In every hotel are to be met spies in the form of guests, waiters,
chambermaids, telephone operators, and bartenders. In the early part of
the war these last proved their worth often, for men otherwise cautious
and reticent became outspoken under the influence of a few Scotches or
cocktails, which are still in vogue in Germany despite their American
origin.
At one of the biggest of the Berlin hotels it is a noticeable fact that
all the floor waiters are young, active, highly intelligent men. When
they are asked why they are not serving at the front all have excuses
on the score of health. The truth is that they are all governmental
agents whose duty it is to familiarize themselves with the details of
every visitor's business. That they do well. Every stranger's papers
are thoroughly investigated, no matter how securely they may be locked
up, before he has been in the city two days, assuming he leaves them in
his room. Two members of the American diplomatic corps who made short
stays in Berlin can tell singular stories on this point.
The chief of the floor waiters at this hotel--and it is illustrative of
all the others--is a polished-mannered young fellow of about thirty-two
who speaks English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Danish with the same
facility that he reads them, and he reads them as well as he does his
native German. I noticed the chief of the telephone operators, who
while discharging the duties of his lowly job wore livery, attending
the races in an English sport-coat, with glasses strung over his
shoulders, and he went to and from the course in a taxicab, the height
of luxury in wartime Berlin. One would hardly credit his income solely
to the measly wages he received from his work at the switch-board. He,
too, as well as his assistants, was an accomplished linguist.
It must not be thought that espionage is confined to the Americans.
On the contrary, even the subjects of Germany's allies receive this
attention. Austrian, Bulgarian, or Turkish, it makes no difference; all
are put under the scrutiny of the secret eyes and ears of the Kaiser.
Almost it is more difficult to obtain a passport permitting one to
travel to Austria than it is to obtain one for a journey to America,
and the examination at the Austrian border is just as severe as at the
frontier between Germany and Denmark.
German spies travel on all the transatlantic liners running from
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Holland to America, and back again. They
find out as much as they can about their fellow-travelers, so that
the secret police may be forewarned as to whom and what they are to
receive. These agents are rarely employed by the German Government for
the secret transmission of mail; that is usually done by men of solid
reputation, American or other neutrals who are persuaded to accept the
task on the ground of a service to the empire. Obviously, they must be
violently pro-German before they are asked to assume the undertaking.
The difficulty of communication is one of the severe hardships that
the German Government and people suffer. Mails to and from the empire
are seized by the Allies, and if delivered at all, are so belated as
to make them valueless. Only such cables as the Allies choose to pass
are permitted transmission. Male Germans are not permitted to travel
on the seas. So German communication is restricted to the wireless, to
supposedly neutral couriers, and to submarines, both of the commercial
type as the _Deutschland_, and of the war type, which have been
secretly conveying important German mail to Spanish waters, where it
is loaded upon friendly neutral vessels, which carry it into Spanish
ports and thence forward it to America and other points. This last
method has been a carefully guarded secret of the German Government.
Mail sent out by Spain is not seized and censored by the Allies....