The German and Austrian agents at Monte Carlo, Nice, and elsewhere
along the French Riviera hid their plans so carefully that the
observation of direct spying was rare. Yet on other occasions than the
one related above, as testified by M. Georges Prade, they were caught
in the very act. The following striking instance came to the notice of
this well-known sportsman in April, 1914, a few months before the war,
when he was organizing the motor-boat races at Monaco.
An extremely powerful motor-glider, with an engine of four hundred
horse-power, attained the enormous speed of sixty-two miles an hour
in that year. Boat and motor were built by M. Despujols, a Paris
manufacturer, and the glider was entered in the programme of events
as piloted by a Spaniard named Soriano. On the last day of the races
everybody heard with surprise that the boat would not take part in the
trials, as the motor had already been taken to pieces and sent away. A
little later it transpired that a buyer, name unknown, had paid no less
than two thousand four hundred pounds for this specialized motor, and,
though it was utilizable only for racing, had withdrawn it from the
contest. The mystery deepened when it was further learnt that the motor
had been sent first to Lyons, and thence to the well-known electrical
and dirigible manufacturing firm of Siemens-Schuckert, at Biesdorf,
near Berlin.
The whole truth came out in the course of an official inquiry conducted
by M. Prade, to whom M. Despujols confided the details of the strange
affair. The purchaser was an individual named Schmidt, who pretended
he was a Russian, but who always steered German motor-boats and raced
under the German flag. He was to have competed against M. Despujols'
boat, but preferred to kill two birds with one stone and buy him out.
Working in league with an engineer of the famous firm of Bosch, the
magneto manufacturers, who represented the German house of Siemens, and
with a workman who, although he was known to be earning only two pounds
a week, was discovered to have distributed bank-notes very lavishly
in return for information, Schmidt learnt that the motor in question
was just what he was looking for. Sent to Berlin at the end of April,
1914, it was destined to form part of a curious motor-boat torpedo,
filled with explosives, running automatically, and controlled from a
distance by Hertzian waves. The value of such an engine as this in a
naval engagement, had it been brought to perfection in all its parts,
is self-evident.
Industrial espionage, of which this motor story is a typical example,
was practised on a very large scale at Nice. The capital of the
Riviera, where the Italian population is very numerous, was regarded
by the Germans as one of the best centres for their operations when
Italy came into the war on the side of the Entente Powers. Hence the
completeness of their spy organization. Their principal meeting-place
was at the bookshop of Hohberg, a vender of German "Kultur" in the
Rue Maccarani. Hohberg was the publisher of a paper called _Deutsche
in Nizza_, which had a circulation of twelve thousand copies weekly
and contained articles with such titles as "In the Interests of
Germanism." It heartily recommended its readers to patronize the
Reichsadler-Apotheke, which masqueraded as an Anglo-Russian pharmacy,
or the notorious spy Hübner, a florist of the Rue Masséna. It warmly
upheld a campaign in favour of Riviera sanatoriums--run by German or
Austrian doctors--such as the ones near Gorbio and Mentone, and which
were admirably suitable as hiding-places for German officers, supposed
to be convalescing but really spying. It contained a complete list of
German doctors, tailors, etc., and frankly invited every Boche to pay
a call at the Nice office, which thus served as a central organization
for all the spies who, as tourists, naturalists, botanists,
_masseuses_, chiropodists, and quacks overran that town and the whole
of the beautiful Alpes-Maritimes.
"The man's topographical knowledge is extraordinary," said a Nice
friend of mine one day, referring to a young Austrian, the tutor to
the children of Jellineck-Mercédés, who used to spend every available
holiday tramping about the lavender-covered hills near Breil and the
Franco-Italian frontier. "Although I've carried my beehives from place
to place in these parts during more than twenty years, and pride myself
on knowing every inch of the ground, yet he has often astonished me
by his references to this or that mountain pathway or little-known
landmark. These Austrians and Germans, almost without exception,
possess a faculty for geographical surveying, linked with a strange
liking for pedestrianism in the neighbourhood of frontiers and forts.
Can that be merely a coincidence?"
This was some years before the war, and at the time my friend's
declaration produced no more than a passing impression. But I have
since come to see what an important truth and warning it contained,
the very kernel of the thesis which another clear thinker and Alsatian
patriot, the Abbé Wetterlé, developed with great skill at the general
meeting of the Touring Club de France on December 5th, 1915.