THE SPECIAL BRANCH
Throughout the War the Special Branch was combined with the Criminal
Investigation Department. There is a dividing line between ordinary
and political crime. In normal times the function of the Criminal
Investigation Department is to unravel crimes that have been committed,
and of the Special Branch to foresee and to prevent political agitators
from committing crime in order to terrorise the community into granting
them what they want. At that time there were about seven hundred
Criminal Investigation officers, of whom rather over a hundred belonged
to the Special Branch.
The Special Branch was instituted in the early ’eighties to cope with
the Irish dynamite outrages in London and elsewhere. Scarcely had
these been put down when foreign anarchists began to follow the Irish
example. The lives of Ministers were threatened, public buildings
were attacked, and legislation in the shape of the Explosives Act was
passed through both Houses at panic speed. The arrest and sentence of
the Italian anarchists, Farnara and Polti, both caught red-handed with
bombs in their possession, the fate of the anarchist who blew himself
to pieces when attacking Greenwich Observatory, and, even more, the
hostility of the crowd when the anarchists under the protection of a
strong escort of police attempted to give the man a public funeral,
were so depressing to criminal aliens that this form of outrage ceased.
Shortly afterwards one of the popular weekly newspapers offered a
reward to the man who would suggest the most effective form of
advertisement, and some bright spirit conceived the plan of sending the
Home Secretary a bomb containing a copy of the newspaper in question.
From the point of view of advertisement it achieved more than he had
counted upon. The parcel containing the bomb was opened by the Private
Secretary, who immediately summoned the Inspector of Explosives. When
he entered the room he found the bomb lying on the hearth-rug before a
bright fire with an office chair standing over it, and a group of Home
Office officials in a respectful semicircle round it. He asked what the
chair was for. They explained that if the bomb went off they thought
it would be some protection. It reminded the Inspector of an episode
at Shoeburyness, when a live shell fell in the mud in the middle of a
class of young gunners. ‘Lie down, gentlemen,’ shouted the instructor,
and no one moved. When the shell had been rendered harmless he asked
why they had not obeyed orders: they might all have been blown to
pieces. One of them faltered, ‘Well, sir, it was so muddy.’
To return to the advertisement competition. When the bomb was opened
and the newspaper was disclosed it was found that it was not an offence
to scare the wits out of a Cabinet Minister. But the young gentleman
had neglected one precaution: he had not removed from the bomb a
percussion cap, and this was his undoing, for under the Postal Act it
was unlawful to send explosives by post. When he appeared at the Police
Court upon this heinous charge he had all the advertisement that he
wanted.
If there was any disposition to reduce or disband the Special Branch at
that time, the criminal activities of Indian students, which culminated
later in the assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie, showed that the
Branch could not be dispensed with, and while the Indian students
were still active the suffragettes took to crime. I am not sure that
these ladies were not a more troublesome problem than all the rest put
together. They steered clear of assassination, but they burned down
churches, blew up the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, damaged
priceless pictures, set valuable property on fire, smashed half the
plate-glass windows in Regent Street, and attempted to throw the King’s
horse at the Derby. Most of them had quite forgotten the vote and
were intent only upon the excitement. Many of them lived in studios
where they could plot and contrive street pageants uninterrupted by
their elders to their hearts’ content. When they were caught they used
to scream down the witnesses or the magistrate, and when they were
committed to prison they went on hunger-strike. The so-called ‘Cat
and Mouse’ Act was devised to meet this contingency, but many of them
eluded re-arrest by a large expenditure of money on motor-cars, and
by an ingenuity that might have been employed upon a better cause. In
official circles I was stigmatised as an incurable optimist when I said
that the violent tactics of the suffragettes would end as suddenly
as they had begun, and perhaps they were right, because neither I
nor any one else had foreseen the War. On 5th August 1914 there were
actually three women in custody for an assault upon Downing Street. On
that morning a deputation of suffragettes called at the Home Office
to demand their release. It was felt that these women quite probably
would throw all their misdirected energies into the national cause.
The three culprits were released, and from that moment the Militants
undertook war work, and in not a few cases gave conspicuous service to
the country. Sometimes their enthusiasm was embarrassing, as when they
began to denounce the wrong people as being traitors to their country,
but on the whole they did more good than harm.
With the outbreak of the War the work of the Special Branch became
more exacting than that of the Criminal Investigation Department.
It was maid-of-all-work to every public office, for, being the only
department with a trained outdoor staff, it was called upon for every
kind of duty, from the regulation of carrier pigeons to investigating
the strange behaviour of a Swiss waiter. Ordinary crime decreased
progressively with every month of the War. The very qualities of
enterprise and adventure that swept so many youngsters into crime
during peace time took the same men to the recruiting office, and when
conscription came in our prisons were more than half empty.
Looking back over the eight years in which the Branch was responsible
under my control for the safety of Ministers and distinguished foreign
visitors, it is natural to take satisfaction in the fact that there has
never been a mishap. Apart from the obvious danger run by the Viceroy
and the Chief Secretary of Ireland, there have been anxious moments,
especially during the Prime Minister’s travels abroad; and if it had
not been for the network of information of the plans of international
assassins, against which precautions could be taken beforehand, there
might have been incidents that would have left their mark upon history.
In 1915 eleven hundred habitual criminals were known to be fighting;
more than seventy had been killed. One of these had stood his trial for
murder, and had been condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted
to penal servitude for life, and in due course he had been set at
liberty on licence. He was one of the first to answer the call. In
one case an ex-warder serving as a private recognised in his sergeant
a former prisoner who had been in his ward, but, like a wise man, he
held his tongue. One ‘old lag’ did give a comrade away. The colonel of
a certain battalion had chosen as his sergeant-major an old soldier
who had rejoined, who feared nobody and was a strict disciplinarian.
All went well until one day a corporal asked for a private interview
with the colonel, and imparted to him the news that the sergeant-major
was an ex-convict. It turned out that he had attempted to trade upon
this knowledge with the sergeant-major himself but had failed, and now
he was having his revenge. Having made his revelation the corporal
deserted, knowing that his sergeant-major was no less redoubtable with
his fists than he was with his tongue.
The police who had the duty of supervision over ex-convicts drew the
line only at the Royal Army Medical Corps. It was their duty to prevent
crime wherever possible, and it was not considered fair to men of these
antecedents to place them in the way of temptation in the shape of the
kit and valuables of the dead and wounded. There were, of course, a few
backsliders. Many of the men gravitated to the lines of communication
rather than to the trenches, and there were cases of the purloining
of stores and rations and comrades’ property. Generally, however, the
punishment awarded by Court-Martial was suspended, and the men were
given another chance in the trenches.
In one case a man who had been convicted for burglary won the Victoria
Cross. He volunteered on a night of heavy rain to crawl to the enemy’s
trenches alone and silence a machine-gun post. He told the officer
before he left that if he did not return in half an hour the company
was free to open fire, ‘and never mind me.’ Just before the interval
expired he dropped back into his own trench, plastered with mud from
head to foot. Returning again to the Front after the award of the V.C.,
he was killed in action. I knew the man--a rough, silent, Lancashire
lad, who had come to grief, I believe, through a love of adventure, and
who was as free from egotism, pose, and self-consciousness as any of
the men I knew. When the Great Book is opened his crimes, such as they
were, will, I think, be found erased on the debit side of his account,
and the Recording Angel will have set down virtues which had but a
tardy recognition while he walked this earth.
The Criminal Investigation Department was called upon to provide
trained men for the personnel of the Intelligence Corps in France.
They were the nucleus of what afterwards became an important body--the
Intelligence Police, who took control of the passenger traffic at the
ports and of _contre espionage_ on the lines of communication. Several
of them who obtained commissions reverted quite cheerfully to the rank
of sergeant of police after the Armistice. One of them whose work in
London had been the detection of White Slave traffickers was detailed
to protect the Commander-in-Chief, Lord French. In the street of G.H.Q.
he recognised a man whose deportation from England had been due to
his investigations. He followed the man, who went straight to Lord
French’s quarters. He stopped him on the doorstep and taxed him with
his identity. There, at least, one would have said that the capture
was important, but no! It turned out that the man had been engaged by
some one who knew nothing of his unsavoury character, to assist in the
kitchen.
It may be imagined that the enormous rush of correspondence in those
first days of the War dislocated the smooth-running machinery of the
Special Branch. There was likely to be a shortage of trained police
officers, and we took on a number of pensioners to cope with the
correspondence. I remember the hopeless expression on their faces when
I visited them about a week after they had started. Piles of unopened
letters lay on the floor, great stacks of docketed letters stood on
every table. They were working I do not know how many hours overtime,
and still the flood of correspondence was threatening to submerge them.
In those first few months I do not think that any of us left the office
before midnight. If all the angry people who poured in their complaints
had realised that every one had to suffer some inconvenience in the War
we might have done better work.
I really think that at this time the American tourist was the most
difficult. Not content with besieging his own Embassy, he would
sometimes come to demand satisfaction from me for the outrage of having
had questions put to him at the port of arrival. These ladies and
gentlemen had never seen a war before, and they could not understand
why it should be allowed to interfere with the elementary comfort of a
neutral who was ready to pay liberally for everything. Sometimes I am
afraid that my subordinates paltered with the sacred truth, for they
had discovered that the quickest way to smooth the ruffled feelings of
these tourists was to say, ‘Do you know that you are the first American
who has ever complained of such inconveniences? We have always found
Americans so quick to realise our difficulties and to make allowances
for them.’ That never seems to have failed to put the angriest of
them on their good behaviour. It made them, in a sense, custodians
of their country’s reputation. But when the first tourist rush had
been seen safely off to the other side of the Atlantic I began to
find the Americans, both official and unofficial, a very great help,
and I made many permanent friends among them. The temptation to win
affection in this country by displaying unneutral feelings must in
some cases have been very great, and yet, though I knew many official
Americans intimately, I never heard one of them go outside the reserve
which every official neutral was expected to entail. The announcement
that America had entered the War must have been to some of them like
removing the top from a boiling saucepan.
I knew that not a few Englishmen thought that when America began to
send over staff officers to Europe they would not want to learn from
our experience but would be more inclined to put us under instruction.
They were quite wrong. The whole attitude of the American officer
was exactly what good sense would prescribe. We had been buying our
experience at great cost for nearly four years, and we were prepared to
give it all freely to our new allies. They, on their part, came over to
learn, and when they had learned all that we were able to teach them
they began to make discoveries for themselves. Never during the whole
course of the War or afterwards was there any difference between my
American friends and myself. We worked as one organisation, and when
they had had time to extend theirs until it reached all over Europe
I thought sometimes that it was the better of the two. Nor must I
forget the American journalist. It had been a tradition in some British
official circles to be afraid of the journalist, probably lest his
trained persuasiveness might have induced them to open their mouths
when they meant to keep them shut. I have always found it best to be
perfectly open with them; to tell them as much as they ought to know
for the proper understanding of the question, and then to settle with
them what they shall publish. I have never known an American journalist
exceed the limits within which he has promised to keep. Sometimes when
it was essential that a matter should be made public they have gone out
of their way to publish it. No doubt the European representatives of
the great American newspapers are very carefully chosen: I have been
surprised at their wide knowledge of international affairs and the
excellent forecasts they have made.
In those early days weird people would swim into my horizon. One
morning information came to me that a gigantic American had arrived
at the Carlton Hotel and had declared his intention of buying a yacht
in order to pay a visit to the Kaiser. He thought that a few minutes’
straight talk between them would finish the War. I invited him to call,
and there walked into my room a very menacing figure. He was well over
six feet, and must have weighed quite eighteen stone. He stood there
glaring at me with his hat on, chewing the stump of a cigar.
‘Won’t you take off your hat and sit down?’ I began.
‘I’d rather stand.’
‘We don’t usually smoke in this office.’
‘I am not smoking.’ (The cigar was unlighted.)
‘I hear that you are going to buy a yacht.’
‘That’s my business.’
At this, my assistant, who was almost equally powerful, rose to his
full height. I think he expected that my visitor intended mischief.
After this unpromising beginning it was useless to question him
further, and we parted. Throughout the interview he had not relaxed his
scowl. Later in the afternoon the American Embassy received a cable to
the effect that a gentleman of large means, who was mentally unstable
and was being looked after by his friends privately, had eluded them
and embarked for Liverpool. The name corresponded with that of my
friend of the hat and the cigar. I was asked whether I saw any way of
restoring the gentleman to his relations. They were ready to wait on
the other side with their arms open to receive him if only he could be
persuaded to go. It was a desperate venture, but I tried it. I sent a
courtly Inspector to the hotel with instructions to be mysterious but
urgent in an invitation to come down at once to another interview. He
came, and this time I did not trouble him with preliminaries. I looked
round to see that all the doors were closed, and then addressed him. ‘I
want to give you a word of advice,’ I said. ‘Ask me no questions, but
if you are wise you will do exactly as I say. There is a boat leaving
for New York to-morrow morning. Don’t stop to think; just go by it. If
the matter had not been so urgent in your own interests I would not
have sent for you. Now waste no time.’ He looked at me blankly for a
moment and left the room without a word. Two hours later inquiries
were made at the hotel. He had looked in for a moment to pay his bill,
and had left without his luggage. A telegram to Liverpool produced the
reply that he had gone on board the steamer, booked his passage, and
had locked himself in his cabin. We heard later that he was met by his
friends, and that the luggage had been sent on after him.
On one other occasion my companion felt called upon to intervene.
A middle-aged man had been asked to call on some quite unimportant
matter. He was of fierce and truculent mien. When I asked him a
question he glared at me and was silent. I put the question again,
whereupon he clapped his hand to some mysterious pocket about his
person, and began to draw out what my companion thought must be a
revolver. He was about to fall upon the visitor when the object was
disclosed. He was pulling out a curious little telephonic apparatus
which he planted on my table in front of me and connected with his ear.
The man was stone deaf. The faintest ghost of a smile flickered across
his rugged countenance when he realised our mistake.
Very soon after the declaration of war every public man whose speech
was reported in the newspapers received a letter in a foreign
handwriting, filled with abuse of the English and extravagant praise of
the Germans, who, according to the writer, were chosen by God to sweep
us into the sea. The brutality and vainglory of these compositions were
tempered with scholarship: the man was an omnivorous reader, and had
a quotation in support of every boast. The letters were posted from
every district in London, and bore an address in Loughton which did
not exist. Apart from the work entailed in the laboriously ornamental
handwriting, the man must have expended time and money in travelling
from one part of London to another. Abusive letters injure nobody, but
that a truculent Hun should be at large in London in war-time, in the
opinion of those who received his letters, reflected little credit
on the efficiency of the police. In order to cut this troublesome
inquiry short I induced the _Globe_ to publish a facsimile of one of
the letters, and immediately several people wrote to say that they
identified the handwriting as that of their former German tutor living
in Dalston. I was curious to see this fire-eating Hun: I pictured him
as a heavy, florid, square-headed Prussian. Square-headed he was, but
he proved to be a rather diminutive abject person with the wide-staring
eyes of a wild animal brought to bay. He was mentally deranged, but in
the choice of his pseudonym, in the precautions he had taken in posting
his letters, he had shown the cunning of a monomaniac. He had a son
serving in the British Army, and a very loyal wife who undertook to
keep him out of mischief for the future.
As the German tide poured over Belgium we received our daily flood of
refugees. The arrangements improvised by the Belgian Relief Committee
were a high tribute to the power of organisation which is latent in
our people. Naturally there was a little confusion at first because
the rush of refugees far exceeded the room for accommodation during
the first few days. Considering that the refugees included all
the unemployable and most of the disreputable part of the Belgian
population, as well as the industrious and the intellectual, it is
remarkable, on the whole, how well they behaved. There were one or two
amusing incidents. I remember hearing that at one of the Receiving
Stations in London a couple who spoke Flemish but no other language
were received late in the evening. The woman was shown into her room,
and shortly afterwards the supposed husband was conducted to the same
apartment. Immediately a fearful uproar arose, and the interpreter had
to be telephoned for. It then appeared that neither of the couple had
ever seen the other before.
Antwerp was being threatened, the Naval Division was pouring in for its
defence, and I was asked to send a police officer to the city because
my officer at Ostend could not possibly leave his post. No officer was
available at the time except a middle-aged man with a large family who
had done excellent service in advising upon doubtful literature. In
fact, he was the greatest living authority upon the kind of literature
on which a successful prosecution could be founded. At the call of duty
he said ‘Good-bye’ to his family and departed. A few days later, when
the German siege guns were in position, there came a telegram from
him, suggesting that he should be recalled. Events were moving fast,
and before I could reply to the telegram his arrival at Scotland Yard
was announced. I sent for him and said gravely, ‘I had your telegram,
Inspector, but you left your post without waiting for a reply.’ He
bowed in his usual courtly manner and replied, ‘Yes, sir, but a
fifteen-inch shell took the corner off my bedroom, sir, and I don’t
know how it is, but I think I am getting too old for sieges.’ ‘Too old
for sieges’ became a byword in my office throughout the War when any
one was asked to undertake a job that he did not relish.
There were two sides to the question of interning enemy aliens who
were kept in the country. When war broke out there were no internment
camps, but there were many Germans who were known to be dangerous. Some
place of internment had to be improvised forthwith, and for London the
obvious place was Olympia. Bedding and blankets were hastily gathered
in, and a guard was provided from Wellington Barracks. I used to go
there daily for a time because some useful information might be gleaned
from the civilian prisoners. They were a most unprepossessing lot.
During the first fortnight two Austrian ships put into the Thames
before they knew that war had been declared. The crews were all marched
to Olympia and interned with the Germans. When I arrived the next
morning the Austrians had been relegated to the annexe, and were roped
off from the others. It appeared that they had not been more than
an hour with the Germans before a violent quarrel broke out and the
Austrian officers formed a deputation to the commandant to request that
they might be separated from ‘those German riff-raff.’ Among them were
four young Austrian students who had apparently taken a voyage for
the enlargement of their minds. These young men had very definite and
uncomplimentary views regarding their brothers-in-arms, the Prussians.
On the whole, the prisoners in Olympia gave very little trouble. On one
occasion a German waiter became insolent to a guardsman, but the Irish
corporal, who had a sense of humour, approached the two while they were
in mid-dispute and said to the private in pretended seriousness, ‘Why
stop to argue with him? Shoot him,’ whereupon the German waiter dived
under a table and was quite polite for the remainder of his stay.
The cry, ‘Intern them all,’ which was taken up by certain newspapers,
was very embarrassing. Though, no doubt, it did interpret the public
feeling and allayed public alarm, it was the cause of thousands of
complaints and investigations. My own view at the time was that we had
so full a knowledge of the dangerous Germans that we should confine
internment to that class and leave the innocent ones at liberty. Many
of them were doing good work for us in munitions and manufactures,
some were definitely ranged in their sympathies with the Allies, such
as the Poles and Czechs. To ‘intern them all’ would be to invite the
enemy countries to intern all our nationals, which, of course, they
did, but the real argument against indiscriminate internment was that
we had no place ready to receive such vast numbers. This meant that
until camps were ready it would be impossible to give the prisoners
the accommodation prescribed by the Hague Convention. Complaints
would reach the enemy, who would then feel themselves justified in
maltreating our prisoners. Nevertheless, it had to be done, and every
day one might see furniture vans packed with Germans proceeding through
the streets to Olympia before being drafted off to such camps as could
be improvised.
Some of the Germans brought this fate upon themselves. There was a
well-known café in Oxford Street in which the staff--even the manager
and the book-keeper--were all registered enemy aliens. On the afternoon
when the news of de Wet’s rebellion in South Africa reached London the
waiters and some of the guests began to cheer. I had news of this by
telephone, and in half an hour the entire staff was rounded up, put
into a furniture van, and driven off to Olympia. There was an indignant
protest from the British directors of the company that evening, but my
case was quite unanswerable.