-signals and codes, the different ranking officers of _all_

the navies of the world, the personnel of warships of the heavier

classes, the various uniforms, the ability to talk about any or all

parts of a gun, a torpedo, a tube, a mine, whether assembled or

unassembled, and it will be freely admitted that the German naval spy

must be a ready man in the fullest sense of Bacon's term. And yet on

another page we have said that German espionage is a doomed failure. We

still maintain it, and for the reason that the foregoing studies only

result, after all is said, in naval theory. As a maker of theories,

your German of all kinds and conditions, is the first man in the world;

it is when he comes to their practical application that he fails so

badly and disappoints his admirers so painfully. The end of German

naval espionage is of course the invasion and conquest of Britain,

and until German armies defeat us and our Allies on land and her Navy

has beaten us at sea, we may feel justified in holding that both her

military and naval systems of espionage are respectively not worth the

rentals paid for their dingy offices in Berlin. There is a hoary old

tale told about an Englishman, a Frenchman, a German and a certain

wonderful crocodile which once made its appearance in Orinico waters

and made the nations talk about him. The Englishman decided to start

at once for Brazil and hunt the creature out; the Frenchman decided on

general principles to carve him out in stone, just as he imagined the

new animal to be; but the German went to a zoological museum, _thought

out_ the new crocodile from a set of palæozoic bones, and wrote a

theory about him. Your German theorist is still far from having passed

away and hardly yet realises that there is a large difference between

learning the secrets of our naval forces and defeating them at sea.

We recognise that German espionage is a danger—a fact which need not,

however, blind us to the certainty that Germany has no more Bismarcks

or Stiebers to build up new organisations with which to face the

conditions of a new world. Germany has certainly no minister in office

to-day who could prophesy so far ahead the course of events as Bismarck

prophesied them to an Austrian lady, the Countess Hohenthal, in 1866.

We recall the anecdote:

"Tell me, Count," said the Austrian to the famous Chancellor at a

dinner-party in Berlin. "I have two homes in Europe, one in Bohemia,

the other at Knautheim, near Leipsic. My countrymen are all talking

about the possibility of Prussia invading us in the near future, and

you might set my mind at rest if you would advise me where to remain

for the rest of the year—in Bohemia, or in Saxony?"

"Countess," replied the Chancellor, "if I were you, I should remain in

Saxony. It is not on a military route." The lady's Bohemian Castle was

not, as it happened, very far from—Sadowa.

As to the financial aspects of the German Spy System, it is a matter

of public record that the Reichstag makes a yearly appropriation of

about £1,000,000 sterling for the purposes and objects of the Imperial

Secret Service. It is obvious, however, that the total expenditure

must be far in excess of this sum, since, to use a memorable phrase,

"every dirty little lieutenant" who has taken a holiday within the

past ten years and has consented to spend his time in England, has

done so at the expense of the Secret Service of Berlin. In these cases

the young officers are "invited" to inspect the counties through which

they travel, and in order to facilitate their movements, they are each

supplied with sectional maps which are more perfect in every particular

than the cyclists' hand-books with which we are so familiar in these

days. There is no lane, bridle-path, road, farmhouse, pot-house,

or farrier's which is not clearly marked in these sectional maps.

The prospective tourist—who is most frequently a minor departmental

official—is handed one or more of them on the understanding that

if he can improve upon their topographical value in the smallest

particulars, he will benefit to the extent of a hundred marks or so.

The result is that official Berlin knows England north, south, east and

west, far better than any Englishman knows Berlin, and one may depend

upon it that if an army corps were to land anywhere in Britain, its

commanders would know the road to London, as well as local facilities

and capacities for feeding 40,000 men, far better than the majority

of Irishmen know the way to Tipperary or even the civic standing of

that much-sung city. The gathering of such minute information involves

a costly process. One million sterling yearly must be inadequate to

cover the expenditure of 500 registered and salaried officials, with

"details" numbering at least 500 more of a more or less fixed status,

and twice that number of annual tourist candidates looking for German

bank-notes.

Before concluding our examination of the German Spy System, we may

hear what an American war-correspondent has to say in regard to the

precautions which the General Staff takes in order to preclude the

operations of spies inside the German lines. The following incident was

communicated to _The New York Times_ by its special correspondent on

1st December 1914:—

"GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Dec. 1.—There is a certain

monotony about the scientific murder of the firing line—a routine

repetition of artillery duels, alarums, and excursions which can be

and are being vividly described by 'war correspondents' from the

safe vantage ground of comfortable cafés miles away. The real human

interest end of this ultra-modern war is to be gleaned from rambling

around the operating zone in a thoroughly irresponsible American

manner, trusting in Providence and the red American eagle sealed on

your emergency passport and a letter from Charles Lesimple, the genial

Consul at Cologne, to keep you from being shot.

"For instance, you get some interesting first-hand knowledge as to how

spies can 'get away with it' in spite of the perfect German military

system of controls and passes. There is no 'spy hysteria' in Germany

but none the less the German authorities know perfectly well that

there are swarms of spies in their midst and are hunting them down

with quiet, typically Teutonic thoroughness. But the very perfection

of the German military machine is its weak spot, and on this, my

second visit to the German Great Headquarters, I was able to give

the astonished authorities a personal demonstration as to how any

smooth-tongued stranger could turn up at even this 'holy of holies.'

The nocturnal trail led in a military train from Luxemberg over Longwy

to Longuyon.

"From here I started out on a foot tour, and entered the Grosses

Hauptquartier (Great Headquarters) unchallenged, by the back door.

Journalistically it was disappointing at first, for it was Sunday

morning and apparently Prussian militarism keeps the Sabbath holy.

There was no one interviewing the Kaiser, for he had gone 'way

down East' and with him his war minister, Gen. von Kalkenhayn. The

courteous commandant, Col. von Hahnke, was not on the job. Even

the brilliant chief of the press division, Major Nikolai, was out

of town when I called on the Great General Staff. But there were

compensations, for at a turn of the road I saw a more impressive

sight than even the motoring Kaiser—a mile of German cavalry coming

down the straight chausse, gray horsemen as far as the eye could see

and more constantly coming over the brow of the distant hill, with

batteries of field artillery sandwiched between.

"On the next day I again dropped in on the great General Staff and

found it not only at home, but very much interested on discovering

that I had no pass to come or go or be there at that time. The

war-time mind of Prussian militarism is keen and right to the point.

It saw not the chance of getting publicity in America, but the

certainty that other more dangerous spies could come through the same

way. By all the rules of the war game, Prussian militarism would have

been thoroughly justified in treating me as a common spy in possession

of vital military secrets, but it courteously contented itself in

insisting on plucking out the heart of the journalistic mystery. All

attempts at evasion and humour were vain—here was the ruthless reality

of war. It was the mailed Prussian Eagle against the bluff American

bird of the same species, and the unequal contest was soon ended when

Major Nikolai, Chief of Division III. of the great General Staff,

stood up very straight and dignified and said:

"'I am a German officer. What German violated his duty? I ask you as a

man of honour how was it possible for you to come here?'

"The answer was quite simple: 'The German military machine was so

perfect that it covered every contingency except the most obvious and

guarded every road except the easiest way. All you have to do is to

take a passenger train to Luxemberg, and hang around the platform

until the next military train pulls out for Belgium or France, hop

aboard, and keep on going. In case of doubt utter the magic phrase, "I

am an American," and flash the open sesame, the red seal of the United

States of America—to which bearded Landsturm guards pay the tribute

of regarding it as equally authoritative as the purple Prussian eagle

stamped on a military pass.'

"Followed a two-hour dialogue in the private office of the chief

of the Kaiser's secret field police, as a result of which future

historians will find in the Kaiser's secret archives the following

unique document, couched in Berlin legal terminology and signed and

subscribed to by the _Times_ correspondent:

"'Secret Field Police, Great Headquarters, Dec. 1, 1914.

"'There appears the American war correspondent and at the particular

request of the authorities, explains:

"'On Saturday, Nov. 30, I arrived at Trier on a second-class ticket

at about 10.30 P.M. There I bought a third-class ticket and boarded

a train leaving Luxemberg at about 12.15 A.M. I did not go into the

railroad station, but trusting to my paper, boarded a military train

leaving at 12.45 A.M., going over Longwy to Longuyon, where I arrived

at 3.30 A.M., Sunday. There an official whose name I do not know took

me to a troop train and made a place for me in the brake box. I left

the train at X and went on foot to H (the Great Headquarters), where I

reported myself to the Chief of Police.

"'I recommend that a sharper control be exercised on the station

platform at Luxemberg as it is a simple matter to avoid the only

control which is at the ticket gate, by simply not going out and

therefore not having to come in.'"

XVI

DIPLOMATIC, SOCIAL, CHURCH SPIES

The so-called mystery of the notorious Chevalier d'Eon has long since

been proved to have been no mystery at all. The question of his sex

was, during his whole life, a matter of fierce dispute and much

speculation in many countries. At his death in London, in the year

1810, an English doctor, Courthorpe by name, gave full attestation

to the fact that the deceased Chevalier was neither a female nor an

hermaphrodite, but a complete man. D'Eon, it is hardly to be disputed,

must rank among the great diplomatic spies whom the world has produced

and even in his own age, when the mystery attaching to his person made

him an object of extraordinary social interest, all men were willing

to bear testimony to his courage, physical energy, industry, audacity

and wit. In all probability no one was ever made the confidant of his

reasons for adopting female dress, but in every likelihood there was

nothing more romantic in his peculiarity than the mania for being

conspicuous and attracting attention, unless indeed, as has been

suggested, he chose to wear woman's dress for the reason that it was

more comfortable than that of man and had the advantage of making him

appear taller than he really was. About the Chevalier it is known

for a certainty that one Douglas, a Scottish diplomatic agent, when

proceeding to Russia in 1755, on a mission to the Empress Elizabeth,

in the interests of Louis XV., took the clever youth with him—at the

suggestion of d'Eon himself—dressed him as a female and introduced him

to the Court of Russia, where his knowledge of languages soon obtained

for him a post as reader to the Empress, over whom for a short season

he obtained an ascendancy which enabled him to turn her sympathies

towards an alliance with France. Louis XV., as we remember, had never

possessed any real political or diplomatic power within his own realm,

and in order to offset his official impotence, thought out his famous

private organisation of court and political intrigue-mongers, which

eventually became known as "The King's Secret." Douglas was among the

men employed in this body, the Prince de Conti, Duc de Broglie and many

other nobles, both French and foreign, also assisting the King in the

conduct of a conspiracy the real object of which is not very apparent,

if it was not for the pure love of the mystery and intrigue surrounding

the whole business.

[Illustration: The Chevalier d'Eon

_After a painting by Angelica Kauffmann_]

Practical results were, however, achieved in the case of d'Eon.

According to the Duc de Broglie, Douglas had proved himself an

unacceptable person at the Russian Court and it was only through the

employment of the services of the youthful Chevalier, then about eight

and twenty years old, that he was enabled to attain his mission's

object. Far from resenting the trick, when d'Eon, on asking to be

released from his position in order to return to France, at the same

time revealing the real nature of his sex, the Empress Elizabeth was

delighted at the manœuvre and made her reader a handsome present on

his departure. He was described about this time as highly educated and

capable of writing with distinction on literary subjects; very much

devoted to the study of law and philosophy, but, one is somewhat uneasy

to hear, as indifferent to female beauty as was Frederick the Great.

It is in 1759 that he is to be found working for Louis as a spy upon

the official French envoys. In that year the Duc de Choiseul was sent

to Russia with the object of inducing the Empress Elizabeth to mediate

for peace in the Seven Years' War. The Chevalier was at the same time

deputed to go to Russia, where his earlier exploits had given him

favourable notice, and bring about the failure of Choiseul's mission.

Accordingly d'Eon became possessed of an important French secret

which Louis was not disposed to have revealed to his contemporaries;

he was given at the successful issue of his mission, a sum equal to

£1200 yearly of our money and was sent to the army of the Upper Rhine

as aide-de-camp to Marshal de Broglie, where the King hoped a bullet

might remove him. The Chevalier appears, however, to have exhibited

prowess as a soldier, and in 1762 we find him secretary to the French

Embassy in London, where he was instrumental in rifling the portfolio

of an important English Foreign Office attaché by resorting to the

somewhat vulgar expedient of giving the diplomat too much to drink,

the inference being that the wine was drugged. His success must have

been important, for in 1763 he was resident Minister in London. In

this capacity he began to organise a scheme on behalf of Louis for the

invasion of England, and as Horace Walpole states, the importance both

of his rôle and position began to prove too great for his usually cool

intelligence. As a result of a few sharp repartees to French visitors

of rank whom he suspected of spying upon him, as in truth they were,

the Chevalier soon found himself reduced to the rank of Secretary, the

King, indeed, ordering his man to return to France, but not to present

himself at Court. In what followed the intelligent observer begins

to discern glimpses of that so-called "artistic temperament" with

which we have become so familiar in these later days. D'Eon declared

that Louis, far from wishing for his removal in an official capacity,

had instructed him to resume female attire and keep up the game of

espionage in England. The late Mr Andrew Lang declares his belief in

the probability that Louis, realising that the little Chevalier's

possession of so many important secrets made him a dangerous enemy,

actually wrote the letter in question, fully aware how far the

"artistic temperament" was likely to carry the disappointed minister.

D'Eon indeed threatened to reveal so much to English statesmen that

Louis deemed it better to compound with a pension equal to several

thousands yearly and permission to correspond with himself. Up till

the death of the King in 1774 the Chevalier indulged his old taste

for espionage in the intrigues which sought to restore the Stuarts to

the English throne. The new Government, probably with the prescience

of unrest to come which should require the financial aid of England,

sought to buy the Chevalier off, offering him a large sum in return for

the documents regarding the projected invasion of England, an alleged

condition of the contract being the extraordinary clause that d'Eon

should return to France and continue during the rest of his life to

wear woman's clothes. It was hoped by this means to deceive the public

with the story that d'Eon was a lunatic woman if he ever should give

way to his well-known petulance. At all events the Chevalier returned

to France where, to the disgust of the connoisseurs, the lady showed

signs too evident of the use of the razor, was as muscular as an

athlete, wore high heels, but spoke like a musketeer, had her hair cut

to the scalp and used to do the hall-room staircase at the unladylike

rate of four steps to the jump. D'Eon soon lost his popularity in

Paris and even his public offer "to become a nun" failed to tickle

the quidnuncs. He returned to London, where he died, a faded old

dowager-looking scarecrow with a very red nose, in 1810.

And, of course, there was another very clever diplomatic spy who

flourished in the same age, a member of the famous de Launay family,

who was known all over Europe as the Comte d'Antraigues. He was a

singular example of the man who was determined at all costs to play

a part in the tortuous diplomacies of his time and, paradoxically

speaking, it must be said that although his life proved a failure he

achieved an historical success which has endured. We confess to a

liking for a phrase which his biographer Pingaud has written in his

regard: "His life is interesting like that of all men who have kept

up the fight, have always been beaten, but have never admitted their

defeat." A man whom Napoleon condescended to notice must have been not

only interesting but important. The Emperor characterised him as a

"blackguard" and "a walking impertinence"—the French word _insolent_

meaning here perhaps our term an officious busybody, which the Count

undoubtedly was. Louis XVIII. called him "the fine flower of sharpers";

for Spain he was a "charlatan"; Austria christened him "a downright

rascal," and Russia characterised him as one of the vilest men in

the universe. Nevertheless, Napoleon tried once to buy his services,

the Bourbon _emigrés_ paid him to keep their cause before the eyes

of reactionary Europe, while Austria, Russia and the Court of Naples

always listened to his advice and suggestions. We have shown in another

chapter that Antraigues was mentioned as the person who had procured

first-hand information of the secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit,

and it is certain that French and Russian writers for the greater

part declare the Count to have been the betrayer of both France and

Russia. There can be no question that he became known to Canning, the

Foreign Minister of the day, as a man whose "inside information," to

use the American phrase, made him a magnificent ally; but it is also

certain that by the year 1807 Antraigues had become discredited both

in Russian and French diplomatic circles and, in any case, was hardly

in a position to exercise much personal or practical influence in so

momentous a conference as that which took place upon the historic

Raft. The accepted English view is that the secret clauses came to the

knowledge of Canning through an oversight on the part of Alexander

who had allowed the Russian Minister in London to learn more than was

expedient.

There is no better exemplar among all the exponents of espionage in its

higher phases than the Comte d'Antraigues in so far as he provides us

with positive proof that there comes a point at which a spy, already

too dangerous by reason of his private knowledge, must be placed beyond

all possibility of indiscretions. The Count was murdered in 1812 by an

Italian valet who was afterwards declared by enemies of d'Antraigues to

have been in the employ of the foreign secret service, a somewhat easy

_ex-post-facto_ explanation on the part of individuals who had long

wished the Count on the safer side of Styx. The fact that his wife was

murdered at the same time lends, however, some colour to the statement

that the murder had been "fixed" as they say in the vernacular of

the Black Hand. She had been in her time a famous opera singer who

had tried to found a political _salon_ on the basis of the private

information which her husband possessed, and altogether seems to have

been one of those terrible but inept females who wander through the

world for the unrest of souls, not only knowing, but knowing that they

know. We make no apology for insisting that the fact that d'Antraigues

was of Gascon birth is a point in favour of our idea that megalomania

is in a large measure the motive-power which turns men and women to the

business of espionage. The native of Gascony is by every tradition,

both home and foreign, said to represent Pretence made flesh.

It is very certain that the number of secrets which pass out of the

cabinets of diplomacy into the possession of non-diplomatic persons

must be infinitesimal, and it is also certain that the Machiavellian

waiters on whose long ears depend the fate of thrones; or the inspired

courtesans who wheedle men like Bismarck out of information the

divulging of which is sufficient to shake the hemispheres; or the

journalistic sleuth who divines a cabinet débâcle from the way the

Foreign Secretary gives an expression of opinion to the War Minister

about the fineness of the night as both leave Downing Street; or the

mysterious Ambassador to Everywhere who visits Constantinople and

"draws up a treaty" which he submits to an uncle of the Sultan's head

doorkeeper as a _modus vivendi_ for the Balkans—all of them are the

fictitious creations of very "yellow" writers. These beings really

count for less in the processes of diplomacy than the proverbial row of

pins, and only the most credulous of souls can accept such a story as

that which professes to show how so important a personage as a Russian

Ambassador was once taken off his guard to the extent of giving away

a secret the publication of which to the world led to an estrangement

between France and his own country, the medium of his lapse being

a Polish Countess with a form like Juno Victrix, eyes as big as

billiard-balls, the soul of one of those awful Ouida heroines who felt

it in her to "dominate the world with the man I love," and the manners

and attitudes of a vaudeville high-kicker. Important information which

has ever "transpired" from an embassy or a ministry for foreign affairs

has done so in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred by sheer accident;

in the unique case has it been given by agents from within and then

most certainly not to a courtesan, but to a practical man of business

by an equally practical man of business, money being in each case the

first consideration. The diplomatic espionage of reality is quite a

different matter from that of fiction and in all probability Napoleon

was its best exponent, with his _cabinet noir_ for the supervision of

suspect letters; his couriers who were always on the road, ostensibly

carrying dispatches, but in reality in quest of special information;

his sisters who through their ladies of honour spied upon each other's

movements; and his secretaries who controlled the organisation of

private spies who spied upon the spies set by Talleyrand and his

department.

Prussia, as everywhere else, leads the way in internal diplomatic

espionage and there is not a court of kingly or princely rank in the

German Confederation which can boast that its most intimate actions,

scandals, expressions of opinion and intentions are safe from the

scrutiny of the authorities at Potsdam. Indeed, it is safe to say

that Potsdam has long had its especial agents watching and reporting

in every Court of Europe, and the comparatively recent "Posen" case

shows to what length the vile system of Prussian espionage is prepared

to go in order that Potsdam shall be kept informed. Some years ago

the Berlin authorities were anxious to know what was the real state

of feeling towards Germany in Prussian Poland, and accordingly a

well-known Prussian Guardsman was sent to Posen with instructions to

seduce the somewhat flighty and "modern" daughter of a Polish notable

who was said to stand high in the Polish liberation movement. It was

not quite certain, however; but as Berlin saw the approach of the war

of 1914, it was necessary to know soon how the exact situation lay. The

young Guardsman effected all that was required of him, also discovered

how matters stood in regard to the Polish movement and then returned

to Berlin. This fact was one of the many which came to light in the

course of the Harden trial of 1907, when it was clearly proved that

the Emperor William had his own private _corps d'espionnage_, even as

Napoleon and Louis XV. had had theirs. This body attended to diplomatic

as well as social matters, and in her Memoirs the Princess Louise of

Saxony shows that no society is too exalted nor any too low for the

operations of its sleuths who, as in Stieber's hey-day, have driven

men from public life to satisfy the private hates of persons only too

willing to purchase their services.