Spying On Spies
Less than forty-eight hours after the fall of Antwerp the wave of
helpless humanity whose crest broke on the Belgian border had
rolled over the entire length and breadth of Holland. Thousands of
Belgian refugees wandered as far north as The Hague, where
various Dutch relief committees and the American Legation at The
Hague did their best to house the homeless and relieve the suffering.
Dr. van Dyke rolled up his sleeves still farther and strained to solve
the problem of the unemployed, sometimes, when a case interested
him, turning his own pocket inside out.
Eight days after the Antwerp bombardment, I left The Hague for my
second trip into Germany.
Just before my start Captain Sunderland, U.S.A., at the head of the
American Relief Committee at The Hague, asked me to help him in
taking charge of two carloads of grain, which were to go across the
German border and be distributed among the starving Belgians at
Liege. England had agreed not to interfere with food supplies,
provided the United States saw that they did not fall into German
hands in Belgium. The present job required sleeping in the freight
cars and saying, in one form or another, "Hands off!" to every spiked
helmet that tried to interfere. Captain Sunderland could speak no
German, and as I had already been over the same territory and had
had some experience with the military authorities, he wished me to
accompany him.
I decided, however, to go into the interior of Germany. I had already
seen three armies in the field, and had watched, more or less closely,
the people of two warring nations. I was now particularly anxious to
study the German point of view, and if possible get to the front with
the Crown Prince's army.
For such a purpose I considered that I carried good enough
credentials. In addition to a packet of mail for Ambassador Gerard,
my letter from ex-President Roosevelt, and my United States
passport, which had been vised by Herr von Mueller, German
Ambassador at The Hague, I now carried a special laissez-passer
which Mr. Marshall Langhorne had been kind enough to secure for
me from the same legation. I had a letter from Count von Bernstorff,
whom I had seen the night he arrived in America, and a letter from
Herr von Biel, Secretary of the German Embassy at The Hague,
recommending me to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Professor Hugo
Munsterberg had taken the trouble to send me a note to Dr. R. W.
Drechsler, head of the American Institute in Berlin, and I had also a
letter to the head of the University of Berlin.
It was a five-hours' run from The Hague to Bentheim, a small country
village on the German frontier. The train stopped a quarter of a mile
north of the border. Dutch officials came aboard to examine
passports and baggage of every passenger. They were good-natured
and talkative, and did not go minutely into details, as those leaving
the country were less carefully watched than "immigrants." Me,
however, they mistook for an Englishman (as was usually the case in
Germany) and told me I could not cross the frontier. A Dutch
manufacturer, with whom I had struck up an acquaintance, explained
my identity, and the official, who looked astonished, waved me ahead
with a doubtful expression, as much as to say, "On your own head be
it, young man."
That first night passed without trouble. At the border station we lined
up, immigrant fashion, and went through an inspection by a number
of the businesslike German militariat attached to the Zollamt, or
customs service. For ten minutes I stood in suspense while a
fiery-looking officer, with a snapping blue eye, looked through my
credentials in silence. He wrote my name in a notebook, looked
through my eye as if he would read my very soul, and then, without a
remark, passed me on. I filed through a narrow gate--and so into
the Realms of the Kaiser.
It was now eleven o'clock at night and the Berlin express came
through Bentheim at 7.45 the next morning. We stayed at a little inn,
somewhat resembling the Wayside Inn, at Sudbury, Massachusetts.
Here I fell in with a German manufacturer whom I had seen several
weeks before as we were bringing the good news from Ghent to Aix. I
was surprised at this man's change of opinion regarding the conflict.
On the first occasion he laughed outright at the idea of an extended
fight. Now, all through his arguments, he repeated such phrases as,
"Well, if Germany doesn't win," or, "Suppose the war does last two
years," etc., etc.
In the morning I had a peculiarly disagreeable experience at Lohne,
some distance from the German frontier, where we had again to
change trains en route to the capital. Experience had by this time
taught me, when thrown with people on the road, to show them my
papers and make my identity known as soon as possible.
I therefore clung pretty closely to my argumentative German
acquaintance of Bentheim and Aix. During the melee of changing
cars I was, however, separated from him, and became engaged in
conversation (spoken in English) with a Dutch chocolate merchant.
The argument must have been interesting, for I did not at first notice a
crowd of twenty or thirty travelers and villagers gathering around us: I
did, however, notice when they began to push and jostle in a manner
obviously intended for insult. When I tried to retreat the exits were
locked. The crowd, convinced that I was an English spy, closed more
compactly and manhandled me off toward an officer on the street
behind the platform. My hat was knocked off, and for a brief moment I
recalled the lynching anger which I had seen in the eyes of Belgian
mobs, as German spies in Antwerp were being led to the police
station.
At the last moment my rescuer came in the shape of the German
friend of Bentheim, who broke through the mob and whispered in my
ear, "Speak German. Always speak in German, you fool!"
I admitted the soft impeachment.
"Ich bin ein Amerikaner--ein correspondent," I explained to the row
of angry faces; and while my German friend soothed and reassured
his testy compatriots, I moved away, glad enough to escape another
visit to jail. Those personally conducted jail tours were not so bad, I
had found, with a handsome gendarme at your side; but a howling
crowd was altogether another matter.
I reached the capital that night. One of my letters says, a few days
later:--
"The atmosphere is oppressive to the Anglo-Saxon visitor. His looks,
his manner, his accent betray him as one of the English-speaking
pest, and the crowd, with its mind so full of English hatred, does not
readily distinguish the American. So drop into a word of English in a
cafe: your neighbor glowers and draws away. You face it out with a
nonchalant air, but gradually the tension grows, especially when, as
happened to-day at the prisoners' camp at Zossen, twenty miles
south of Berlin, a great burly Prussian puts a menacing eye on you
and says, without introduction: 'It is very dangerous for an
Englishman here!'
"Day by day here the hatred grows of England and things English:
judging from the press and the temper of the people, one would think
that England is the only foe. As a nation and as individuals they bear
no particular malice toward France. They even feel sorry for
'misguided' Belgium--betrayed by the British, they say. But England
they look upon as the root of all their trouble, the despicable,
retreating enemy they cannot touch, the enemy, they maintain,
whose clever, but selfish, diplomacy has forced the brunt of the
fighting on the others, while she sits back to wait for the spoils."
On my arrival in Berlin I delivered the mail packet to Ambassador
Gerard. Two days later I presented my credentials at the Auswartige
Amt, or Foreign Office, hoping to get permission to go to the western
front with the Crown Prince's army. I was told to see Baron von
Mumm Schwartzenstein, who was officially designated by Von Jagow
to handle neutral correspondents, and who, unofficially, I have reason
to believe, is connected with the Secret Service. He is a pudgy sort of
man, with a watery skin, and decidedly not of military build or bearing.
When, after much red tape, I was finally admitted to an outer office,
he stepped out to see me, merely taking my name and the names of
the papers I represented. I was told to come back in the evening.
When I did so and was admitted to His Holy of Holies, he said to me
at once:--
"I was expecting you to come yesterday. Why did you not?"
This was rather startling, but his next remark altogether took away my
breath.
"Were you satisfied with your treatment by the War Office in Brussels,
Herr Green? And why, if you have already been wiss ze army in
scenes of war, do you now come to me for permission?"
Mind you, I had at this time spoken scarcely a word, and had certainly
told nothing of my age or previous condition of servitude in Brussels.
But the Government that never forgets knew all about my
movements. He smiled at my discomfiture, and, within the next few
minutes, proved to be such a genial German (for war-time) that I
soon told him all about my adventures, including the fact that I had
gone back into Antwerp and entered Belgian lines, after escaping
from German surveillance at Aix. I happened to speak of the
marvelous efficiency and preparedness of the German army in
Belgium.
"Yes, that iss quite so," remarked His Excellency, with a smile. "You
see, we were prepared for everysing--except," he added after a
pause,--"except ze invasion of ze American newspaperman. When
he iss out of our sight, zen we do not feel secure."
Several weeks later, after I had come out of the Kaiser's realm, a
representative of the "Boston Journal," who had been looking for me
all over the Continent, ran me down just as I was leaving The Hague
for England.
"The Foreign Office in Berlin told me where to find you," he said.
"They told me that in Berlin you had stayed first at the Esplanade, and
then you had moved to the Kaiserhof. They said you had left the city
[this was when I went out toward Poland], that you had returned to
Berlin, and that on such and such a date at 8.45 you had departed for
The Hague."!!
The military and civil authorities looked upon the correspondent as an
embryo spy. And if the correspondent's sympathies were foreign, he
was a thousand times worse than the ordinary spy, because he could
make use of the cable and press to spread his information.
While waiting in Berlin for a chance to go to the front, I became,
therefore, more and more conscious of surveillance. Whether it was
the fact of being so much alone, or due perhaps to an unfortunately
English-like appearance, I do not know. At all events, the long arm of
the Secret Service continuously cast a shadow over my shoulder: I
even became suspicious of myself.
For one who has not been through the experience it is difficult to
appreciate the strain of such constant, unending suspicion. On July
17,1912, I stood beside the body of Herman Rosenthal, the gambler,
as it lay in the coffin in the parlor of his house in the Tenderloin. My
newspaper had sent me to "cover" the funeral, and I managed,
because of some previous knowledge of the household, and by
giving the impression of a mourner, to gain access. The murderers
had not yet been caught. Because the public knew nothing of "Lefty"
Louie, or "Gyp the Blood," or even of the late Lieutenant Becker, it
was common gossip that the criminals lurked in the neighborhood,
and that, in order to avoid suspicion, they would appear among the
chief mourners. Therefore, each eye was turned against its neighbor,
and each man, as he passed you, asked the silent question,--"Did
you shoot Herman Rosenthal?" During all the months on the
Continent, and particularly in Germany, I felt myself at Rosenthal's
funeral.
To a greater or less degree other correspondents had similar
experiences. I must mention one or two of them, in spite of the fact
that they may dim the importance of my own adventures. There was
Swing, of Chicago, German by relationship and sympathy, who
championed the Kaiser's cause and in his dispatches blew the
Teuton horn in the Middle West of America. Swing was given
exceptional privileges, including a typewriter and telephone near the
Foreign Office. Yet Swing himself was constantly shadowed, and it is
a fact that every time he used the telephone (and he was never
permitted to speak in English) a Secret Service agent cut in on the
wire to listen to the conversation.
An anecdote which I have heard in connection with the same
correspondent, although I do not vouch for its accuracy, shows that
"keeping the lid" on newspaper men had its humorous side. It
likewise indicates the initiative and aggressiveness of many American
correspondents, who, as a rule, went right ahead in the face of
military regulations, in some cases risking their lives, and in almost
every case refusing to be "bluffed out," even where the threatened
penalty was death. Swing had made his way to the battle front near---
-----, where he was taken into custody and brought before Von
Mumm, then on a visit to Staff Headquarters.
"I find one of your countrymen wizin ze army lines," is the way
Excellency von Mumm is reported as telling the story, "and I say to
him, 'Herr Swing, it iss strongly forbidden zat a newspaper man come
to ze front. It is not permitted zat any one come here; you must go
away.'
"Very goot, Excellency," said Swing.
"Ze next day I am extr-r-remely sorry to encounter ze same
chentleman, and I say to him, 'Go away at once. If you are not gone
in one hour you will be shot!'
"Very goot, Excellency," answered Herr Swing. "Auf wiedersehn."
"Zat Very afternoon, to my sur-r-r-prise and gr-r-reat astonishment, I
see him again. He was still in ze army lines. And I say to him, 'Now I
have you! This time you will be shot at sunrise!'
"And he look at me and say:--
"'Very goot, Excellency. Zat make perfectly bully story for my paper.'
"And I look at him for a minute, and I do not know whether to shoot
him or to laugh.
"And you know, I cannot help myself but to laugh."
And finally there was the case of Cyril Brown, staff correspondent of
the "New York Times" in Berlin, with whom I floundered through the
maze of official red tape and military snares that entangled the
reporter at the German capital. Brown is an individual with a sense of
humor and a Mark Twain penchant for ten-pfennig cigars. He takes
his work seriously, but, unlike most war correspondents, not himself.
After some interesting freight-car adventures of his own planning, he
reached the Grosser Hauptquartier, a small city on the Meuse, where
at that time the brain of the German fighting machine was located.
This most vulnerable spot of the entire German Empire was,
paradoxically, in France. The Kaiser, the King of Saxony, the Crown
Prince of Germany, and Field Marshal von Moltke were here holding
council of war. It was therefore of utmost importance to conceal the
locality. Neutral correspondents were not allowed: the German press,
even if it knew, would not dare to breathe its whereabouts. When
Brown by strategy got inside the red-and-white striped poles which
marked the entrance to the Over War Lord's quarters, he was at once
arrested and taken before Major Nikolai, head of the Kaiser's
bodyguard and chief of the field detectives.
It was late at night, and it was determined that Brown should go on the
first military Postzug, which left at 7 A.M. If he was not gone by that
time there were terrible threats of what would happen to him.
It so happened that the day was the Crown Princess's birthday. Soldiers,
grenadiers, and servants of the Kaiser's household celebrated the fact.
Brown evaded his intoxicated sentinels and deliberately missed the
train. The following morning Major Nikolai discovered him behind the
guardhouse, himself feigning intoxication. Major Nikolai was about to
throw Brown into jail "for the duration of the war" when the young man
answered:--
"But, Major, I overslept. What loyal German could possibly remain sober
on the Crown Princess's birthday?"
"Gott im Himmel!" exclaimed the major, bursting into a laugh; "vatever
can be done mit such a man?"
To-day Brown has free run of the Foreign Office and the War Office in
Berlin, and is sending to his paper, in my humble opinion, the best
information obtainable in this country on the way in which the German
civil and military mind views the "crisis" with the U. S. A.