GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS
German spies who looked like "movie" detectives hung about and
followed us on the journey from Berlin to Switzerland, France and
Spain. There were even suspicious characters among the Americans
with German accent who came on our special train from Germany to
Switzerland.
Berne is now the champion spy centre of the world. Switzerland, a
neutral country, bordering on Germany, France, Italy and Austria,
is the happy hunting ground and outfitting point for myriads of
spies employed by the nations at war. The Germans, however, use
more spies than all the other nations together.
Bismarck said that there are male nations and female nations, and
that Germany was a male nation--certainly the German has less of
that heaven-sent feminine quality of intuition than other
peoples. The autocrat, never mingling with the plain people of
all walks of life, finds the spy a necessity.
Spy spies on spy--autocracy produces bureaucracy where men rise
and fall not by the votes of their fellow citizens but by back
stairs intrigue. The German office-holder fears the spies of his
rivals. I often said to Germans holding high office during the
war, "This strain is breaking you down,--all day in your office.
Take an afternoon off and come shooting with me." The invariable
answer was, "I cannot--the others would learn it from their spies
and would spread the report that I neglect business!"
While in Spain I met the then Premier, Count Romanones, a man of
great talent and impressive personality. He told me of the
finding of a quantity of high explosives, marked by a little
buoy, in one of the secluded bays of the coast. And that day a
German had been arrested who had mysteriously appeared at a
Spanish port dressed as a workman. The workman took a first class
passage to Madrid, went to the best hotel and bought a complete
outfit of fine clothes. Undoubtedly the high explosive as well as
the mysterious German had been landed from a German submarine.
Whether the explosive was destined as a depot for submarines or
was to help overturn the Spanish government was hard to guess,
but Count Romanones was worried over the activity of the German
agents in Spain.
It has been very easy for German agents in America to communicate
with Germany through this submarine post from Spain to Germany,
the letters from America being sent to Cuba and thence on Spanish
boats to Spain.
At all times since the war the Germans have had a submarine post
running direct from Germany to Spain. Shortly after our arrival
in Spain Mrs. Gerard received mysteriously a letter written by a
friend of hers, a German Baroness, in Berlin. This letter had
undoubtedly been sent through the very efficient German spy
system.
Sometime in 1915 a German soldier, in uniform, speaking perfect
English, called one day at the Embassy. He said that his name was
Bode and that he had at one time worked for my father-in-law, the
late Marcus Daly. Of course, we had no means of verifying his
statements and Mrs. Gerard did not remember any one of that name
or recall Bode personally. He said that he was fighting on the
East front and that he had a temporary leave of absence. I gave
him some money and later we sent him packages of food and tobacco
to the front, but never received any acknowledgment.
In Madrid one of my assistants, Frank Hall, while walking through
the street, ran across Bode, who was fashionably attired. His
calling cards stated that he was a mining engineer from Los
Angeles, California. He told Hall a most extraordinary fairy
story, saying that he had been captured by the Russians on the
East front and sent to Siberia, that from Siberia he had escaped
to China and from there he had gradually worked his way back to
America and thence to Spain.
Of course, without any definite information on the subject it is
impossible to say exactly what he was doing in Spain. But I am
sure that it is far more likely he had landed from a German
submarine on the coast of Spain and that he was posing as an
American mining engineer for a particular purpose.
I told certain people in Spain about Bode and of his intention to
visit the mining districts of Spain where numbers of men are
employed. Bode must have suspected that I had given information
about him, for Hall and I received several postcards of a
threatening character, evidently from him.
My cables to and from the State Department passed through our
legation at Copenhagen, and, of course, if the Germans knew our
cipher these messages were read by them. On special occasions I
made use of a super-cipher the key to which I kept in a safe in
my bedroom and which only one secretary could use. The files of
cipher cables sent and received were kept in a large safe in the
Embassy. But before leaving Germany, knowing the Germans as I
did, and particularly what they had done in other countries and
to other diplomats, knowing how easy it would be for them to
burglarise the safe after we left, when the Spaniards and Dutch
were out of the building at night, I tossed all these despatches
as well as the code books into a big furnace fire. Commander
Gherardi and Secretary Hugh Wilson stood by and personally saw
that the last scrap was burned. Of course, copies of all the
cables are in the State Department.
German spies are adepts at opening bags, steaming letters--all
the old tricks. The easiest way to baffle them is to write
nothing that cannot be published to the world.
For a long time after the beginning of war I was too busy to
write the weekly report of official gossip usually sent home by
diplomats. I suppose the Germans searched our courier bags for
such a report vainly. Anyway, its absence finally got on the
nerves of Zimmermann so much that one day he blurted out, "Don't
you ever write reports to your Government?"
Sealed letters are opened by spies as follows:
[Illustration]
by inserting a pencil or small round object in the envelope,
steamed a little, if necessary; the envelope is opened at the end
flap and the contents pulled out without disturbing the seal, the
contents are then read, put in their place again, the end flap
re-inserted, a little gum used and the envelope is as intact as
before.
The only safe way to seal an envelope is thus:
[Illustration]
Even then a clever spy can open the letter, read the contents and
seal it again. This is done by cutting through the seals with a
hot razor--the divided seals are then united by pressing the hot
razor against each side of the cut and then pressing the two
parts of the cut seal together. This is, however, a very delicate
operation and doesn't always work.
From the outbreak of war we sent and received our official mail
through England, and couriers carried it between Berlin and
London through Holland via Flushing and Tilbury.
On account of the great volume of correspondence between
Ambassador Page and myself on the affairs of German prisoners in
England and English prisoners in Germany, there were many pouches
every week. These were leather mail bags opened only by duplicate
keys kept in London and Berlin and, for the American mail, in
Berlin and Washington. Our couriers did their best to keep the
numerous bags in their sight during the long journey but on many
occasions our couriers were separated, I am sure with malicious
purpose, from their bags by the German railway authorities and on
some occasions the bags not recovered for days.
Undoubtedly at this time the Germans opened and looked over the
contents of the bags. Later in the war our courier while on a
Dutch mail boat, running between Flushing and England, was twice
captured with the boat by a German warship and taken into
Zeebrugge. Undoubtedly here, too, the bags were secretly opened
and our uncoded despatches and letters read.
German spies were most annoying in Havana and one of them, a
large dark man, followed me about at a distance of only six feet,
with his eyes glued on the small bag which I carried from a thick
strap hanging around my shoulder. I brought it from Germany in
that way. I never let it out of my hands or sight.
What was in that bag? Among other things were the original
telegrams written by the Kaiser in his own handwriting,
facsimiles of which appear in my earlier book, "My Four Years in
Germany," and the treaty which the Germans tried to get me to
sign while they held me as a prisoner. Under the terms they
proposed the German ships interned in America were to have the
right in case of war, to sail for Germany under a safe conduct to
be obtained from the Allies by the United States. Somewhat of a
treaty! And quite a new, bright and original thought by some one
in the Foreign Office or German Admiralty. There were also in
this mysterious bag many other matters of interest that may some
day see the light.
* * * * *
Poisonous propaganda and spying are the twin offspring of
Kaiserism.
There is in Mexico, for instance, one force that never
sleeps,--the German propaganda. It is the same method as that
used by the Teutons in every country, the purchase or rental of
newspaper properties, bribing public men and officers of the army
and the insidious use of Germans who are engaged in commerce.
This propaganda is backed by enormous sums of money appropriated
by the German government which directs how all its officers and
agents, high and low, shall participate in the campaign.
In the long run a paid propaganda always fails. It is like paying
money to blackmailers. The blackmailer who has once received
money becomes so insatiable that even the Bank of England will
not satisfy him in the end. Sometimes the newspapers which are
not bought, but are equally corrupt, become vehement in their
denunciation of the country making the propaganda in the hope of
being bought and in the hope that their bribe money will be in
proportion to their hostility. Corrupted public men who are not
bribed often become sternly virtuous and denunciatory with a
similar hope. Those who have received the wages of shame, on the
other hand, become more insistent in their demands, crying,
"Give! Give!" like the daughter of the horse-leech.
The blows of war must be struck quickly. Delays are dangerous and
the temporary paralysis of one country by propaganda may mean the
loss of the war. The United States has been at a great disadvantage
because our officials have not had the authority, the means or
the money to fight the German propaganda with effective educational
campaigns, both offensive and defensive.
Bernstorff in this country disposed of enormous sums for the
purpose of moulding American public opinion. I, in Berlin, was
without one cent with which to place America's side before the
German people. It is a conflict of two systems. In Berlin I did
not even have money to pay private detectives and on the rare
occasions when I used them as, for instance to find out who was
connected with the so-called American organisation, the League of
Truth, which was engaged in a violent propaganda against America
inside Germany, I was obliged to bear the expense personally.
South of the Rio Grande the Germans are working against us, doing
their best to prejudice the Mexicans against the United States,
playing upon old hatreds and creating new ones and, in the
meantime, by their purchase of properties and of mines creating a
situation that will constitute for us in the future a most
difficult and dangerous problem.
The Germans cannot understand why we do not take advantage of
conditions in Mexico in order to conquer and hold that unfortunate
country. They could not believe that we were actuated by a spirit
of idealism and that we were patiently suffering much in order
really to help Mexico. They could not believe that we were
waiting in order to convince not only Mexico but the other States
of Central America and the great friendly republics of South
America, that it was not our policy to use the dissensions and
weakness of our neighbours to gain territory.
On one occasion before the war I and several other Ambassadors
were dining with the Kaiser and after dinner the conversation
turned to the strange sights to be seen in America. One of the
Ambassadors, I think it was Cambon, said that he had seen in
America whole houses being moved along the roads, something of a
novelty to European eyes where the houses, constructed of brick
and stone, cannot be transported from place to place like our
wooden frame house. The Emperor jokingly remarked: "Yes, I am
sure that the Americans are moving their houses. They are moving
them down towards the Mexican border."