In all things pertaining to the conduct of war Germany of to-day has
copied as far as possible the methods of Napoleon the First. In
military strategy, German experts have fallen far behind their model--or
rather, they have never approached his methods, because they have never
fathomed the secret of his success. Von Clausewitz, the greatest German
military writer, planned his "On War" on Napoleonic lines, but left out
the greatest factor of Napoleon's work. As he saw the work of the great
conqueror, Napoleon made use of accident: in reality, Napoleon made the
accident, and this Von Clausewitz could not comprehend. French genius
rediscovered the Napoleon strategy, but even unto this day German
military methods leave out the idea of making circumstances instead of
being limited by them.
Thus, in striving to attain the Napoleonic ideal in things military,
Germany has failed. But Napoleon established a new branch of military
organisation when he codified and arranged a system of espionage, and,
in adopting from him this systematisation of what had hitherto been a
haphazard business, German builders for a world-empire have gone far
beyond their model, so that to-day the German spy system is the most
perfect ever organised, not even excepting the system of Venice in its
palmy days, where all was written and nothing spoken, nor that of Russia
in comparatively modern times.
The German system falls naturally under several heads. To take them in
reverse order of importance, there is first the commercial system of
espionage, which takes the form of sending out men who accept posts as
clerks in foreign (to Germany) business firms. These men come,
especially to England, ostensibly to learn the language, but in many
cases they have received thorough tuition in idiomatic and commercial
English from some member of the British colonies existing in such
centres as Berlin and Dresden. They accept a very low wage for what are
in reality services far beyond their pay in value. They gain access to
books and price-lists, and to lists of customers, by means of which they
are able to give exact details of the markets to which British goods are
sent, and the prices, rates of freight, discounts, etc. These
particulars are transmitted in full to Germany, and with them the German
competing firms are able to undercut British firms in foreign markets,
and to secure British trade by always making their estimates a little
lower than those of the competing British firms. Since in commerce all
is legitimate in the interests of one's employer, the only comment to be
made on this method of spying is that it is despicable in that it
involves the deliberate abuse of hospitality, and thus no code of ethics
can be found to justify it; but business and ethics are two different
things.
This commercial spying, however, is but an offshoot from the great
espionage system perfected by Stieber, chief of German secret police and
privy councillor, of whom more anon. The main system is concerned with
military and naval matters, and various points discovered in connection
with this main system show that Germany has for many years made up its
mind to embark on a war of aggrandisement--whether or no the War Lord of
popular conception was fully in agreement with the idea is another
matter, and one that history will probably show.
The superiority of the German system to that of other and what may be
termed competing nations is evidenced by one apparently unimportant
fact. When French and British spies have been caught in Germany, and
sentenced to terms of imprisonment in German fortresses, in a great
number of cases it has transpired that the offenders were military
officers still on the active list. They had been specially chosen for
their work, perhaps; they had undertaken it with the highest of motives,
also, perhaps; and they had understood the grave risks they ran in that
their Governments would afford them no direct protection in case of
their being detected. But they were officers on the active list,
soldiers by profession.
Now, on consideration, the calling of a spy reveals itself as one of
doubtful honesty, no matter what the motives prompting the spy may be--
and the soldier is at all times supposed to be a man of honour and
strict integrity--which he usually is. Whether the spy be a British,
French, Russian, or German subject, he is engaged in abusing the
hospitality of the country on which he is spying, and, from a military
point of view, is not playing the game. So little is he playing the
game, in fact, that in time of peace his government refuses to recognise
him if he fails, and in time of war he gets no combatant rights, but is
shot out of hand by the enemy into whose hands he falls. The formality
of a trial is unnecessary, if the fact of espionage, accomplished or
attempted, be apparent. Guilty of what cannot be called other than a
mean act, attempting to endanger the lives of soldiers by unsoldierly
methods, in revealing himself as a spy a man condemns himself and passes
his own sentence--which is as it should be. And yet two of the Great
Powers permit commissioned officers to undertake this dirty work, as it
must be called!
Germany has realised that special men ought to be employed for this
special, necessary, but at the same time despicable business. Your
perfect spy is a man of criminal impulse, a moral pervert of sorts, and,
recognising this, Stieber and his followers in the government of the
system have organised a separate branch of the Great German General
Staff, a branch made up of chosen men and women, of whom the men may at
one time have held military or naval commissions in this warlike nation,
but very few are officers on the active list. It has been realised in
this land of nearly perfect espionage that the duties of a spy and those
of an officer of the services--of either service--are not compatible.
The German secret-service corps which Stieber organised is a matter of
three main departments: the military, the naval, and the diplomatic spy
corps. Under the last-mentioned head must be grouped the work of
Germans in foreign countries, notably in France and to a certain extent
in England, with a view to influencing labour by means of strikes and
industrial unrest, a system of influence which often approaches closely
to and sometimes interlinks with commercial espionage, though it is
primarily directed to the paralysis of a possible enemy in case of war,
and the facilitating of a German attack on the country in which the work
is being done. For always German strategy has been that of attack;
whatever protestations of peaceful intents the German nation may make,
there can be no doubt of its real designs when one considers the trend
of all its policy in recent years, the nature of its naval and military
increase of effort, and, as far as revelations show, the methods pursued
in its espionage system. Germany as a whole has meditated attack with a
view to extension of territory and commercial advantage for years, and
no apologist can adduce evidence to justify, on the score of a defensive
policy, such preparations for war as the country has made. One instance
of the methods pursued by the espionage department will illustrate this.
The fortifications of Maubeuge, the French fortress which fell to the
German attack in so marvellously short a time, were proof against
anything short of the heaviest siege-artillery, and, before this class
of artillery can be mounted for use against a town or fortress,
gun-platforms levelled and supported by masonry equal to the strain
imposed in firing the guns must be constructed. The construction of
these platforms involves much calculation and measurement, and is not a
matter of such time as was involved in the fall of Maubeuge, but of a
much longer period. The explanation of the use of siege-guns against
Maubeuge, and the rapid reduction of the fortress, is said to lie in the
purchase of about 600 acres of the woods of Lanieres, about four miles
from Maubeuge, by an agent for Frederic Krupp, the builder of the
siege-guns with which Maubeuge was reduced. The firm of Krupp, for whom
this purchase was made as far back as 1911, announced its intention of
building a locomotive factory on the ground acquired; but, long before
the present war was declared, Krupp constructed the platforms on which
siege-guns could be mounted to command Maubeuge, and totally neutralised
the value of the fortifications as well as turning out locomotives.
Here is evidence, if evidence were necessary, of Germany's deliberate
intent to make war in its own good time; not merely to defend German
frontiers, but to attack and reduce a neighbouring State by the use of
methods which any nation save this one would regard as too dishonourable
for use. Since the system of espionage has reached to such lengths as
this, it will be seen that the stories of spies and their work, in which
the public delights, are built up out of the doings of comparatively
innocent agents, who are credited with dangerous tendencies and many
melodramatic and impossible actions. That minor plans and persons do
exist is certain, but for the most part the spying of which the public
hears is merely incidental to the great whole--a whole composed for the
most part of far different elements from the clerks, hotel-waiters, and
other minor incidentals on which the imagination is fed, in order that
the reality may more easily escape detection.
There are in existence many books purporting to tell the actual work of
spies and to expose the system under which these spies work, but it may
be said at the outset that no full exposure of the spy system of Germany
has ever been made. Stieber, in his Memoirs, told exactly what it
suited him to tell, but he did not give away any essential secrets of
organisation, nor has any other writer done this, up to the present.
All that we have in the way of real evidence consists in things as well
attested by fact and result as the incident of Maubeuge and the
gun-platforms, related above; in selections from the Memoirs of spies of
those portions which bear in themselves evidence of truth, and in
reports of police-court proceedings in England and France. From these
sources we can piece together a fairly accurate conception of the whole
business of the spy; but, as regards books purporting to detail the
experience of spies, or the character of the organisation under which
they work, we must accept these experiences and the rest with all
possible reserve, remembering that, the more melodramatic and the more
plausible they may be, the more they should be questioned as regards
accuracy.
Moreover, there is sufficient evidence to show that the system is so
extensive, and that its ramifications are so far-reaching, that no one
book could contain all details of the various kinds of work entailed on
the German spy system. It is possible only, in a book dealing with the
system, to indicate the main lines on which spies in connection with
military and naval matters work, and to give some concrete examples of
their failures and successes. Naturally, there is far more material
available as regards failures, for the work of the successful spy is of
such a nature that it rarely comes to light; it is more often unheard of
until, as in the case of the gun-platforms constructed in time of peace
about Maubeuge, the work itself is put to use.