It has been difficult to write in peace-time on the delicate subject
of spies and spying, but now that the war is in progress and the
methods of those much abused gentry have been disclosed, there is no
harm in going more fully into the question, and to relate some of my
own personal experiences.
Spies are like ghosts--people seem to have had a general feeling that
there might be such things, but they did not at the same time believe
in them--because they never saw them, and seldom met anyone who had
had first-hand experience of them. But as regards the spies, I can
speak with personal knowledge in saying that they do exist, and in
very large numbers, not only in England, but in every part of Europe.
As in the case of ghosts, any phenomenon which people don't
understand, from a sudden crash on a quiet day to a midnight creak of
a cupboard, has an affect of alarm upon nervous minds. So also a spy
is spoken of with undue alarm and abhorrence, because he is somewhat
of a bogey.
As a first step it is well to disabuse one's mind of the idea
that every spy is necessarily the base and despicable fellow he is
generally held to be. He is often both clever and brave.
The term "spy" is used rather indiscriminately, and has by use come to
be a term of contempt. As a misapplication of the term "spy" the case
of Major André always seems to me to have been rather a hard one. He
was a Swiss by birth, and during the American War of Independence in
1780 joined the British Army in Canada, where he ultimately became
A.D.C. to General Sir H. Clinton.
The American commander of a fort near West Point, on the Hudson River,
had hinted that he wanted to surrender, and Sir H. Clinton sent André
to treat with him. In order to get through the American lines André
dressed himself in plain clothes and took the name of John Anderson.
He was unfortunately caught by the Americans and tried by court
martial and hanged as a spy.
As he was not trying to get information, it seems scarcely right to
call him a spy. Many people took this view at the time, and George
III. gave his mother a pension, as well as a title to his brother, and
his body was ultimately dug up and re-interred in Westminster Abbey.