Clearing a battlefield after the advance of the French armies in
September, 1915. The fallen of both armies were loaded together on
wagons and hauled to convenient places for interment. Their identity
was learned from numbered metal tags on cords around the neck, or sewn
into the clothing.]
“‘No woman spies have been shot in England and only one among the
feminine lot—a bad lot—who are serving sentence could possibly
lay claim to being a “beautiful lady” spy. This woman had all the
hall-marks of the fiction and cinema character, charming in manner,
well gowned, having plenty of money, traveling about luxuriously,
and was finally nabbed with the incriminating papers on her. But the
popular conception of the feminine secret agent rarely exists outside
of sensational stories because only women without moral sense can take
up this profession, and when a woman is devoid of moral sense she is
sure to be devoid of the other qualities that might make her work
efficacious.
“‘There are, of course, numberless men and women who would be spies if
they had not been interned, and, among the 30,000 Germans who are at
this moment so confined, there are doubtless several who treasure the
belief that they would have been of inestimable use to their country;
but as they will never get a chance to prove themselves wrong that poor
solace is permitted them.
“‘We have,’ continued my informant, ‘a great number of “cherished
spies” with us. These are the spies who go about plying their
profession and believing themselves the personification of that
cleverness the Germans demand for this work. That is why we have dubbed
them “Our Cherished Ones.” They are carefully watched. We let them go
on doing bad work because it is much better to keep a bad spy doing bad
work than it is to take him and perhaps have a spy who might do good
work sent in his place.
“‘We would hate to lose our “cherished spies.” We don’t intend to!
“‘America has the job of the century. I wouldn’t know where to tell her
to begin. Spies that were there and have left had plenty of time to lay
their plans before the unrestricted submarine warfare began.
“‘With 8,000,000 Germans in America, what you have to find out is
whether or not a German has been denationalized, a process that
can only be gone through in Germany. It is not enough to know that
he has been naturalized and that he claims to be a good citizen to
your country. The fact that he has become a naturalized citizen
does not free him from the call to fight for his own land. If he is
denationalized as well as naturalized you are then safe, but not
before. In England we had only a very small number who were found to be
denationalized, a fairly negligible unit.
“‘I should say that the rush by foreigners immediately after the
declaration of war in America was not because before they had been
indifferent or hostile, but because they feared to be called upon to
fight for their own countries. You will probably find that many of the
Germans had been denationalized and were finishing up the process.’”