Such reports as the German agents at fixed posts have to make to their
employers are communicated, whenever possible, by means of the
travelling inspectors, for the postal service is not to be trusted where
espionage is concerned. During the French Revolution there was
originated what was known as the "Cabinet Noir," or secret service of
the post office in France, of which the duties were to intercept, open,
and where desirable destroy or replace, such letters as were deemed
unfit to reach their senders, in the best interests of the State.
Berlin, with its genius for developing other people's inventions,
adopted this idea, and made of it one of the regular weapons of the
secret service. It operates not only internally, but also
internationally, and any suspected letters are freely opened and read;
sometimes they are suppressed altogether from their recipients;
sometimes false letters, giving contrary instructions, are substituted,
and suspected spies of other Powers are caught by this means.
The idea has been generally adopted by most countries; but, in
practically any country but Germany, the idea of personal and national
honour is sufficiently strong to keep absolutely secret the doings
behind official doors. For instance, at the trial of the spy Ernst at
Bow Street, it came as a surprise to many people to learn that the
British postal authorities possessed powers under which they might open
any suspected missives, with a view to ascertaining their contents when
deemed essential for the safety and well-being of the State. It is
common knowledge in Germany that no letter is safe from being opened,
and the powers which the British post offices exercise only in case of
genuine suspicion are utilised in Germany to a far greater extent.
Further, the officials at the Berlin post office "Cabinet Noir" do not
always maintain the absolute secrecy that their work demands, and
sometimes there creep out details of other things as well as espionage.
Apparently, every German official has his price in his own country, and
the habit of spying is so ingrained in the race that commercial secrets
are bought and sold not only in the interests of German firms as a
whole, but in the interests of one rival German firm which desires to
steal a market from another firm of Teutonic name and standing. It
appears that Stieber, by organising his colossal system of espionage,
laid the foundations of national pettiness and deceit--the German
character as a whole has been undermined by the knowledge that nobody is
safe from espionage, and all acts are liable to be reported, while
blackmail is a flourishing industry.
In the event of active service, the German system of communication
between spies and the army in the field is very largely on the lines
laid down by Klembovski, whose "Military Espionage in Peace and War" is
one of the recognised textbooks on espionage. So clearly and well does
Klembovski indicate the methods to be followed, that certain passages of
his work with regard to this matter of communications are worthy of
reproduction as they stand in his original work, in order to assist in a
conception of the means employed.
It is not always possible, he says, for the spies to report personally
to their chief about the results of their investigations; therefore it
is of interest to consider the methods of communication by means of
which they can forward the required information to the stipulated place.
These methods of communication are to be grouped in three divisions,
according to their nature: 1. Optical signals; 2. Agreed
communications by writing; 3. Despatches in cipher.
1. _Optical signals_.--In operations in heavily wooded districts which
obstruct reconnoitring by cavalry, or in the operations of detachments
which consist only of infantry, the assurance of guarding against danger
which is obtained by means of the despatch of patrols in the direction
of the enemy embraces no especially broad stretch in the front of the
troops. In such cases the duty of reconnaissance can be allotted to
spies, who should collect the simplest and fullest possible information
about the enemy. For example: presence or absence of the enemy in
certain directions and at certain distances; the approximate strength of
his troops; whether the enemy is on the march, at rest, or occupying a
position. Such information is especially of importance to such
detachments as possess cavalry, for the commander of the detachment can,
if he has fresh knowledge of the presence and dispositions of the enemy,
execute cavalry reconnaissances far better than he could without the
knowledge to be obtained by spies. He can estimate the number and
strength of the patrols which he intends to send out, and can give them
the correct direction of marching to achieve their purpose, etc.
For communicating such information the simplest signals are desirable.
Signals should be employed which on the one hand will not arouse the
suspicions of the enemy, and on the other hand will not require special
instructions and explanations, and will not occupy too much time either
in preparation or sending.
If the country to the front of the troops offers a wide view, a spy sent
on in advance can make fires, whose number and arrangement has a
previously agreed meaning. Among the enemy's outposts the making of
fires will seldom be practicable, since it would at once arouse
suspicion. In these cases the spy can make use of houses which can be
seen from a distance on all sides, since the appearance and
disappearance of a light in the windows, or the opening and shutting of
the shutters, can have a recognised sense and meaning for the troops
from whom the spy is sent.
Optical communication of news is seldom possible in wooded country, or
at any rate only if the troops advance, and not if they retreat or
remain stationary. In these cases the spy sent in advance can inform
the troops by various agreed signs, such as breaking or tying together
small trees and branches, moving turf, writing agreed-on signs with
chalk on bark of trees, fences, houses, and big stones or rocks.
Smugglers in some Russian districts use little stones, which they put
down by the way on single big stones, heaps of earth, and leaves; as the
number and position of the stones with regard to one another varies, so
the smugglers mutually impart valuable information to each other. This
method should be borne in mind for adoption by an army in the field.
2. _Agreed communications by writing_.--In many cases secret
communication by writing can be carried on in the guise of quite
ordinary correspondence, in which the speech is of trade and family
matters, etc, so that a stranger, who was not initiated into the secret
meanings of the special words, would attribute no special meaning to
them. Such letters would be addressed to persons who are prominent
through their business in official positions--lesser state officials and
merchants, for instance.
In July 1887, at the Imperial Court of Justice at Leipzig, the trial
took place of the Alsatians--Klein and Greber for espionage. In the
indictment of the public prosecutor it was said, among other things,
that the defendant Klein had never been directly in correspondence with
the Bureau at whose head was Colonel Vincent, but he knew that his
despatches had been communicated to the War Office from which Colonel
Vincent took his orders. In order to arouse no suspicion, the
correspondence was given the appearance of letters which passed between
relatives; herein lay the reason for the constant repetition of
Christian names, and the good wishes for Uncle, Aunt, and other persons
who certainly did not exist, or under whose names personalities would be
understood that were very well-known to the French secret service.
Usually the sender of such correspondence agrees with the recipient as
to the way in which the communications shall be read. For example, in
1650 Prince Conde, who lay in prison on account of participation in the
plot against the Guises and Catherine de Medici, received a letter
which, perused in the ordinary way, could arouse no suspicion. But, in
reading it, Conde missed out every other line, obtaining by this means a
perfect meaning to fit the situation in which he was placed.
There is also a mechanical method of conducting a secret correspondence,
for the deciphering of which both sender and recipient must have
"castings," or small metal plates exactly similar, which are divided by
lines into squares. Some of the squares are cut out, the two plates
being kept exactly similar and then the sender lays the square plate on
the paper and writes his message in his usual writing on the cut-out
squares; then he takes the plate from the paper and fills in the empty
squares with casually chosen words, taking care, however, that some
meaning is made from the double writing, so as to replace the real
meaning when the plate is applied. On receipt of the letter the
addressee lays his square on it, and comfortably reads everything that
interests him, since the superfluous words which the sender wrote later
are covered by the squares in the plate which have been left by the
cutting-out.
All complex codes and similar means of communication occupy much time,
so they are not for spies to use in time of war, though one can employ
them in peace time. Certain solutions can be employed as inks, so that,
when dry, they leave no trace on the paper; then one has only to warm
the paper over a lamp, and the writing stands out clearly. This method,
however, has been very largely used, and a blank sheet of paper is
always an object of suspicion. And, in view of the meaning which an
apparently simple letter may bear to eyes that can decipher the hidden
meaning, it should be a rule in war to destroy all captured
correspondence of the enemy. This rule should also be observed on the
arrest of any suspected person.
3. _Cipher correspondence_.--There are a great number of systems of
cipher-writing; one of the simplest is described in the following letter
of Marshal Soult to General Neil, dated September 26, 1806, in which
Soult writes: "His Majesty advises me to agree upon a cipher with you,
which you will have to use in future in your correspondence with the
Chief of Staff of the Army. In the execution of this you can, in my
opinion, best make use of a pamphlet (of which the title is given in the
letter). The first figure will give the number of the page; the second
figure the line, reckoned from above, not counting the heading. The
third number will serve as indication of the required word or letter,
and give its position in the line indicated by the second figure: if the
figure means a whole word, you will underline it; if it only means a
letter, you will not do so. Commas must be put between the indicating
figures."
The disadvantages of this system consisted in the slowness of
construction and deciphering of the message, since it would almost
always be necessary to indicate not whole words, but each letter
separately, for which three figures are necessary each time. To avoid
the latter disadvantage a dictionary can be employed for the execution
of the cipher, whereby in most cases one could succeed in giving the
whole word with two figures.
A certain officer proposed to set up for this purpose a special military
dictionary, similar to the marine signal-books existing in all
countries. In this dictionary one could enter in alphabetical order all
figures, letters, constantly occurring syllables, and complete military
expressions. The officer in question was of the opinion that 3,000
ciphers would be quite enough to form a complete code. Thus all
figures, letters, words, etc, would be numbered in the book in
succession from beginning to end. In the preparation of reports one
could then indicate by one cipher a figure, a letter, a syllable, and
sometimes a whole word or even a whole phrase.
The disadvantage of such a system consists in that its foundation is
always the same, and that the printed dictionary could easily be
secretly obtained from all neighbouring States. In order to obviate
this, a few alterations were subsequently proposed. One alteration was
to the effect that one could take a given number to serve as a key; in
preparing reports the key-number would always be added to the number
under which is designated the required word in the dictionary. It may
be assumed that the word "regiment" is required to be coded, and this
word is number 500 in the dictionary; the key-number is 25; so in the
report the word is indicated by 525. It is of course obvious that one
could subtract, instead of adding, the key-number.
Another alternative consists in having two different key-numbers. In
the report the words are indicated by figures always changing, first in
the case of the one, and then of the other key-number. In this way one
and the same word, indicated twice in the report, may each time be
indicated differently. For instance, the word "division" is number 765
in the word-book; the key-numbers are 5,000 and 6,125. The first time
the word "division" is indicated by the number 4,235 (that is, 5,000--
765) and the second time by 5,360 (that is, 6,125--765).
The main disadvantage of all these various means of communication lies
in that a book is essential, from which the deciphering will have to be
done. The book in question is easily lost, or is not at hand at the
required moment, and then the cipher is not only useless, but the work
caused in obtaining the message is wasted.
An instance of this occurred in 1870, when one of the German generals
received a message which he could not decipher at once, since the
dictionary which the headquarter staff had arranged with him as a
code-book was in a wagon which had been left behind. The same
misfortune befell the commander of a French territorial division at
Chalons-sur-Marne, who could not decipher a telegram, since by an
oversight he had sent his cipher with the archives to Chateau Thierry.
For the ciphering of messages by spies the above systems are also
disadvantageous because most spies can carry no books with them on their
missions.
Thus writes Klembovski, who made a study of espionage on active service,
but was unable to arrive at any method of transmitting messages which
should be free of marked disadvantages. As to his contentions regarding
the use of ciphers, it has been stated--though on what authority is hard
to ascertain--that the German secret service will decipher any message
in any language in a given space of time, no matter what code may be
used. In one of Edgar Allan Poe's stories there is a means shown of
deciphering practically any code in which the characters are constant--
that is, in which the same sign represents the same letter each time it
is used--and it is quite probable that one used to the deciphering of
code-messages could work out any code. For a code must be built up on
some system, and therefore some reversal of the system must exist by
means of which the message can be deciphered without the aid of a key.
Berlin recognises the uses of pseudo-clergy in time of war, for quite a
number of German village clergy are impecunious and of a distinctly low
class, and thus the army is not averse to their imposture. Men of this
kind are selected for service in the field, where it is anticipated they
can make themselves useful, under the pretext of ministering to the
wounded, by extracting information about the movements of troops, etc.
It is arranged that, in the event of a retreat, the clerical spy shall
convey to the pursuing force detailed information regarding the losses
in men and guns of those retreating, the numbers of men still unwounded,
and the _moral_ of the troops, by means of signals as detailed above--
broken branches of trees, specially placed stones, and other things.
One favourite system of espionage on active service, from the German
point of view, consists in the use of the Red Cross van. Under the
rules governing international war, the Red Cross van may go anywhere,
even into the enemy's lines, to pick up wounded, and the German forces,
"making war by all the violent means at their command," have not
scrupled to make use of Red Cross vans both for espionage work and as
shelter for machine-guns--authentic cases are reported in which
treacherous fire has been opened on the troops of the Allies in this
way. Another method of obtaining information consists in sending two
scouts out with a coil of wire, when in the presence of the enemy. The
scouts, bearing one end of the wire, are instructed to approach the
enemy's lines, at night, and of course, when they have approached within
sight, they are shot. The wire no longer "pays out" from the end kept
in the lines, and the length unrolled, when hauled back and measured,
gives the artillery-range almost to a nicety.
Communications in times of peace are never made direct to headquarters.
The fixed spies, as already remarked, employ such agents as they may
choose and their rate of pay allows. Their reports are collected by the
travelling spies, who are under the control of agents of sections,
stationed in Belgium and Switzerland (up to the outbreak of war) but not
in Germany. From the agents of sections reports go to the Central
Bureau of the secret service at Berlin, where sorting and classification
of news supplied is pursued, and all that part of the world which could
possibly be inimical to Germany is card-indexed. It is a sordid, sorry,
mean business, utterly devoid of the romance and glamour with which the
spy of fiction has invested it, and, whatever the fate of German armies
in the field may be, the secret service of Germany has done more than
anything else to pervert the moral sense of the nation.