he is physically capable of performing. Some men are not able to fly at
higher levels than a few thousand feet without suffering deleterious
effects, while others may operate at five miles above the surface of
the earth without physical harm. It is necessary to know a flyer’s
limitations before his training is specialized, for the saving of time
and money, and, indeed, the flyer himself. Just as the trainer of a
varsity track team classifies his available material into sprinters,
distance men, broad jumpers, high jumpers, and weight throwers, so the
director of a flying-school must classify his material into men fitted
for combat, observation, and bombing. It would be an obvious waste
of time and effort to train a man for combat work at high altitudes
and then discover that his physical limitations permitted only of his
doing bombing work at comparatively low levels. In order to accomplish
this work of classification, branch research medical laboratories were
established at the various flying-fields, which, by means of certain
standardized tests, especially the one on the “rebreather” machine,
placed the flyers in their proper categories. The rebreathing tests
were conducted in a room so designed, by the gradual expulsion of its
oxygen, as to create the exact and various conditions that would exist
at any known altitude. Physicians and physiological experts, themselves
supplied with oxygen through tubes, remained in the room throughout the
tests, closely observing the effect produced on the candidate by the
gradual decrease of the oxygen supply. It was soon found that a man’s
faculty to respond to sight, sound, and touch becomes more dormant as the
air becomes more rarefied, and it was to offset this condition that the
oxygen apparatus which I have described in preceding pages was designed.
The effect of low oxygen upon the mental process varies greatly, however,
according to the individual. He usually becomes mentally inefficient at
an altitude at which there is as yet no serious failure of his vital
bodily functions. By simple tests of mental alertness during these
rebreathing experiments, such as directing the candidate to press
designated buttons controlling electric lights of certain colors,
controlling a volume of sound by operating a pedal with his feet, and
the like, it was easy to determine that one flier would lose his mental
alertness at 15,000 feet, while another would retain full control of his
faculties at nearly double that height.
In order to accomplish the best results, a comprehensive programme
was undertaken, providing for the standardization of both tests and
examiners. Sixty-seven military units were established, each examining
from ten to sixty applicants a day, there being required, in addition to
the complete physical examination embracing all the features ordinarily
required of men entering the military service, rigid tests of the special
senses of vision, hearing, and motion sensing. Yet, despite the severity
of the tests to which the candidates were subjected, the records show
that 70.7% of the applicants qualified. But the work of the surgeons did
not end when they had passed a man as physically fitted for training
as an aviator. On the contrary, it had only begun. The candidate was
not only kept under the closest medical observation during his training
days, but this observation did not relax even after he had become a fully
fledged flyer with the silver wings embroidered on his breast, for the
“flight surgeon” who was attached to every squadron was instructed to
keep the flyers physically fit and to carefully investigate the causes
of all such accidents as might be attributed to the mental or physical
failure of the flyers themselves. Keeping the flyer fit was by no means
as simple a matter as it sounds, for it included seeing that the men
took the necessary amount of physical exercise, the provision of proper
recreation, watching the state of fatigue of the individual, making
arrangements for leave or furlough, determining the quantity and nature
of their food and the questions of alcohol and tobacco, and re-examining
them at frequent intervals. Any one who knows how temperamental many
flying-men are inclined to be will realize that the flight surgeons held
no sinecures.
During the last few months of the war an apparatus was perfected
whereby students could acquire flying experience and training without
leaving the ground. This machine, known as the “Ruggles Orientator,” is
a modification of the universal joint, composed of three concentric
rings so pivoted as to permit the fuselage, which is pivoted within the
innermost ring, to be put through every possible evolution experienced
in actual flying—the candidate being able to experience, while safely on
the ground, the sensations of nose-diving, tail-diving, side-slipping,
looping the loop, and all the rest—everything, in fact, except forward
progression. I feel certain that a man of Mr. Ruggles’s amazing ingenuity
could have satisfied both the parent and child of the ancient verse:
“‘Mother, may I go in to swim?’
‘Yes, my darling daughter.
Hang your hose on a hickory limb,
And don’t go near the water.’”
VII
“M. I.”
In writing the story of Military Intelligence I feel as though I were
picking my way along a narrow and slippery path which is bordered on
either side by precipices and is in places obscured by fog. On the one
hand, I am in danger of unconsciously overemphasizing the mysterious and
sensational aspects of the subject; on the other, of making it appear
more commonplace and prosaic than it really is. And, at every few steps,
I find my progress hindered by the veil of secrecy which necessarily
enveloped certain activities of the division during the war, and which
it has not been deemed wise entirely to lift with the return of peace.
And there is still another difficulty. The public has in a large measure
obtained its conceptions of military intelligence work from the novels
of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. Robert W. Chambers, and Mr. E. Phillips
Oppenheim. So, if the pages of this narrative are not filled with
alluring adventuresses of dazzling beauty, cloaked assassins, secret
agents flitting about the countryside in high-powered cars, German barons
disguised as head waiters, mysterious signals flashed by night to lurking
U-boats, messages written in invisible ink, and midnight meetings in
subterranean chambers, my readers will be disappointed and dissatisfied
and will probably believe in their hearts that I am holding something out
on them.
The story depends, after all, on the angle from which you look at it.
I know an officer of the Military Intelligence Division who goes about
on tiptoe, figuratively speaking, with his finger always on his lips.
He is so tight-mouthed that Colonel House seems garrulous beside him.
This officer has been of enormous service to his country, and the
importance of his work fully justifies the secrecy and mystery with which
he surrounds it, yet his duties have been performed at an office desk
in Washington, with a table of logarithms at his elbow, and, so far as
action and adventure are concerned, his life has been about as exciting
as that of a professor of mathematics. I know another man, likewise
connected with the Military Intelligence Division, who, assuming the
guise of a workman, succeeded in obtaining admission to the councils
of the I. W. W. and of criminals operating in the forests of the
Northwest, and who did more than any single person, perhaps, to unearth
the conspiracy which had for its object the crippling of our airplane
programme. For weeks on end he carried his life in his hands, for, had
his identity been suspected, he would have met a sudden and mysterious
end by knife or bullet. Yet he speaks of his adventures as casually as
though he had been in no greater danger than a Fifth Avenue policeman.
The fact is that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes
represented by these two instances. The opportunities which have been
afforded me to investigate the subject lead to the conclusion that,
though Military Intelligence is, in many of its phases, as hard-boiled
and unromantic as Standard Oil, it is nevertheless thickly sprinkled
with incidents and episodes which would have provided material for the
creators of LeCoq and Sherlock Holmes. Though a fairly careful perusal
of the files of “M. I. D.,” as the Division of Military Intelligence
is commonly referred to in the army, discloses no evidence that German
spies of the caliber of Karl Lody and Bolo Pasha operated in this country
during the war, they do contain the _dossiers_ of enemy agents whose
personalities and exploits meet all the requirements for characters in
spy fiction. Probably the nearest approach to the high-class spy, as made
familiar by the articles in the Sunday supplements and the magazines,
was Captain Franz von Rintelen, naval attaché of the German Embassy in
Washington, who is now enjoying an enforced sojourn in a large stone
château as the guest of the government. Though the equally notorious
Madame Victorica, a titled adventuress in the pay of the Wilhelmstrasse,
filled several of the specifications of the secret agent of fiction,
truth compels me to destroy certain illusions which the public has held
concerning this lady by stating that she was by no means young, that she
was only passably good-looking, and that she was so far from clever that
her own boastfulness led to her apprehension. The other enemy agents who
operated in this country were, for the most part, former privates in the
German Army or petty officers and stewards on German liners, the most
picturesque of the lot, a man named Bode, being so inefficient that he
was dismissed by his own government, whereupon, being without funds, he
surrendered himself to the American authorities. He will receive board
and lodging at government expense for some years to come. Though the
beautiful young Madame Storch, who died under mysterious circumstances at
Ellis Island a few days after her arrest, possessed a certain romantic
interest, she and her three companions were so weak in character and of
such small-caliber intelligence, that it is exceedingly doubtful if the
Wilhelmstrasse ever intrusted them with any important work or confided
to them any important secrets. Let it be perfectly clear, however, that
nothing is further from my intention than to minimize the deadly gravity
of the German-spy menace in this country during the war, or to suggest
that, had no steps been taken to check it, it would not have caused the
loss of millions of American dollars and thousands of American lives.
That the national safety was not more gravely imperilled by these enemy
agents was not due to their inefficiency, or to the weakness of the
German espionage system, but to the efficiency, resourcefulness, and
unremitting vigilance of the Division of Military Intelligence, which, I
might add, frequently carried on its work under the most disheartening
condition.
Military intelligence is the term applied to all such information as
may be of value to the successful prosecution of a war. The Military
Intelligence Division is that branch of the General Staff which is
organized to secure this information. Its field of inquiry includes the
investigation of active and potential enemies, allies, and neutrals;
their military, political, and economic condition; their state of
mind, their secret activities at home and abroad, and their strategic
and tactical plans for present or future campaigns. A well-organized
intelligence service provides, moreover, for estimating and safeguarding
the resources of its own country; for protecting war industries and
means of transportation; for stimulating the morale of its troops and
of the civil population; for frustrating enemy agents and preventing
the dissemination of enemy propaganda. Thus arises the distinction
between the positive and the negative aspects of the service. The
former, known as Positive Intelligence, concerns itself with the
collection and distribution of information. It publishes estimates of
the military, economic, political, and psychological status of various
countries; prints maps of enemy districts, with particular reference to
fortifications, harbors, and routes of travel; deciphers intercepted
messages, and translates foreign documents. The Negative Branch of the
service concerns itself with the frustration of all agents, military or
civil, who are consciously or unconsciously of value to the enemy. This
is known as Counter-Espionage, or Negative Intelligence. It establishes a
system of propaganda designed to neutralize the propaganda of the enemy;
it detects and causes the arrest of spies among the troops as well as
in the civil population; it censors news and information given to the
public; it prevents enemy agents from entering or leaving the country,
and it investigates the causes of economic disturbances and unrest.
Though military intelligence work was undertaken by the army in 1885, in
response to a demand for information from the Secretary of War, it was
not until the United States found itself an actual belligerent in the
Great War that the immense importance of the work was fully realized.
Incredible as it may seem, when General Pershing set sail for France in
the spring of 1917, the entire personnel of the Military Intelligence
Section, as it was then called, consisted of four officers (of which one
was myself) and three clerks. Due, however, to the forcible arguments and
the breadth of vision of its first chief, Colonel Ralph H. Van Deman, the
foundation was laid for the present vast organization, whose activities
expanded, at the demands of war, until, when the Armistice was signed,
they virtually covered the globe. In addition to the huge military
intelligence personnel in Washington, a carefully organized intelligence
service is maintained in each camp, post, and station, as well as in the
field. Though these officers are appointed by their respective division
or department commanders, the responsibility for their instruction and
the control of their counter-espionage activities rest upon the Director
of Military Intelligence, at present (June, 1919) Brigadier-General
Marlborough Churchill. During the war the Military Intelligence Division
maintained the closest liaison with the Director of Naval Intelligence,
the Department of Justice, the agents of the departments of State, Labor,
and the Treasury, the War Trade Board, the War Industries Board, the
Censorship Board, the National Research Council, the American Protective
League, and the Council of National Defense, all of these organizations
being able, through the medium of their countless branches, agents, and
correspondents, to provide Military Intelligence with enormous amounts of
valuable information which it could not otherwise easily have secured.
The Administrative Branch of the Military Intelligence Division, referred
to, for the sake of convenience, as M I 1, co-ordinates the activities
of the other eleven sections, six of which, M I 2, M I 5, M I 6, M I 7,
M I 8, and M I 9, form the Positive Branch of the service, the Negative
Branch consisting of M I 3, M I 4, M I 10, M I 11, and M I 13. The
Second Section (M I 2) is divided in turn into five subsections, four of
which—Combat, Political, Economic, and Psychologic—devote themselves to
the collation of information, the maintenance of the “Current Estimate,”
of which more hereafter, and the furnishing of special reports. Another
subsection deals with the preparation of military monographs. M I 5
collects information for the use of the Positive Branch and supervises
the military attachés. M I 6 concerns itself with the translation of
documents for all branches of the War Department. M I 7 has charge of
all maps and photographs, one of its subsections devoting itself to map
construction and another having the custody of the War Department map
collection. To M I 8 is intrusted the solution of codes and ciphers, the
study of shorthand systems, encoding and decoding, the compilation of
codes, and the maintenance of a laboratory for the detection of invisible
inks. M I 9 has supervision of the training of intelligence officers
and men for work in the field. Turning to the Negative Branch of the
division, M I 3 is charged with counter-espionage within the military
establishment, together with collateral activities directly affecting
the army. The eleven subsections of M I 3 deal with such diverse
subjects as the preparation of bulletins, summaries, and surveys; and
of instructions for intelligence officers, counter-espionage in prison
camps, disciplinary barracks, the District of Columbia, the various
branches of the Staff and Line, and among conscientious objectors,
and the investigation of applicants for commissions. M I 4 conducts
counter-espionage outside the military service in the United States
and abroad, with particular reference to sabotage and the protection
of plants and means of communication, its activities covering nearly
the entire world. M I 10 is charged with the censorship of letters,
books, newspapers, and periodicals, telegraphs and telephones, and
radiophotographs and motion-pictures, and with a general supervision of
the foreign-language press. M I 11 passes on passport applications and,
in co-operation with certain other bureaus, has charge of port control.
M I 13 is the Graft and Fraud Section, its work being principally
concerned with criminal activities which may affect the army. The present
Morale Branch of the General Staff consists, as its name indicates, in
maintaining the morale of the army, which includes the encouragement and
supervision of soldier publications, military advertising, camp-posters,
and the treatment of the foreign-speaking and negro soldier problems
originated as the Military Morale Section of Military Intelligence.
M I 2, as I have already explained, is that section of the Military
Intelligence Division whose duty is to collect, collate, and distribute
_foreign_ intelligence, its Combat Subsection being charged with the
preparation, maintenance, and dissemination of combat and military
information on all countries. The work of the subsection is classified
as “active,” “static,” and “encyclopedic.” The “active” work consisted,
during the war, of the preparation of material for the _Daily Summary_
and the _Weekly Summary_, and of material for transmission to other
governmental departments; the preparation of _Front Summaries_ and
_Strength Summaries_; the transmission of a special weekly report to
the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia; the establishment and
maintenance of line-maps of the various active fronts in the offices of
the Chief of Staff, the Secretary of State, the War Council, the War
College, and in the House of Representatives. In addition this subsection
was charged with the preparation of a weekly résumé of the situation on
all fronts to be presented to the heads of the several army bureaus, of
the industrial bureaus, and the military committees of the Senate and
the House. The “static” work consisted in keeping up to date the combat
portion of the _Current Estimate of the Strategic Situation_, where
was presented in concise form a wealth of combat, economic, ethnic,
political, and psychologic information for ready reference by the Chief
of Staff and other general officers who were compelled to keep their
fingers constantly on the pulse of the enemy and Allied nations. The
“encyclopedic” work consisted of the compilation of military and combat
information of a permanent character.
During the war there were few more interesting places in Washington—and
none, perhaps, more difficult to obtain access to—than the map-room of
the Military Intelligence Division. On its walls were displayed every
conceivable sort of map and diagrams depicting the movements of the
armies on the various fronts. Not only were there large-scale maps of
the European fronts on which our troops were fighting, but there were
likewise maps on which rows of tiny colored flags indicated the positions
of the opposing forces in Russia, Siberia, Macedonia, Mesopotamia,
Palestine, China, German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, and the
Cameroons. These maps recorded, not only from day to day, but frequently
from hour to hour, the advance or retreat of the lines on the various
fronts, besides representing in graphic form the location of the enemy
forces and indicating any economic conditions which were of particular
interest at the moment. Thanks to the completeness of our information
and the speed with which it was transmitted from the battle-fronts to
Washington, the Director of Military Intelligence could sit in his
map-room and follow the progress of a great battle on the Western Front
as readily as the crowd in front of a newspaper office can follow a
battle on a baseball diamond by means of the automatic score-board.
In addition to the unceasing care and study necessary for keeping the
maps of the various fronts up to the minute, and for anticipating events
so that maps which might be needed in the near future would be ready,
as, for example, when we first contemplated sending an expedition to
Italy or when we learned that the British were preparing to invade
Palestine, the staff of the map-room had many other duties. It verified
every name which occurred in the cables which were constantly being
received from every corner of the globe (and if you have ever seen what a
cable operator can do to geographical names you will appreciate how far
from a sinecure this task was); it answered periodic letters from the
Custodian of Alien Property requesting information as to the situation
and possession of various enemy-owned estates, and it dealt with demands
for every conceivable sort of information from every conceivable quarter.
For example, the National Geographic Society asked for the boundaries of
the Ukraine, which the society’s geographic experts had been unable to
determine themselves; the Naval Intelligence Division inquired about maps
of northern France and where it could obtain them; the Shipping Board
wanted information regarding French coastwise services. When the Siberian
Expeditionary Force was being organized it became imperative that its
commander should have an English map of the Trans-Siberian Railway. No
such map had ever been made, but by a stupendous effort the officers of
the subsection succeeded in translating three sections of the available
Russian map. The other sections were translated by the War College, and
the whole was reproduced by the Military Intelligence Printing-Office.
The work was, of course, hastily done, and later had to be revised, but
for the moment it served its purpose well, and the Expeditionary Force
was able to take with it the only complete map of that system in English
in existence.
In addition to the great number of combat, strategic, and physical
maps covering the belligerent countries and the various theatres of
war, complete sets of military maps of the neutral nations were also
kept available, for there was never any certainty as to how far the
conflagration might extend. While hostilities were in progress the
subsection responded to a constant stream of demands for estimates of
the military situation, of the enemy’s strength and resources, and for
forecasts of his plans. An enormous amount of information relative
to German and Austrian munitions, tanks, gas, aircraft, artillery,
and infantry equipment was also codified and distributed in pamphlet
form to those branches of the War Department particularly concerned.
Statistical reports, showing, for example, the percentage of French and
British officers wounded and killed during stated periods, were of great
assistance to the War Department in determining the number of officers
to be assigned to the various draft contingents and for figuring the
replacements which would be required. A report showing the housing
facilities for planes possessed by the French Air Service materially
aided our own Department of Aeronautics. The rate of pay for prisoners
of war was fixed by the Adjutant-General’s Department with the aid of
tables furnished by this subsection. Nor did the work of the subsection
end with the signing of the Armistice. If anything, it increased, for
it was called upon to furnish all sorts of highly technical information
for the use of the peace delegates. The most interesting and important
data thus supplied was a translation, with copious notes, of a Russian
document describing in great detail the growth of the movement for the
political independence of Siberia, a complete plan for the organization
of voting districts, the composition of scores of territorial councils
and commissions, and the effect on political life in Siberia of the
revolutions in European Russia.