A Dozen Were Shot, Hundreds Were Imprisoned, But “Cherished Spies” Were
Allowed To Go Free Because Their Work Was So Bad.
There has never been a war since the one in which the daughter of
Jupiter and Leda, the inconstant Helen, figured so conspicuously, that
has not had its fact or fiction of “beautiful” women. Whether it be
Homer or Timothy Tubbmutton who wields the recording pen, there is
always the woman beautiful to flavor the narrative. And usually the
“beautiful” is a clever spy who casts a seductive spell over diplomats,
statesmen, generals or, if need be, corporals of the guard. Inevitably
a war of a magnitude to take in every clime and nation offered alluring
field for the play of the reportorial or literary imagination, and we
have had—in novel, movie and magazine as well as in the columns of the
press—stories unlimited about beautiful women spies.
It goes without saying that, with the rarest possible exception, beauty
is not a feature of the type of person whose mentality delights in
“treasons, stratagems and spoils.” But we seldom have an authoritative
pronouncement on the subject, and for that reason it is particularly
interesting to reproduce in part an interview Miss Gertrude Lynch
had with an English secret service official in 1917 while the war
was still very much on. Miss Lynch was one of the “Vigilantes,” an
association of American writers whose object was to “help win the war”
by the dissemination of educative information. The interview with the
English official was to get some light on the German espionage system
as applied to England. Though not named, the official is described as
the spy expert of England. A great many spies, of one and another sort,
were nabbed in England. The article says: