five-cent Bocks from his pocket, “and they do not cost so much.”
Mata Hari’s disapproval was unconcealed. She was heard to remark to her
other neighbour at the table:
“That crack smells of herring. The stingy old devil! I could never enter
into relations with a creature like that.”
The man was the gainer, however, for the abrupt rupture of their
friendship spared him from suspicion of complicity in her intrigues
which fell upon all her acquaintances of this time. The incident is
characteristic of the luxury-saturated existence she loved and further
supports her frequent assertions that she hated mean people and stingy
actions. This was her excuse for the profligacy she habitually practised
and for the showers of gold (provided by her generous male companions)
which flowed from her. A freedom of giving, however ill-calculated it
might be, passed with her for generosity and earned for her the
affection of domestics, who benefited from her liberal bounty, and
fulsome flattery from among her numerous worshippers.
At last the weary business of selling her property was satisfactorily
completed and there was no further reason why she should not return to
Holland, but she found a reason to prolong her stay that increased the
alarm of the Second Bureau, which would gladly have seen her depart.
Mata Hari announced that she had enrolled in the Red Cross and was
instructed to report for duty at the hospital in Vittel, a town in the
zone of the Chemin des Dames. There were excellent reasons why a
suspected person should not be permitted to go there and the Second
Bureau were resolved to do their utmost to prevent the journey. A glance
at the military situation will explain this.
After the offensive in Artois in May and June of 1915 in which the
advance had been faster than was planned, it was decided to profit by
the lessons learned and to plan an extensive allied offensive in
Champagne with a simultaneous attack in Artois. In order that the
preparation for this great offensive might be masked French activity was
transferred during the summer to the Vosges and the Argonne with the
hope that the enemy might not learn where the actual attack was to be
delivered.
It was considered that the French defensive system had been so perfected
that the garrisons of quieter sectors could be reduced to a minimum,
with a corresponding increase in the available reserves. New divisions
had been formed and the troops intended for the attack were given
methodical training. The situation looked favourable for the attainment
of great objectives, which were to relieve the pressure on the eastern
front and to effect a complete rupture of the German line so as to
outflank it on the left, to the north of Rheims. The more optimistic
officers of Joffre’s staff believed that the powerful reinforcements and
the increase in heavy artillery would furnish the French with the means
of disengaging the entire western front, an object that was not
unattainable at that stage of the war. With such optimism prevailing at
army headquarters it was not surprising that the darkening of the
national spirit should be lightened by a gleam of hope which peered
wanly through the surrounding gloom. The attack was to be launched
toward the end of September.
One of the three zones for the attack was in front of Vittel, so that
all the bustling activity of preparation must go surging eastward
through the small town which was the location of several stationary
units such as hospitals and air squadrons. The little town would be
bursting with the portents of an offensive. There is no element in
military strategy so conducive to success as surprise. The Lord may be
on the side of the big battalions, but if the weaker opponent is warned
of his enemy’s intentions the advantages of numbers are offset by the
state of preparedness he will encounter.
Before air-photography of positions had become a science with recognized
symbols for the concentration of troops and material, a military
commander had to depend upon one small gift—the secret of entry into
another man’s mind to discover what was passing there. The greatest
general the world has ever known owed his success to this power of
guessing correctly what the enemy was going to do. Many can guess, but
few guess right, and in a military sense it has been observed that the
best guessers, including Napoleon, were those who had the best
Intelligence service to furnish them with the inspiration for their
guess. In the case of Mata Hari’s visit to Vittel, the men of the Second
Bureau were convinced that she was seeking information concerning the
approaching offensive, because, since Joffre had contrived to keep much
of his preparation from the Parisian gossip, there was no alternative
but to investigate it on the spot. Yet the utmost vigilance failed to
reveal any act which could support their conviction. Further, general
opinion was all against them.
Mata Hari made no secret of her intention to visit Vittel. She had met
an old acquaintance in Paris, a Russian nobleman who is today a
well-known resident in the city, and he had informed her that a mutual
friend had received wounds which had resulted in the loss of his sight.
This unfortunate victim of war was a Captain Marov, an officer of the
Russian contingent serving on the western front; he was at the time a
patient in hospital at Vittel. Without any hesitation Mata Hari
announced her intention of going to the stricken man’s side to console
and comfort him with her ministrations.
Had she quietly made use of the influence of her Ministerial friends to
slip unostentatiously away from Paris, it is possible that she could
have eluded the vigilance of the Second Bureau for some time, but,
woman-like, she had to make a ceremony of her renunciation of the
flesh-pots of the modern Babylon and celebrate it in a series of merry
farewell parties. In spite of all their researches the counter-espionage
agents were compelled to admit that her story of acquaintance with
Captain Marov was correct and that it had been of such an intimate
character that her desire to devote herself to the consolation of the
unfortunate officer was plausible. The only flaw in the story was her
statement that she was proceeding as an official nurse, for enquiry
revealed that the Red Cross had not even been approached with the offer
of her services.
Nevertheless, the hazard of having an agent of the enemy in the forward
area during preparations for an offensive was prodigious, and the Second
Bureau felt justified in trying to prevent the journey.
Authorization for a visit to the district of Vittel could only be
obtained from the offices of the Interior and Foreign Affairs. But how
could the counter-espionage agents tell the two men who were prepared to
facilitate Mata Hari’s journey that their friend was a dangerous spy,
when there was no shred of evidence to support the contention? M. Malvy
and the head of the Foreign Office might be willing to concede that she
was quite capable of committing any folly in broad daylight, but they
would reject the suggestion that she was capable of even a petty
villainy in the shadow. But, argued the Second Bureau officials, our own
nationals who reside in the army zone are denied the privilege of
leaving their homes without written consent from the local police, who
are qualified from knowledge of their affairs to judge whether the
journey is justifiable. No visitor is admitted to these closed areas
without an official pass, which is issued only after the most careful
investigation. Why, then, award to neutrals, even friendly neutrals, a
privilege which is denied citizens whose patriotism is above all
suspicion? In substance Mata Hari’s Ministerial friends replied:
“The restriction of personal liberty within the army zone is a measure
which we can enforce upon our own nationals because of their common
interest in the safety of their country, but, from the point of view of
general policy, we do not feel justified in recommending a similar
course against neutrals whose friendship we desire to promote and thus
establish good relations abroad. Further, a general rule closing the
forward areas to neutrals would inflict great hardships in individual
cases, and that we desire to avoid. Such a ruling, for example, would
prevent the charming and spiritual Mata Hari, the prominent young Dutch
_artiste_, from undertaking the highly meritorious mission she proposes
to perform for the benefit of one of our wounded heroes.”
Thus, if Mata Hari’s Ministerial friends committed no overt act of
treachery, it is obvious that their generosity could be applied to
dangerous abuse by an unscrupulous woman.
Confronted by such a policy, there appeared little that the officers of
the Second Bureau could do but sit on the quays and spit
misanthropically into the Seine while waiting for the worst to happen.
They could not deny that the supposed spy was making considerable
self-sacrifice (a virtue of which she had never been accused) in
forfeiting her elegant surroundings in order to live under _macabre_
conditions that were a fit scene for a Dantean inferno. Besides, there
was her love, and while philosophy can explain many things, there are
some beyond her pitch, one of which is a woman’s love and the way of it.
Mata Hari had innumerable casual love-affairs, but did she ever achieve
the ideal bond, that human weakness that ennobles its victims? Her
friends contend that she did and point triumphantly to this incident at
Vittel as convincing proof. Mata Hari later told her judges:
“While staying at Vittel I devoted myself to a poor Russian officer who
had lost his sight. It was my intention to abandon my life of debauchery
and to consecrate myself to the care of this unhappy man whom I loved
sincerely. He was the only man whom I ever sincerely loved.”
Her friends point to the sacrifice she was making, a sacrifice which
inspired an extraordinary sympathy among those who had imagined that her
selfish soul was swallowed up in frivolity and debauchery. Her life had
given no suggestion that she was capable of such devotion. Hers was not
the beauty that bloomed for one man, but for the multitude; she fed not
on the love of an individual, but on the adulation of many until Marov
reappeared in her life. The Second Bureau officers were the only people
who placed an uncharitable interpretation upon her action. They said
that the woman who wishes to be all things to all men cannot be
everything to one.
As for Captain Marov’s views on the matter, we have been told by those
who pretend to know his thoughts that he is a brother in a Spanish
monastery where he remembers in his daily office to pray for the soul of
Mata Hari and gives thanks for the sacrificial love of the wronged woman
who gave up her gay and voluptuous life in Paris to brighten his dark
days. To Marov she was a fellow creature touched with divinity through
the possession of angelic qualities. A man who has suffered as he has
done is entitled to cherish all his visions of former happiness; only
the churlish would dispute his right to that solace for the
enlightenment of a life that must be spent in physical darkness. There
has been no suggestion that this innocent victim of the war was aware of
his companion’s employment.
There is no more gratifying sight to the moralist than a penitent
renouncing wrong. Let us make the best of it. Mata Hari had been the
recipient of every luxury her wealthy lovers could devise in emulation
as the price of her favours. Marov was not a wealthy man and, therefore,
could offer no inducement which appealed to her luxurious senses; he
could not even maintain his lover in average comfort had it been
available in Vittel. His impoverishment is advanced in palliation of
Mata Hari’s subsequent conduct when she found it necessary to provide
herself with funds in order to maintain herself and furnish delicacies
to the patient who looked to her for comfort.
Her method was characteristic. Marov’s situation was such that she could
not spend her entire day at his side, and the resources of bomb-riven
Vittel were poor in the extreme for a woman of her tastes. No one who
has not endured it can picture the drab misery, the pitiless discomfort,
the utter stagnation of life in those overcrowded villages just behind
the lines. Social intercourse, already hampered by regulations, was
swamped beneath military requirements. For entertainment during her
leisure, then, Mata Hari turned to the officers who were stationed in
the neighbourhood and to those, still more numerous, who were passing
through the town. The military activity was such that the French army
appeared to have begun an involved game of general post, so that there
were new faces in the town each day. For all and sundry, Mata Hari had a
ready welcome that was characterized by an entire absence of modest
reticences; she accepted as lovers any officers whom her fickle fancy
chanced to alight on. In extenuation of this prostitution it is urged
that she was forced to sell her body in order to procure funds to
supplement Captain Marov’s meagre hospital fare.
The stage was admirably set for an orgy of riotous licentiousness.
Incoming troops, aware of the significance of their movement, recognized
that tomorrow would find them in the line, exposed to the abomination of
trench life in winter, while here a charming hostess was spreading out
for their delight such pleasures as might be their last earthly revel.
The lust of these men who were turning their backs on all that was
natural, refreshing, and pleasant in their lives to face unmitigated
misery, was only equalled by the trench-weary veterans whom they
relieved. These men grasped greedily at the first opportunity to savour
joys after weeks of deprivation in the front lines.
Most favoured of all her companions were the airmen from neighbouring
squadrons, those young heroes who sported with death in many forms and
who enjoyed a species of dark exaltation in the mortuary horror of their
tasks; these were singled out for special favour, and as a class airmen
have never been distinguished for restraint. Many of the young pilots
were permitted to share her intimacy and cheer her loneliness with their
stories, for which she rewarded them with wine-scented kisses and the
bliss of intoxication.
The ever-watchful agents of the counter-espionage service missed none of
this. Her voluminous correspondence was carefully examined without
revealing anything but the most innocent communications between friends
who tried to beguile her self-imposed exile. The monotonous regularity
of her life was only interrupted by an occasional visit to Paris in the
interest of her patient. So unprofitable were the watches of these
patient officers that they were forced to wonder whether they were not
labouring under a misapprehension in endeavouring to convict this woman
of intelligence with the enemy. Spying in the forward area was an
entirely different matter to doing the same kind of work under
concealment of life in a crowded city where the indifferent civilians
had not the same motives of self-preservation in watching for and
suspecting any possible betrayers.
So passed the months of July and August to an increasing crescendo of
bustle and excitement as the troops prepared for the approach of zero
day for the great offensive. All might go well if only the increased
activity in the Vosges and the Argonne had succeeded in concealing from
the enemy the time and the locale of the real assault. It was the duty
of the counter-espionage agents to ensure that no tidings of the
forthcoming attack were communicated to the expectant enemy and they
relaxed nothing of their effort. Finally all was ready.
Shortly after mid-day on September 25th the infantry attack in Artois
was launched. The surprise was as complete as could be expected after
such elaborate preparation. The German barrage was laid down too late
and the subsequent confusion prevented the artillery from supporting the
infantry. The German reserves for the defence of Vimy Ridge were not
available. Nothing but the mud held back the impetuous French. For three
days the surprised German command experienced acute anxiety.
Further south the attack experienced greater difficulty. The resistance
was greater than had been anticipated because, when the attack was
planned the defensive force consisted of 90 battalions; when it was
launched this force has been increased to 192 battalions. But the heavy
artillery preparation ensured a certain amount of success in several
localities. Ground was gained in the advanced positions but the results
were far from the high hopes raised by the optimistic staff who had
forged this powerful weapon which was to open the way to the enemy’s
rear positions.
In several places the German front line still held its ground in spite
of the overwhelming force directed against it and a week later the
entire second position remained intact. When a general order closed the
operations the French had lost 80,000 killed and 100,000 wounded.
Heavy as were these losses and inconsiderable the gain nothing but the
paralysis of the German high command was responsible for omitting to
furnish the means of making the former heavier and the latter less. As
early as August 15th the place and time of attack was known to the lower
commands, as was shown by an order of General von Ditfurth. The means
taken to encounter it have been described by one German authority,
General Feyler, as a “hotch potch” in which units were split up and sent
to different localities, thus losing their _esprit de corps_.
The main objects were far from being accomplished. The eastern front had
not been relieved of pressure and Vouziers, the local objective, was
still far distant. To admit that the army had been betrayed was too
damaging a confession to make after raising such high hopes. But that it
had been betrayed was now a known fact. Yet the betrayer was inviolate.
_Chapter Nine_
We have already said that a spy’s main difficulty is not in obtaining
information, but in transmitting it safely to the desired point. There
is nothing which so completely tries the resourcefulness of the secret
agent as the methods he employs in the conveyance of material to his
superiors, and without some knowledge of the extraordinary artifices
employed by the spies one cannot appreciate the bewildering difficulties
that confronted the Second Bureau in their endeavours to intercept
incriminating correspondence.
If Mata Hari was engaged in spying, she had the choice of many cunning
subterfuges, but a woman living in the full blaze of publicity that
attends a vaudeville _artiste_ who courts notoriety, knowing she was
under suspicion of the English, but ignorant of the extent of their
knowledge, could not hope to keep secret a treasonable correspondence
without precautions of an extraordinary nature. The ordinary channels of
communication adopted by secret agents were too dangerous to be employed
in her case, because the German authorities knew from their own
experience that the best of codes can be deciphered by specialists,
while chains of agents through whom the information is passed are
terribly dangerous, since each link in the chain progressively increases
the danger of the betrayal, as was proved in the German _coup_ preceding
the Verdun offensive to be mentioned later. Therefore some more than
usually safe method had to be devised for communication with Amsterdam
and Antwerp.
It was obviously impossible to rely upon the time-honoured methods which
were familiar to all secret services alike. Simple invisible inks made
from onion or lemon juices were often employed to introduce information
into an innocent-looking missive, a simple device which would have
spared Nathan Hale’s life had he known of it. One only had to heat the
paper to make the writing visible. This old method was very early
abandoned in favour of more scientific devices that defied the
recognized methods of detection. Since it was necessary to avoid
creating any suspicion of the materials used, it became necessary to
import them from the agent’s headquarters and it was this form of
smuggling which most often revealed a new chemical agent employed for
the purpose. Soaps and toilet waters containing ferrate of potassium and
lead acetate for the manufacture of invisible inks became part of a
spy’s equipment, while handy methods, such as the dipping of a pocket
handkerchief saturated with this chemical in a glass of water provided
the agent with a means of producing the ink at will.
The writer well recalls the perplexity of a group of counter-espionage
agents over a trunk containing nothing but soiled underclothes which had
been sent from Amsterdam to a man who had not been in that city for many
months. It was the mere fact that all the clothes were soiled that
caused the examiners to subject them to a careful scrutiny. Only when a
chemical test was applied to every article was it found that one pair of
socks was heavily saturated with the material for making enough
invisible ink to have supplied a battalion of spies. The remainder of
the clothes were unexceptional.
The most amazing craftsman in the use of invisible inks was an Argentine
called Dei Pasi, who reported to Gruber in Geneva. Dei Pasi was the
typical swarthy spy of the stage romances, with a natural catlike tread
and that quick sidelong glance of a man who is instinctively on his
guard against the weight of a hand clapped suddenly on his shoulder. His
equipment of invisible inks was amazing in its variety and completeness,
and yet he was detected only when he sent information concerning the
cruiser _Kleber_ through the ordinary mail to Switzerland, written in
ordinary ink, and in plain ordinary writing instead of cipher. It is
believed that it was this romantic son of the warm south who tried,
unsuccessfully, to send a message through a channel which almost
deserved a better fate for its originality. He sent the designs of an
artillery improvement drawn in the delicate folds of a ballet-dancer’s
skirt, but, alas! misfortune too often wears a skirt; it was discovered.
Another favourite means of communicating with superiors in a distant
country was by means of small advertisements in the newspapers, but this
practice became too dangerous in France, where all such notices had to
be submitted to the police before publication, while in England the
newspaper staffs developed an extraordinary scent for the suspicious
advertisement and voluntarily co-operated with the police in preventing
their publication. One spy made use of the “For Sale” column to insert
cleverly concealed information relating to the movements of British
naval vessels. But if this method had the advantage that when a director
of espionage wished to secure secret information all he had to do was to
read the enemy newspapers, it had the drawback that intentionally
inaccurate information sometimes continued to appear in the usual way
long after a spy had withdrawn from the world at large to become the
inmate of a prison. The Scotland Yard officials have only recently
discarded a motor-car which was purchased from funds received for
information supplied in this way. The police had seized the spy Müller
and were fortunate enough to have acquired his code book and
instructions at the same time. Armed with these documents, the English
Intelligence Department continued to furnish the German officials
carefully “doctored” information, which so pleased the latter that they
increased their spy’s salary. It should be explained on behalf of the
London police that they showed their gratitude for this unexpected
windfall by purchasing a car and calling it “Müller,” after its
unintentional donor.