The Spy Net (16 page)

T
HE ORDINARY PUBLIC
has no conception of secret service. The beautiful female spy is not an essential to every secret service coup – she rarely figured in our wartime services – for every Gabrielle Petit or Louise de Bettignies, the two brave Allied agents who paid the supreme penalty for their devotion to duty, there were a hundred male spies, less glamorous but just as efficient; nor is drugging or the rifling of safes and strong-boxes a common practice. Physical violence is an exception, and so also is the carrying of firearms or any other weapon, even as a means of defence.

The spies who have been shot and whose cases have attracted the greatest publicity have not always been great spies. The penalty for spying during the war was, in most cases, death. Some of the victims had succeeded in procuring information of the greatest value and had inflicted material damage on the enemy; others were caught and shot before they had been able to do any harm. Yet often those in the latter category received the most attention from the press. Mata Hari, for instance, was not one of the great spies of the war: I don’t think she was actually successful in conveying much information to the Germans, but she is known to the whole world because she was a woman born in romantic circumstances, because she was a dancer, and because she died bravely before the firing squad at Vincennes, dressed in her best clothes, with a pair of long white gloves in her hands, which she drew on calmly as she awaited the fatal command.

The spy hysteria during the war was another example of the public’s lack of knowledge. At the outbreak of hostilities many pre-war German spies did remain in the belligerent countries with instructions to carry on, but their number was grossly exaggerated, and violent precautionary measures were taken by local military authorities (often as ill-informed as the public) which resulted in a great number of innocent people being shot. Even in far-off South Africa, General Delarey was mistaken for a spy and shot at night by a sentry, when the general’s chauffeur, not hearing the challenge, failed to stop. This took place close to Johannesburg, hundreds of miles from the nearest German colony, in a situation where, if a spy had existed it would have been very improbable that he would be dashing around in a car at night.

I shall never forget what havoc the rumour of a lurking spy caused in my own brigade during our first week in France. So unnerved did those in command become that sentries were posted in each gunpit with orders to shoot anyone who did not stop when challenged. During that same night one of the gunners, coming out of his billet half asleep to relieve himself, was killed by a sentry. The sentries were removed, and that was the last we heard of the phantom German spy.

True it is that when an army is retreating in its own country, it often leaves spies behind to report on the enemy’s movements. In open warfare, they can return to their own lines, or even communicate for a short while by means of a hidden telephone wire, or pigeons, or for a few hours by means of a portable wireless set or some signalling apparatus. But once the belligerents have settled down to stationary trench warfare, with a continuous line of barbed wire entanglements between them, it is more than unlikely that any system of spy reports can exist directly across the battlefront lines. It would have surprised me greatly to have been told of a single authentic case in the Great War where a German spy was caught within a couple of miles of the front lines. Even if a spy had been there, he would have been useless without means of communication. Working from Holland, I knew how difficult it was to get a regular courier to penetrate close to the German front line, and yet I was directing agents of French and Belgian nationality working in their own country. Within the actual firing zone, they would not only have had to secure military uniforms, but also – at least on some occasions – have had to live in contact with the soldiers, for on both sides during the last two years of the war practically every front sector was
entirely freed of civilian population by enforced evacuation. Yet spies were a constant subject of talk and of precaution among those in command in the firing zone.

Of a similar order was the general belief that German spies were signalling to submarines or other craft out to sea. Boy Scouts were even sent out in some parts of England to watch for signal flashes at night; this, however, as well as other fantastic means of communication, was soon proved a bogey after the first few months of the war. The only participation of submarines in spying was that they probably landed one or two spies on the west coast of Ireland.

However, though all this war hysteria came from lack of knowledge on the part of the public, or from a tendency to credit the ‘wonderful’ Germans with secret service tricks even more fantastic than those invented by the writers of fiction, on one point at least the public had correct information: before the war the Germans undoubtedly had the finest secret service in the world. It is certain that there was very little they did not know about pre-war Allied armies and navies.

This service of theirs was organised with characteristic German thoroughness; it worked in direct contact with their Foreign Office and with the general staffs of their army and navy, who used it often to obtain all required information of a secret nature which they could not obtain through diplomatic or other regular channels; its agents were all picked men and women, who went through a special course of training before they were sent out into the field. Some were permanently fixed in a definite country; others, using Berlin as a base, were sent abroad on special missions. Graves, the German spy who was arrested in
England just before the war in an attempt to get specifications and details of the new British 14-inch naval guns, at that time under construction at Beardmore’s in Glasgow, was a typical example of the well trained, intelligent German spy. He would never have been caught had it not been for the carelessness [or was it betrayal?] of the German secret service, who misaddressed a letter sent to him.

Men of this type were not chosen at random or given
carte
blanche
as to their activities, but dispatched to secure specific data. They were picked to obtain such varied information as the design of a new engine of war, details of training, equipment, and strength of a foreign army, plans of fortifications and even topographical sketches of certain sectors of a country, or perhaps plates for the printing of accurate maps of a country in which at some future date they might be called upon to conduct a campaign. Thus, for example, at the commencement of the war, the German war maps of Belgium were far more accurate than those possessed by the British – a matter of prime importance in modern warfare, where most artillery fire is indirect, preliminary angles and ranges being measured off on a map. The gun platforms which were laid down before the war in France and Belgium by German spies, or under their supervision, although greatly exaggerated in number, were no myth, but an actual fact.

Once the war began, however, the permanent German agents in France – and especially in Great Britain – were gradually cut off from their base by the efficient control exercised at the various ports of exit and entry, and by the watchful eye of the censor’s department, which was instrumental in catching quite a number of spies. Every trick involving the use of invisible inks or chemicals,
which the Germans were very fond of using, or the employment of codes in connection with letters, telegrams, or newspaper advertisements, was uncovered. One of the most crafty schemes to be defeated was the method by which the German agents received and concealed their supplies of invisible inks and chemicals. Handkerchiefs or apparently innocent supplies of extra clothing were impregnated with the material, and when ink was needed the cloth was soaked in water and wrung out. Such inks were used not only between the lines of an ordinary letter, but under the postage stamps, and on the inside, or even under the gummed parts, of envelopes.

A last precaution against German espionage was to delay letters and telegrams to neutral countries so long that any information they might have contained became worthless for any military or naval use. Even parcels were held, for it had been discovered that the German agents conveyed brief reports by a code method of long and short stitches, or some other stitching device, used on the garments or other cloth articles enclosed, and by sending packages of a shape secretly agreed upon, or wrapped in coloured paper which had a meaning for the colleague to whom it was addressed.

At length, for the transmission of their information, the Germans came to rely almost entirely on Germans with forged neutral passports, or on neutrals, a certain number of whom were allowed to travel to and from the allied countries. This was proved by the number of spies of this category who were shot.

It was no easy matter for a neutral to get to England. The sailors of neutral ships were not allowed to land, and visas were granted only to those neutrals who had pressing business to
transact and whose
bona fides
, antecedents, and sympathies were known. In each neutral country there was an efficient counter-espionage organisation, and it would have surprised many an individual to have seen the accurate information obtained about him before a visa was accorded. The British counter-espionage organisation, located in T’s office in Rotterdam under the direction of de Mestre, was typical. No visa was granted to a Dutch subject until the applicant had been checked over by de Mestre himself. The name of every neutral who was suspected of trading with the enemy, or of being pro-German, was inserted in the British Black List, which was in the hands of all consular or passport officers. Inclusion in this list meant automatic barring from England. As to the traveller’s purposes, and the usual commercial information, it was not only obtained through recognised business channels, such as the banks, but in many cases the applicant was watched for a long time by our agents. Every movement was followed; I often laughed over the indiscretions of some of the individuals – in the hands of their wives the information would have been devastating.

Whether any of these individuals of neutral nationality ever used the diplomatic dispatch-bags of one or another of the neutral countries, I do not know, and it would have been almost impossible to find out. I know, however, that Mata Hari was suspected of this. It was a danger we had to face, but about which we could not do very much. The probable procedure in such a case would be that Smith, a citizen of Slavonia, would have a personal friend at his country’s embassy in London to whom he would hand a letter addressed to Jones, possibly a common friend in their home country. At the opening of the diplomatic
bag, which of course was immune from censorship, the letter would be found and automatically posted and this procedure could then be repeated in the reverse direction. It is unlikely that a diplomatic representative would lend himself wittingly to the transmission of a spy’s report, but he might do it to oblige a pretty woman, or a friend, who would, of course, assure him that the only motive was to avoid the embarrassment of having some official in the British censor’s office read one’s private affairs.

In addition to these activities, de Mestre’s agents also kept watch on all known German agents in Holland. Through their movements and contacts, we often got valuable clues as to who were transmitting reports to the Germans. Old Haas and his niece were de Mestre’s best agents; no one could possibly have suspected this old man, or his unobtrusive niece, as being sleuths in British pay. In appearance they were so colourless that even in a small gathering they would have attracted no attention; in addition, they were good linguists, intelligent, observant, and endowed with unlimited patience – qualities which made them invaluable as CE agents.

Finally, the various counter-espionage organisations in the different neutral countries were able to check up on any individual reported as being suspect by the chief in England, or about whom information was required – for example, the person to whom a suspicious letter had been addressed. It was surprising how often a spy was caught by some small slip. I remember a case where the British censor became suspicious of a letter addressed to a man in Holland. De Mestre traced the address to a German agent. In the letter, which was, of course, written from a fictitious address in England, a message was included
asking for all letters to be sent in future to a street number up in the 2000s. A check of the London streets soon showed that there were only two or three streets with such high numbers. An investigation was undertaken, which promptly led to the arrest of the German agent who was acting as a letter box.

As will readily be understood the German secret service had tremendous difficulties to face during the war. Communication across the sea (a far more effective barrier than any high voltage wire), a highly efficient censor’s department, hawk-eyed passport control officers at the various ports, unceasing watching on the part of the Allied CE agents, and the absence of willing spies of their own or of allied nationality operating in their own country or in occupied territory, were obstacles greater than those I had to contend with.

From Berlin the old pre-war German secret service continued to function. It, too, had spread itself, and although it continued to send out agents direct from Berlin, many of them were recruited by its branches, which it established in neutral countries, and in the occupied territories.

The difficulty of communication was not its only problem; it had to face both a scarcity of agents and a falling-off of efficiency as compared with those of its pre-war service. No longer, could it pick its men, train them, and send them where it wished. It had to accept anyone who could fulfil the prime function of either being able to get in or out of a belligerent country, or who had some means of communication. The result was that many of its wartime agents were inefficient, careless, and stupid. Lody, who was caught during the early stages of the war, was a typical example. Arriving in England, armed with an American passport, he
was able to enter the country undetected among the crowd of Belgian refugees who were then flocking into England. Carelessly worded telegrams which he sent out to a neutral country promptly gave him away. He was followed continuously for a couple of weeks in an attempt to link him up with other agents, and, when this proved futile, he was finally arrested in Ireland. In his possession the Irish police found a mass of entirely unnecessary incriminating documents which were conclusive evidence against him. However stupid he may have been, he faced death bravely, earning the unstinted admiration of everyone who came in contact with him during the few days he was confined to the Tower of London before he was shot.