Though the knowledge of an enemy’s plans, purposes and preparatory
measures is of the highest importance in military campaigning, and
though the utmost of courage and daring are often necessary to obtain
the required information, the office of the spy has, from time
immemorial, been contemned of men. There was but one fate for the
captured spy under military rule. Even when the bravery and devotion
of the adventuring spy have been admitted to admiration there has
remained the instinctive aversion to the office. The reason for the
almost universal mental attitude is that spying usually, if not
invariably, involves treachery, the betrayal of trust and confidence
gained by professions of friendship and sympathetic opinion. The word
“spies” stirs the spleen of wholesome minded persons. It implies craft,
duplicity, perversity. Few men have been willing to confess themselves
spies. However greedily the sensational or adventure-loving reader
may follow the narrative of the experiences, the desperate chances,
the hazards, the daring risks, the narrow escapes of the successful
spy, there is nevertheless a regretful wish that the valor, the
intelligence, had found a nobler medium of expression.
But because there is such a thing as fearless, generous self-sacrifice
in the performance of undertakings or obligations that come under the
general classification of spying, it is perhaps unfortunate that no
attempt has been made to discriminate what may be termed honorable (in
a military sense) espionage from ignoble spying. Surely there is a vast
distinction between the soldier who volunteers to penetrate an enemy’s
lines to ascertain particular facts and the person who under the
protection of social or official privilege wins trust only to betray
it. In the second class there probably is no more despicable violation
of moral responsibility recorded in the history of nations than the
German intrigue against the United States when this country was still
at peace with Germany. The indictment is clearly drawn in a few words
in the Flag Day address of President Wilson, June 14, 1917. He said
speaking of the German Government:
“They filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and
conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their
own behalf. When they found they could not do that, their agents
diligently spread sedition amongst us and sought to draw our own
citizens from their allegiance—and some of these agents were men
connected with the official embassy of the German Government itself
here in our own capital.”