LOCATING GERMAN MINE-LAYERS
COAST HUNTING--A FIND--SPIES OF MANY NATIONS--OBLITERATING
TRAILS--TRACKING DOWN THE _BERLIN_--MARVELLOUS NAVIGATION BY
GERMANS--INTERNED--GERMAN ARSON--AN IMPUDENT INVITATION--A RUSSIAN
SUGAR QUEEN'S YACHT--QUEER COMPANY--SAPPING HUN
INTELLIGENCE--PLAYING ON WEAKNESSES--SUCCESS--LOSS OF H.M.S.
_AUDACIOUS_--SOLILOQUISING.
The first work which was entrusted to me after having been granted a
rating in the Foreign Secret Service was to hunt out the hiding-places
of the large German auxiliary cruisers which had been specially fitted
out for the important service of laying special minefields off remoter
parts of the coastline of the British Isles.
Early in October, 1914, I landed at the south of Norway, and I zigzagged
my way northwards on all kinds of craft that cruised about the thousands
of fjords and islands, inquiring as unobservantly and disinterestedly as
circumstances would admit in the hope of picking up some information
which might lead me to the object of my search.
It was believed that these pests of the seas were using unknown fjords
as hiding-places, and taking advantage of the double neutral routes of
the inner and outer passage of the west coast of Norway to cover their
coming and their going from Germany to the Icelandic coast, whence they
dropped down upon the British Isles suddenly and unexpectedly, laid
their dangerous batches of eggs, and returned the same way as they came.
I had travelled almost 750 miles northward, and I was quite convinced
that no German mine-layer was concealed anywhere in that distance. Many
reports I gathered of German war and other vessels of various rig and
shape taking advantage of the neutral waterways; but they had all been
under steam.
I had nearly reached the Arctic Circle, and I meant going north to
Hammerfest, and even beyond, if the smallest clue showed itself. I was
stopped in the town of T----, because there was a German vessel of some
mystery which had been lying there quite a while. I wanted to learn more
about her, so I lingered. She was a steamer of several thousand tons
burden and loaded with coal. In spite of her disguised condition, she
had been chased into neutral waters by English warships. Having remained
over her allotted interval of time she became interned; but she was
under suspicion and watched night and day by interested parties. This
suspicion was accentuated by the fact that a strong head of steam was
always kept up in her engine-room. Why?
Her name was s.s. _Brandenberg_, and it was openly whispered that she
probably had on board supplies for submarines concealed under her coal.
The second night after my arrival, the proprietor of my hotel exhibited
much friendliness towards me. Beside volunteering a considerable amount
of interesting information about the war, Germany, and the Germans, he
commented on "the great scandal," as he referred to it, that an English
Consul at S---- was allowed to pocket hundreds of thousands of kroner by
supplying the Germans with herrings whilst they were at war with the
country he actually represented. He added, "It is no secret, the whole
country is talking about it, and every man, woman, and child considers
it disgraceful." Continuing a running fire of generalities, he went on
to state that he had several German spies stopping at his hotel, and one
who was English. He said he was quite sure about this, because they all
seemed to try to watch each other, whilst the police and the military
watched them.
"That gentleman over there with the sandy moustache, sitting at a table
in the corner by himself, is the English spy," he said, as we stood in a
secluded part of the _salle à manger_. "He goes out every night about 8
o'clock and does not return until breakfast-time. He sits in railway
trucks and woodstacks on the quays and other queer places, watching the
_Brandenberg_. He thinks no one knows, but we all know. When he comes
back in the morning, hints are dropped about amorous wanderings, and
what 'wonderful dogs with the ladies some men are to be sure.' You see,
he feels flattered in two ways, whilst we 'laugh in the trouser,' as you
English sometimes say. That man at the other end of the hall, with the
military bearing, is a German spy, and so are the two at the middle
table. Some of my servants draw money from all sides. They report to me
a great deal. Perhaps a great deal more they keep to themselves.
However, it seems to be good business for all of us, in spite of added
and extra war burdens and taxes. It's a peculiar game on the whole, yet
it's interesting."
I wondered why the proprietor should be so open with his confidences. It
was probably the old, old feint--a luring to draw to attract, or
extract, reciprocal advances. It was the proprietor's policy to
sympathise and tender make-believe unanimity and agreement with all his
guests; to humour all their troubles, whims, or fancies, so that all
believed him to be their particular friend and supporter. It was the
backbone of his business, which, needless to add, was a thriving and
lucrative one.
Within twenty-four hours of arrival I instinctively felt and knew that
I, too, had been labelled as a suspect. I was being watched and
followed.
Immediate action to checkmate this was perhaps advisable. I knew
personally the individual heads of some of the large business firms in
the town and its neighbourhood. I had acted legally for or against
several of them in England, in matters concerning the expenditure of
thousands of pounds. It would be simple to raise imaginary or other
business issues. I mentally determined that it should be done without
delay.
When next I left the hotel a couple of the wealthiest local traders
called shortly afterwards to inquire for me. They expressed annoyance at
my absence and sought the proprietor. That gentleman, at their request,
sent out the hotel porter and a page to visit the main streets, the
barbers' shops, the post-office, and other possible places wherein I
might be met with. Whilst they were chafing outwardly in their
impatience, they casually mentioned to the proprietor that I was one of
the best-known Continental lawyers in London, from Gibraltar to
Hammerfest; that I had come over specially to transact some important
business with which they were indirectly connected and which might
detain me in the country some considerable period, and that I was a
guest worthy of consideration.
An hour later I returned. I was all apologies for my absence. I had
called at the respective offices of my visitors and I had found them
out. The proprietor bustled away with the news, by which he probably
ingratiated himself a little further into the confidence of other guests
of different nationality.
Subsequent events proved that my ruse had for the time being worked
successfully against my opponents, although the local authorities, who
had known me and of me for many years past, may have entertained their
own surmises concerning my advent at that particular place and at that
particular period of the world's history.
Next day was blustering and stormy. Snowflakes fell thick in large
globules in the streets, making them almost impassable to traffic; yet a
silent and unobtrusive man ploughed his way to the hotel soon after
daylight, carrying interesting news.
The German auxiliary fast cruiser _Berlin_ had been seen entering the
fjord.
This was indeed important. The news must at any cost be transmitted
home, and at the earliest possible moment.
It appeared that the cruiser, a vessel of some 18,000 tons, armed with
eight to a dozen quick-firing guns and other equipment, had, under her
enormously powerful engines, and after disposing of her cargo of mines,
laid a course northwards well into the region of floating ice, thus
outwitting the vigilance of the English patrol boats. Taking the fullest
advantage of the awful weather and frequent snowstorms, she had slipped
unobserved through the tortuous entrances and difficult channels of the
Norwegian coast; past the guard fortresses at ----; past the guardships;
and finally dropped her anchor unchallenged and unhindered under the
windows of the town of ----, which half encircles one of the most
coveted harbours in all Europe.
It was a marvellous feat of navigation, but then it is an open secret
that members of the German Navy know the ins and outs of the Norwegian
fjords even better than Norwegians do themselves. They have also much
better charts; both of which facts they proved in a startling manner in
their manoeuvres before the war.
It is another open secret that at the German War Office, in the
Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, was kept a complete series of the Ordnance maps
of England, brought fully up-to-date by secret surveys, which gave
detail and information that our maps do not show and which our War
Office is probably quite unacquainted with. I was never more astonished
in my life, although I had the sense to conceal it, than when an alleged
German commercial traveller with whom I had been travelling somewhere in
Finland sketched, in order to illustrate an argument, a correct plan of
a remote part of the East Coast of England with which I was very well
acquainted. On this sketch the aforesaid traveller proceeded to
delineate fords to streams and hidden roadways, the existence of which
most of those even who had dwelt all their lives in the parishes
affected had either forgotten or never knew about.
To return to the subject. The long-lost _Berlin_ had been run to ground.
The burning question of the moment was whether she would face the music
and make a bolt for the Fatherland or whether she would remain where she
was and become interned. A collection of British cruisers outside
probably caused her to elect the latter course. So it was up to me,
somehow or other, to try and ferret out all I could relating to her
recent voyage. But how?
The chief of the British Secret Service is never interested in detail.
To him the most interesting particulars, showing how an objective is
attained, are irritating and merely so much waste of time. His
requirements and mind centre only round concrete results, congealed
into the fewest possible number of words. Whilst interviews in his
office are limited almost to grudgingly-given minutes.
It is undoubtedly prudent and wise to draw a bough over my innumerable
snow-trails in order to obliterate the footprints of my tortuous
wanderings during the days that followed. Suffice to say that, night and
day, awake or dreaming, the subject never left my thoughts, whilst I
schemed and invented possible and impossible plans, until at last one
day chance supplied the missing link.
Meanwhile side issues were not wanting. German agents had traced the
hotel proprietor's show-English-spy to his nightly lair in the
woodstacks. They naturally attached an unknown importance to what they
believed to be his anxiety concerning the safety of these piles of
innocent timber. They appeared to assume that this particular
wood--worth possibly somewhere about £20,000--was considered of great
value to the English Government. Accordingly they planned, by contra
espionage, to lure the nightly watcher in another direction. As soon as
his presence was thus temporarily removed they promptly fired the pile,
which job was so thoroughly well done that hardly a plank could be
salved from the flames.
Having been confidentially told that I was suspected of being an English
S.S. agent, I promptly called up on the telephone the head of the
department which controlled these matters, and invited him to lunch.
Fortunately I knew him well and could do so. It was humorous that whilst
I was doing this the gentleman in question happened to be attending a
small committee meeting which was, at the moment, discussing my _bona
fides_, and the somewhat important personage called for raised
unavailing protests at being compelled to answer my insistent call, only
to learn of the unimportant invitation to himself from the actual
suspect whose presence was then under discussion and whom it was part of
his duty to be accountable for.
I could not help subsequently smiling when I was privately informed by
another member of the committee that the old colonel had returned from
the telephone, very red in the face, and swearing audibly about that
"d--d impudent mad-brained Englishman who was chasing him about, instead
of waiting to be properly chased," or its equivalent in words in his own
language.
In a snug creek, away from the busy waterways and the ever-moving
industry of the heavily overloaded quays, was securely moored and laid
up for the winter a palatial pleasure yacht, belonging to a well-known
Russian sugar queen of reputed fabulous wealth. Her captain and crew
were objects of interest to all. I considered it politic to ingratiate
myself with the crew with a view to future possibilities.
In course of time, certain ladies of unknown origin appeared at various
hotels in the town and its environs. They possessed youth, beauty,
vivacity of spirit, charm of manner, and apparently plenty of ready
money to add to their attraction and graces. They had friends who soon
called, or met them at or away from their hotels. From information
received and from personal observation, I deemed it expedient to push
myself forward into this small but somewhat exclusive circle, although
it required the utmost ingenuity to mix with the members of these
various circles whilst in constant touch with the chief residents of the
town without permitting one group to gain knowledge of my intimacy with
other groups.
By judicious expenditure in hospitality and a free hand with small
gifts, I was able to draw into my confidences half a dozen acquaintances
whom I could trust to render any assistance I might perhaps at some time
require. Meanwhile I was ostensibly engaged in legal matters. Clients
called with masses of papers and remained closeted with me for hours.
Often they remained for meals, and then the choicest of wines were
ordered, and the last doubts the proprietor of the hotel might have
entertained vanished.
Within a week or ten days an accurate report was secretly handed to me
of the exact number, nationality, and rating of every man on board the
enemy vessel. It also contained addenda giving the name and business of
every visitor thereto, and the duration of each visit; this afforded
matter for cogitation, reflection, and thought.
My next requirement was a roughly summed-up estimate of the
characteristics of each person I designated, with all possible
information and detail concerning their believed weaknesses, whims,
fancies, hobbies, ambitions, or failings, which I persisted in procuring
concerning every person I could on the before-mentioned list. This was a
long and more difficult task. Pride, conceit, alcohol, women, and money
figured against one or the other. The two former would seem the easiest
to work upon, but in the end it was the latter which affected the
_débàcle_.
Having laid well my plans, which promised almost certain successful
results, it was advisable for me to depart from the town and district in
order that matters might be permitted to operate successfully without
any possible chance of failure through some remote suspicion being
hatched and developed from my presence. It was far better for me to
watch from a distance, to observe the effects of palm-oil penetrate
deeper and yet deeper, until that which I was most anxious to get hold
of, namely, material extracts from the log of the recent voyage of this
important vessel, had been brought ashore and communicated; and, what
was most important of all, the exact number of mines she had laid in
British waters, with precise latitude and longitude of such laying.
It was expensive, but it was worth the outlay many times over. It would
have been undoubtedly a very great surprise indeed to the kultured Hun
sea-pirates, had they only known how their most jealously-guarded
secrets were thus so easily opened up.
When in England some months after this information had been
communicated, I had an opportunity of interviewing some officers and
members of the crews on board various minesweeping vessels which had
been employed to remove these pests from navigable waters. They were men
engaged to harvest what the _Berlin_ was alleged to have sown near Tory
Island, which lies off the north-west coast of Ireland, and not far from
the all-important Loch Swilly. The first and second fleet sent there to
act upon the information which had been collected in the manner
hereinbefore described seem to have returned to their respective bases
and reported there were no mines to be found. But whilst those in
authority were debating or doubting the accuracy of the original
information collected abroad, proof positive soon convinced them.
Vessel after vessel was reported sunk by mine contact, including the new
leviathan, H.M.S. _Audacious_, which awful disaster was religiously
hushed up and kept away from the ken of the English nation. American
papers, however, exhibited photos of the wreck and rescues which were
freely copied by international journals, whilst Germany knew all about
it from the first. The third fleet of mine-sweepers, eventually sent to
Tory Island with instructions to sweep the same area as at first
directed but at a greater depth, gathered in about 120 to 130 large
mines out of the 150 said to have been sown there. But this was after
far too many casualties had been reported, and much shipping, with
valuable lives, had been lost to Great Britain.
Although at times I am notoriously loquacious, I can also be a deep
thinker. Sometimes when alone during those dark days in the solitude of
deep forests, or perched upon some bleak promontory jutting out into
northern seas and watching over the angry waters beneath me, I would sit
for hours lost in meditation turning over in my mind again and again
passing events, weighing the possibilities, probabilities, alleged
diplomatic mistakes and indiscretions; social upheavals, labour strikes,
absurd optimism of a section of the Press; false security created by too
rigid censorship; political dangers from continued vote-angling and
pandering to obvious German agitation amongst workmen and miners;
continued short-sighted political revenge upon English landowners for
the suppression rather than encouragement of any increased user of the
land towards food production; contradictions which were irreconcilable;
on the one hand enormous and useless expenditures, on the other
unparalleled meanness and littleness; the clinging to fatal fallacies by
refusing conscription; the insistence with which old and admittedly
absolutely incompetent officials were kept in office; refusals to find
places--even honorary ones--for admittedly first-class younger
volunteers from our colonies; muddle upon muddle; waste upon waste;
mistake upon mistake; yet the glorious gallantry and irrepressible
loyalty and patriotism of Britisher units and her allies on land and sea
seemed to be pulling everything through.
Having regard to the thirty years' preparation of Germany and the utter
unpreparedness of England, a miracle seemed in the process of evolution.
Would the nations involved cease their strife owing to absolute
exhaustion and attrition? Would the Entente eventually achieve full
consummation of its hopes, so devoutly to be wished? Or was the sequel
foreshadowed by the late Lord Tennyson:
"Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world's annals, you, and take their wisdom for your
friend;
Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour
will last."