SPY-HUNTING
Man is by instinct and tradition a hunter, and there is no sport so
thrilling as man-hunting, especially if the hunted be a menace to
society, and more especially if he be a spy that threatens the safety
of yourself and comrades. There is also in this branch of intelligence
service an appeal to the clash of wits that holds fascination for the
keen mind. The German spy system is not more clever than our own, but
has been more carefully organized and much longer in operation. He
spies also on friend and neutral, while we only use this back-door
method of gleaning information from an enemy. The word, too, has
associations that are ugly, and I fancy that our spies do not boast of
their service, but spy-hunting is a service that has no taint, and
there is much satisfaction both to the conscience and intellect in
routing out the underground worker who, for "filthy lucre," would sell
the blood of his fellow man. The traitor and the spy have in all ages
been rightly considered as foul beings who poison the air and whose
touch contaminates. In Germany alone is the spy given honor which is
fitting in a country which has substituted _Expediency_ for _Honor_ and
_Plausibility_ for _Truth_, on whose throne is a maniac, and where
_Conscience_ has been unseated by _Pride_, and _Reason_ displaced by
_Method_.
Germany's espionage of her neighbors has been in existence so long, and
so much time and money have been expended on it that we must prepare
for its reassertion after the war even in countries where it has been
for a time suppressed. Its hands have been cut off, but the plotting
brain and the murderous heart of the system still persist and will be
used after the war to rehabilitate the trade of Germany under many
disguises, and will also seek, through appeal to our pity for a fallen
nation, to lull us into slumber, until the claws and fangs of
militarism have grown again.
We are so new in the game that our methods in spy-hunting are clumsy,
and we frequently give warning to the brains of the system to seek
cover when we strike at its puppets. By arresting the agents of the
German master spy we cut off his activity for a time but allow him to
spread his ramifications in other directions, and the first knowledge
we have that he has sprung to life again is by the destruction of
property and loss of life that ensue. It would sometimes pay us to
give these agents more and more rope, keeping them under observation
until we can strike at the centre and heart of all this plotting. When
we have enough evidence against one of these agents for a death penalty
we should allow him to purchase his life by betraying his master, and
as these agents only serve for hire and know not what loyalty is, they
are always ready to turn king's evidence if the price offered be high
enough. Of course, they should not be given their liberty again, but
segregated like the carrier of a contagious disease.
It should always be remembered that a man who in war-time talks
sedition and disloyalty in public is not a spy. He is too big a fool
to be ever employed in a service that requires, above all things,
secrecy and the ability to avert suspicion. The first thing a spy
seeks to do is to find a suitable cloak to cover his designs, and also
to place himself in a position where he will gain information. Among
the first things he would do would be to seek to join the Red Cross,
and he would be almost certain to enlist. In these days the man to be
suspicious of is the one who is always protesting his loyalty and
showing what _he_ is doing "to help the cause." The true patriot knows
that he has no need to proclaim his loyalty, and is shy of boasting of
service that is really a "privilege and a duty."
Among the most useful equipments for a secret-service agent is
lip-reading, and if he can signal with his eyelids in Morse so much the
better. Dark goggles, one glass of which is a small mirror, are also
very useful, as one can sit with one's back to a party in a cafe or
train, and read what they are saying. Women are the most dangerous
spies, and trade on the instinctive chivalry that men cannot help but
extend to them. There are many officers whose deaths at the front have
been suicides because they were betrayed by some woman who had sucked
valuable information from them, and their chivalry would not let them
deliver her over to justice. Men in high place in England and in
France have betrayed the public trust through faith in a woman who was
false and who sold their confidence to the enemy for a price that was
so strong to their hearts as to be irresistible, more than love, honor,
or country.
Even in the army there are mysterious happenings--shots from behind and
strange disappearances. There was one Australian general whose death
created many rumors, and other officers who were supposed to have been
shot from within our lines.
Of course, in the war zone among a strange peasantry there are many spy
scares, and maybe some of the things we were suspicious of were quite
innocent; but it was strange that whenever a gray horse appeared near a
battery that battery was shelled, and when they painted all the gray
horses green their positions were not so frequently spotted. Sometimes
the old Flemish farmers would certainly plough their fields in a
strange fashion but, perhaps, zigzags and swastikas are common patterns
in French fields. It may have been our alarmed ears that fancied the
paper boy played a different tune on his horn every day, but pigeons
did certainly rise from the middle of paddocks contrary to the habits
of these birds.
One of the hardest things I ever did was to arrest a young Belgian girl
nineteen years of age who undoubtedly was the means of the death of
thousands of our boys. It was in this wise. One night I observed a
light a good way behind our trenches go out then come again. I watched
it very carefully, and found it was signalling by the Morse code with
dashes ten seconds long and the dots five. If you were not watching it
very carefully you would never have dreamt it was anything but a
flicker of light. The letters I read were--NRUDTVEAUAOILN, which, when
decoded, gave important information regarding the movement of troops.
I took a line through some trees of the direction from which the light
came and walked toward it. Just off an old drain I found an overturned
wagon with a loophole cut through the backboard. There were footprints
in the drain, and the grass was pressed down where a body had been
lying. For five nights I lay in wait, my hopes keyed up to the highest
point of expectation. At last to me was to fall the good fortune of
capturing a spy--perhaps to end the leakage of information of our plans
that we knew the Germans were getting. But on these five nights
nothing happened. The day afterward, some boys of a battery whom I
asked to watch this drain caught an old farmer in it. This farmer,
however, who lived next door to our brigade headquarters had been
carefully watched, and the information had come from outside the zone
which he never left. Some one must have brought the information to
him. Everybody using those roads had to have a passport issued by the
French intelligence service, and countersigned by the intelligence
officer of the area. Elimination narrowed suspicion to a paper girl
who, it was found, sold out her papers round the batteries and billets
at ten o'clock, and did not return until after three. The excuse she
gave was that she was visiting her brother's grave, but on looking up
her records we found that she had never had a brother. One day I kept
her in sight on the road while I rode across the fields. After she
entered the house where she was living at Estaires I followed and
opened the door. As soon as she saw me she fainted. I blew my
whistle, and on arrival of the picket we searched the house and found
the German code with some maps and other incriminating documents. I
never did a harder task in my life than hand that girl over to the
French authorities for possible execution. She was a very pretty,
happy little girl, red-haired and blue-eyed, and, although one could
show no pity because the safety and life of thousands were at stake,
yet it wrung the heart to think of the wastage of the young, bright
life, the victim of German gold, and the treachery that is the
handmaiden of war, and preys on the weakness of the moral nature.
There was another occasion when I unearthed a spy's burrow. One night
a man in D Company stopped me on the road, and pointing out a lonely
farmhouse, told me he had seen some blue sparks flashing from the
chimney. We walked across and, entering the flagged kitchen, asked for
"cafe au lait." Sitting at the white table worn with much scrubbing,
and slowly sipping the coffee, we engaged the old man and woman in
conversation. They were very bitter in their denunciation of "les
boches," and spoke of their sacrifices as nothing. "Why, monsieur, it
is for France! It is not for us to complain if she ask much from us."
My companion spoke French very fluently (his name was Davies), and he
acted as interpreter. I noticed that they seemed anxious to get rid of
us, but we stayed for several hours getting the old lady to cook us
eggs and chipped potatoes, and talking on almost every topic but the
war. One suspicious circumstance that had caught my eye as soon as we
entered the kitchen was the fact that the flue of the stove did not
lead up the chimney, but out through a hole in the wall.
At last, when we rose to go the old man in an excess of hospitality
accompanied us fifty yards on our way. We promised to bring some
companions on another day. "But no, monsieur, that will not do--we
cannot get more eggs, and my wife she is a little afraid of the soldat
from Australie."
After he left us and returned to the farm we doubled back, and round to
the other side. Soon we heard the crackle of wireless. Expecting that
the door would be fast bolted, we smashed-in a window, almost knocking
over the old woman as she barred our way. Looking up the chimney, I
found there as neat a small set of wireless as was ever "made in
Germany." The motor was in the cellar and well-muffled. The old chap
hesitated to come down, but a shot that brought down some plaster
hurried his decision. In spite of the old woman's pretended fear of
Australians, she evidently did not think we were adamant to pity. On
her knees with much weeping she begged us to let them go away, and
shifted rapidly from one ground of appeal to another. She said her
husband was crazy and his wires and things did no harm; he was trying
to talk to "le Président," but no answer ever came. She would have him
locked up. "You would not harm an old mother of France!" I told her
she wasn't French, but German, of which I had had suspicions all along.
She then spat at us and told us to do our worst, but the old man merely
stood there and scowled, and as he stood upright, with folded arms, we
judged he was not as old by twenty years as he appeared, though his
make-up was perfect. We marched them through the village under the
curious eyes of many of our own comrades, but the eager gesticulations
of the French people, and the fierce blaze of rage in the eyes of the
women showed us that they had no friends among the neighbors, and
revealed to us the smouldering fires of hate that the French people
have for the brutal invader. I fancy the dastardly pair were glad of
our protection for all their looks of defiance. They knew that a spy
would meet short shrift at the hands of these French women whose
untamed spirit was the same as that of the Margots of the Parisian
gutters in the Reign of Terror.