SECRET STORIES OF THE GERMAN SPY IN FRANCE
How Sixty Thousand Spies Prepared for the War
We have had a certain amount of experience of the German spy and his devious ways, but in France—the first country that the Huns had earmarked for destruction—the espionage system was even more fully developed. Ever since the beginning of the war the writer of this remarkable article has been engaged in collecting authentic information concerning German spies and their methods, and some of the results of his investigations are set forth. A startling light is thrown on the ramifications of a system that employed abroad more than sixty thousand men and women in every walk of life, and which is still far from having been eradicated.—Related in Wide World Magazine.
I—STORY OF A STARTLING DISCOVERY AT MONTE CARLO
In the early days of the war, when everything in the military and civilian life of France was still in a state of perturbation, certain undecipherable messages were picked up nightly by the wireless telegraphy station at Cros-de-Cagnes, a little fishing village on the French Riviera, some seven miles from Nice. Other stations in many other parts of the country and abroad likewise received those mysterious fragments from the unknown—partly in code, partly in unintelligible German—and transmitted them to military headquarters, where futile attempts were made to make head or tail of them. One thing, however, was certain: they emanated from an enemy source, a secret wireless installation somewhere, as the experts were convinced, either on the French or Italian Riviera. The problem of the whereabouts of the German or Austrian spies who thus dared to carry out their nefarious operations under the very noses of the French and Italian authorities at once became of intense interest to the police all the way between Marseilles and Genoa. But they searched for the culprits in vain.
Before the middle of August, 1914, however, thanks to a perspicacious English journalist, the mystery was elucidated.
Singularly well-inspired, he had gone to Monte Carlo to obtain war impressions. Had he searched all through France he could not have found a more fruitful subject for study than the little independent principality over which the Prince of Monaco and M. Camille Blanc et Cie. reign. For many years before the war the administrators of the gambling hall had done everything in their power to make Monte Carlo attractive to Germans and Austrians, in order to fill the void left by English visitors, a great many of whom had instinctively fled to Egypt or elsewhere, to get away from these ill-mannered or otherwise obnoxious guests. The Boches and their accomplices having been expelled from the principality on the second day of mobilization, our journalist found the authorities of the Casino still staggering under the blow which the cataclysm had dealt them. The Casino was closed, the palaces and villas and hotels on the hillside seemed to be sleeping more soundly than usual under the hot August sun, the Terrace overlooking the sea was deserted. Over everything was written, as it were, that stock phrase of the croupiers—who now sat, armed with fans in lieu of money-rakes, outside their own establishment—"Rien ne va plus."
With several pages of jottings in his notebook and his brain filled with impressions, the journalist, who intended to take an early afternoon train back to Nice, turned, on his way to the railway station, into the half-closed Café de Paris. Here, getting into conversation with a communicative garçon—a clearly well-informed Monagasque—he unexpectedly gleaned the most important item of intelligence he had yet come across, a piece of information so curious and so significant that he there and then decided to change his plans and spend the night at Monte Carlo.
"Yes, sir; it was high time they got rid of the Boches," said the waiter. "Monaco had become a veritable spies' nest. At any rate, they got hold of one—Kurz, the Austrian sub-director of the Casino. He was undoubtedly working for Francis Joseph, otherwise how can one explain the incriminating plans and documents which, on dit, were seized at his house? They got him early in the month, just after the Prince's notices to the Austro-Boches were posted up, and he's now at the island of Ste. Marguerite, where some others would be, too, if they weren't being protected."
As he reached the end of this last phrase the waiter lowered his voice to a confidential whisper, and after a quick glance in the direction of the caissière's desk, in order to assure himself that he was not observed, continued:
"The man with whom Kurz was naturally hand in glove we've still in our midst, though I don't suppose he'll have the face to stop here another twenty-four hours. Vicht, the Director-General of the Casino, is a German, and since the declaration of war he's done all he could to get the authorities to maintain his too-recent naturalization. He tries to make out he's a Monagasque. Mais cela ne marche pas. The wonder is that he's still here, for it's well known what he and Kurz have been up to for years past. Everybody acquainted with the position of affairs here knows that these two men had at their disposition a small army of detectives, whom they employed to shadow the habitués of the Casino, including certain well-known journalists, in order to ascertain the origin of information against Germany and the Germans which had been published in the press. Vicht and Kurz had become all-powerful here, and would have turned the principality into a German possession if they'd had the chance. They made a start last winter, it is said, by assisting in the publication of a German weekly newspaper run by an unsuspecting journalist. Ah, Vicht's a wily customer—a man to be watched, I think."
Thus put on the scent, the journalist decided, as I have said, to postpone his departure and await developments, which came much sooner than he expected.
Having dined at the Hôtel de Paris, he went out in the cool of the summer evening to stroll on the Terrace and smoke his cigar. It was a magnificent summer night, one of those soirées d'été when Monte Carlo and Monaco, with their soft-scented breezes from the hillsides and sea and the twinkling lights in the little harbour opposite the Condamine, were steeped in romance—a night for reflection. Thoughts of the war and the astounding fact that an enemy subject was still at liberty in the principality filled the journalist's mind as, at the end of a quarter of an hour's perambulation on the flower-adorned promenade, he stopped to rest and, leaning on the parapet, looked down on the harbour of the Bay of Hercules.
II—STORY OF THE MASTER SPY AND HIS YACHT AT MONACO
A good-sized yacht was moored there. Whose was it? It was not the Princess Alice, Prince Albert of Monaco's boat, which had been used for so many oceanographic expeditions, and whose lines he knew well. Suddenly he remembered to whom it belonged—to Jellineck, the motor-car manufacturer, director of the Mercédès Company, and Austrian Consul at Monaco, and the whole story of that notorious spy's machinations flashed back to his mind. Strange that he had not thought of it before, when it was so recent!
Jellineck, an intimate friend of a French prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, whose sister, it is said, had once been a governess to the children of the Austrian manufacturer, had succeeded in escaping when war was declared, and some of the blame had been laid by one of the Nice newspapers on the shoulders of the French official. Matters were made still worse when Jellineck's yacht, which had been sequestrated and taken to Cannes, was allowed, in most peculiar circumstances, to be removed clandestinely to Monaco, where presumably, it was in neutral waters. The affair created a great commotion locally, because Jellineck's rôle as a master-spy had long been suspected, a supposition supported by the fact that a special messenger of his used to make the journey every week from Nice to Ventimiglia, to receive and dispatch his correspondence.
Whilst the journalist's eyes were fixed on the dark outline of Jellineck's yacht, on board of which there was not the slightest sign of life, his attention was attracted by a strange luminosity playing, like a will-o'-the-wisp, over the masts. By jove—wireless! To his observant eye and well-trained technical mind there was not the slightest doubt about it; that light could be nothing else than radio-telegraphic sparks, the play of which can so often be seen around the antennae of wireless telegraphy stations.
This electric phenomenon furnished, as it were, the missing link in a long chain of deductions which, subconsciously, his brain had been turning over and over days past—ever since, in fact, he had first heard from a friendly police-inspector at Nice of the mysterious messages picked up at Cros-de-Cagnes. The master-spy Jellineck—the removal of his yacht to Monaco—wireless messages dispatched or received there. With whom was he still communicating? Surely it must be Vicht!
No further time to be lost. The journalist left the Terrace immediately, walked swiftly down to the Condamine, and took a short cut to the police-commissary's office at Moneghetti. The little dark-eyed Italianesque official acted with commendable promptness and circumspection. Before the night was over two wireless installations were seized—one on board Jellineck's yacht; the other, traced in the same way, in a Monte Carlo villa residence, which, if it had not actually been occupied by Vicht or members of his family, had certainly been rented by an accomplice, who, like himself, cleverly managed to slip through the fingers of the police. The flight of the Director-General of the Casino, first to Ventimiglia, afterwards to San Remo, and then to Diana Marina, coincided with the astute journalist's discovery—a tell-tale fact indeed.
It has now been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Monaco was, with Paris, Brussels, and Geneva, one of the Germans' chief spy centres, and the operations of their innumerable agents naturally spread to Nice, Cannes, Toulon, and other places along the Riviera. Even after Vicht's flight this dangerous man preserved sufficient influence in the principality to obtain his salary, which was brought to him from Ventimiglia, whilst his accomplice, Kurz, had the impudence to write to the gas company and order the gas to be laid on at his Monte Carlo villa, presumably in view of his triumphal return there after the victory of the Germans! A German millionaire, named Uhde, the owner of an important building rented by a big bank, situated just beyond the frontier line between Monaco and France, was arrested on the day after mobilization, just as he was trying to escape in his car. The owner of the chateau and estate of Almanarre, near Hyères, Uhde, who was formerly an officer in the Zieten Hussars, had chosen his property with true military foresight. It enjoys an extensive view over the Bay of Toulon, where he could follow at his ease all the movements of the French warships. His suspicious behaviour and frequent journeys to Germany led to a lawsuit, some time before the war, between him and M. Léon Daudet, whose ante-bellum revelations concerning espionage in France have been shown to be in a great measure correct. Uhde lost his action for libel before the Toulon court, which condemned him to pay the costs, and he met with little better results on appealing to Aix, where, having claimed four hundred pounds damages, he was awarded merely two pounds.
III—STORY OF THE MYSTERY OF THE MOTOR BOAT RACES
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.
IV—HOW EVERY GERMAN TOURIST BECAME A SPY
The Abbé Wetterlé showed in his lecture how every German, through his civil and military education, has become a potential spy; how, on going forth to spend his holidays in France or elsewhere abroad, he could not help being the active agent of those directors of his conscience, the Pan-Germanists.
"Recollect, everywhere and always, that you belong to the supreme race," they said to him, through their newspapers, pamphlets, and tracts. "Even if you know the language of the country where you are travelling, speak nothing but German. Never put up at any hotels but those kept by Germans, and amongst these choose only the ones kept by compatriots who you know have preserved all their attachment for the Fatherland. Insist in these establishments that they serve you with German products, and that the bill of fare is drawn up in your native tongue. Drink only beer imported from Germany. In the shops buy only those goods which bear the mark 'Made in Germany.' Praise wherever you go German industry, German methods, German science. To keep your feet on the right path, we will supply you with guides, in which you will find every needful address. Our good counsel will accompany you everywhere. And thus, whilst amusing and instructing yourself, you will render signal service to your country and will become a pioneer of Germanism in those countries which we wish, progressively, to dominate. Moreover, never forget in the course of your travels that you can make a thousand useful observations. Note down what you see and send us the information you collect. Details apparently the most insignificant may be of use to our industrial, commercial, and patriotic societies. Finally, strengthen the patriotic feeling with our compatriots established abroad. Tell them that Germany does not forget them, and that it is to their interest to remain in close relations with it. If you act in this way—and you cannot do otherwise, for we shall keep a sharp eye on you—you will contribute largely to the glory of Germany, which to-morrow will dominate the world."
This picture is in no way exaggerated. Identical language was addressed to German tourists by the Pan-Germanist Association and the Deutschtum im Ausland Society, and the guides they published inculcated the principles of the most barefaced espionage.
The information which these ambulatory amateur spies collected was undoubtedly precious. It assisted in the spread of German commerce and German ideas. Our enemies worked on the principle that every little helped, and that the observations of a spectacled professor tramping through France could be turned to almost as much use as those of a professional spy, working under cover of a bank or an insurance company like the Viktoria zu Berlin in Paris, which our friends and Allies the French very soon closed down. The sum-total of the efforts of all these amateur and professional spies was enormous, and would indeed have led to the domination of Europe by the Teuton but for his inborn crass stupidity.
I wonder when we shall really learn to know the true character of the German? French people, who long ago put a stop to Teuton tricks, are amazed to hear that we still allow the enemy to remain in our midst, and that we actually help them to carry on their businesses, just as though the war never existed. "Are you aware of the fact," I have often been asked by Parisian friends, "that these large German concerns were nothing more or less than gigantic spying organizations?"
V—REVELATIONS OF THE SPY SYSTEM
Those who have any doubt about this should read the remarkable revelations of M. Georges Prade anent the Viktoria zu Berlin Insurance Company, the premiums of which represented over eighty million pounds. In the Paris offices of this company, in the Avenue de l'Opéra, M. Prade discovered a peculiar organization called the Special Büro. The employés of this office were all Germans, between twenty-five and thirty years of age, and officers in the German reserve. They spent from five to six months in France, received forty pounds a month each, with an allowance for travelling expenses, and spent their time motoring all over France. Eastern France and the Alps was their favourite region. Naturally they all disappeared a few days before the German mobilization in July, 1914. Whilst these men were spying out the land, their colleagues in Paris were performing equally useful work for the German Government, "establishing an exact estimate of the public fortune, a useful element in assessing war taxation and indemnities," and otherwise obtaining valuable information. The Viktoria, for example, offered special terms to French officers. It insured them, without extra charge, against war risks, and, through the medium of visiting agents, advanced money at very reasonable terms on their policies. The Berlin offices of the Viktoria thus secured the names of all the French officers who owed it money, an excellent arrangement indeed on which to base an organization for spying.
One of the most astounding institutions in Paris before the war was a free German school, open to children of all nationalities, where instruction was given entirely in German, and French was treated as a foreign tongue. Naturally history and geography were taught from the German standpoint, and a love of Germany and the Kaiser was dinned into the pupils. Stranger still, none of the professors held a French certificate, a sine qua non for a French teacher, or were even naturalized. Yet in 1908 one of them was even decorated with the Legion of Honour.
Side by side with this instance of "peaceful penetration" may be placed that of a commercial agency, the Agence Schimmelpfeng, which existed in Paris for years, and, under the guise of a society for giving confidential information to commercial houses and their customers, covered a most elaborate and minute spy system, with central offices in Berlin. To give but one example of the work of this agency, it knew the name of every baker in the East of France, how many men he employed, and the exact number of sacks of flour he used per week. Thus the German military authorities knew almost to a loaf how much bread could be counted on for an invading army.
German spies were always particularly active in Eastern France. Another precaution they took was to secure all the contracts for coal for the frontier forts, in order to be able to withhold supplies at a critical moment and thus render them useless. On a par with this was the establishment of a German chemical works adjoining an airship factory, which they were ready to supply with hydrogen just as long as it suited them. The arrangement had this additional advantage: when any little hitch occurred with a machine, German workmen were always ready with their help. A French dirigible had thus no secrets for them.
Supplies and the methods by which as complete a control of them as possible could be obtained must have been made the study of a special section of the Secret Service department in Berlin. It is not curious that in 1912 a German firm should have succeeded in obtaining the contract for the exclusive furnishing of lubricating oil for the French army motor-cars? But this is nothing in comparison with the plans laid for getting possession of the iron-fields of Normandy and a certain part of the French Channel coast.
VI—STORY OF A "GERMAN GIBRALTAR" IN NORMANDY
Germany, lacking iron ore, obtained extensive concessions of land in Normandy and annually sent vast quantities of mineral to Krupp's, where it went to the making of munitions to be used against the Allies. In the extraction of this ore only German machinery, worked by German coal, was used. Simultaneously our arch-enemy got possession of a place called Diélette, eighteen miles west of Cherbourg, and constructed there a deep-water port, capable of accommodating vessels of fifty thousand tons. The ostensible purpose set forth by the concessionnaires was the shipping of ore and the working of a submarine iron-mine, but the real object was made clear when the German newspapers, in their bragging way, began to write about Diélette as the "German Gibraltar." And a German Gibraltar it would have become but for Great Britain's intervention in the war. For if France had not had our Navy behind her, nothing would have been easier than to land German troops at Diélette. The port and arsenal of Cherbourg would have been but a mouthful for the Huns, the western side of Cherbourg, owing to the natural disposition of the land, being undefended, as it has always been looked upon as impregnable. And so it was until the port of Diélette was constructed.
Diélette, the proposed German submarine base for the Channel, and adapted not only for military and naval purposes, but most conveniently situated for spying on Cherbourg, was used for the first time as a port only a week before the outbreak of war. On July 25th, 1914, the first big vessel arrived and was loaded in the record time of twenty-four hours. Under the superintendence of Raders, the chief spy, large quantities of explosives had been accumulated. The greater part was seized by the French Government, but when the authorities attempted to visit the mine it was discovered that many of the galleries had been wilfully flooded.
After all the arrangements had been made at Diélette, the Germans began to say that the carriage of iron ore thence to a German port had been found to be too costly, so they immediately began to acquire land and make arrangements for smelting on the spot. Furnaces were built at Caen, a railway line was constructed, the canal from that town to the sea was deepened, and things were so arranged that at any given moment Caen could be cut off from its natural port, Ouistreham. The electric cable transmitting the motive force for this port and for the opening and shutting of the bridges over the canal was aerial, and passed over land acquired by another of the prime movers of the Diélette and Caen schemes, a man named Thyssen, an intimate friend of the Kaiser. This cable was cut on August 12th, 1914.
The machinery and materials, directors and workmen of all these undertakings were German, so that, although some of the capital of the company was furnished by French shareholders, practically the whole of this part of Normandy was already, when war broke out, in the hands of the Huns. Normandy in their power, they set about getting Brittany. Private individuals bought up large tracts of land and islands, and there is no doubt that the splendid port of Brest would before long have been theirs. Was not one of the Kaiser's sons familiarly known in Berlin as the "Duke of Brittany?"
I have mentioned two of the chief spies connected with the Normandy plots, Raders and Thyssen. The former left the mine at Diélette on August 1st, but was arrested. Hefter, one of his subordinates, received a telegram that his brother had been run over by a train, and so got away on July 26th, whilst a third, a so-called Swiss, named Strobel, stayed in France for a month, and even returned to Diélette in January to destroy a trunk full of papers in a house which he had occupied.
Rheims, the cathedral city of saddened memories, was another of the great spy centres of France. More than seventy inhabitants, in every imaginable disguise, had to be shot, we are told by M. Léon Daudet, who before and since the war has thrown much light on German espionage. Every woollen mill in Rheims was known to the enemy, and at the time of the invasion they sent off to Germany more than a hundred wagon-loads of models and drawings of machines, and so on, together with multitudinous bales of merchandise. All account-books were soaked with paraffin and burnt, and all workmen's dwellings were systematically destroyed.
There is no doubt that as regards works, factories, and mills of all kinds, a systematic plan was followed wherever the German system of espionage operated. Those that could in any way be useful to the invaders during their occupation were carefully preserved, and those judged prejudicial to their future commercial prosperity were as ruthlessly destroyed. It was the same with private residences. Anything belonging to spies—many of them naturalized Frenchmen—was marked by advance guards in accordance with a carefully-prepared list, and was neither burnt nor pillaged when all around was destroyed.
Henkell, of Wiesbaden, had some years ago started a wine business at Rheims, and his warehouse was built between the barracks, the aviation ground, the military fodder stores, and other official buildings. From the windows of his establishment he and his employés could keep an eye on the movement of all military trains on the three lines leading from Rheims to Chalons, Charleville, and Laon.
VII—STORY OF HERMANN VON MUMM, "PRINCE OF CHAMPAGNE"
But this man Henkell was a mere underling compared with others. Hermann von Mumm, of champagne fame, was the high priest of the spies of Rheims. A multimillionaire, he owned a splendid residence in that city, another in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and a third in the Department of the Marne. He was served by a retinue of servants, most of whom were non-commissioned officers in the German army. Besides being an enthusiastic motorist, he kept a racing stable. Many German officers visited and stayed with him. Under cover of his wine business, the acquiring of vineyards or other land, these spies openly scoured the country until they knew it in its minutest details. Everything was thus foreseen and arranged for the German occupation—the position of trenches, good shelters, cemented platforms for heavy guns, and even stores of ammunition in disused quarries. It was entirely due to Mumm and his satellites that the Huns were able to establish themselves in Champagne so firmly. After the victory he was to have been Prince of Champagne.
Thanks to Hermann von Mumm's horse-dealings and the sumptuous fétes he was accustomed to give, he succeeded in establishing relations with innumerable people willing to uphold and help him in his nefarious work. At Chantilly, the racing centre, he had quite a little army of spies under his direction.
His brother, Walter von Mumm, a devotee of shooting, who with his friends was responsible for about four thousand head of game every year at Ville-aux-Bois, went to Germany in February, 1914, and on his return informed his keepers that he should preserve no game that year, as he did not intend to shoot next season. On July 25th, 1914, he left in one of his motor-cars, with his French chauffeur, for Frankfort, telling his servants he should be back in three weeks' time, between August 15th and 25th. Once over the frontier the chauffeur was astonished to see numbers of soldiers on the march, and was calmly informed by his master that it was "la guerre." On reaching Frankfort he was dismissed, and told to get back to France as best he could, which he did after a long and painful journey viâ Belgium.
In the district known as La Woevre, a great plain in the east, extending between the Meuse and the Moselle, all the large farms for years past gradually slipped into the hands of the Germans, who generally bought them much above their value, and then, as often as not, let them lie fallow. All the labourers were Germans, mostly not speaking French, whilst many others appeared to be much above their station—evidently spies who would be most useful to an invading army as knowing all the strategic points, pathways, bogs, and so on.
VIII—STORY OF A SECRET TELEPHONE SYSTEM
Much the same thing happened around Verdun. Many of these frontier towns had secret telephones installed in the cellars. A French ambulance worker, taken prisoner, was conducted into one of these farms to await the convoy she was to join. By accident she was hustled into a room full of telephonic apparatus, and was able, before she was hurriedly taken away again, to read the names of some twenty French villages inscribed over them. She had encountered by chance the central exchange of the spy farms.
In this manner did the Huns lay their plans for the hoped-for occupation of France. When the time came for the declaration of the war the majority of the spies of Germany made good their escape. But some, in accordance with the orders of their superiors, remained behind to continue to assist in the conquest of the country.
When the German army was marching towards Paris signals were noticed at night on the heights of Meudon-Bellevue, and these were answered by others along the river. Similar ones were noticed near the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l'Est, and it is a fact that at no matter what hour a train of stores left the former station bombs were always dropped upon it. This continued, I have been told by a person in authority, until certain spies, who had obtained employment with the railway company in order to signal the departure of the trains, were discovered and shot.
I have often been asked if I think that much spying still goes on, even in this third year of the war, and my invariable reply is, "Read the newspapers." Hardly a day passes without a case of espionage being recorded in the Press. Here are two typical examples which have come to my own particular notice quite recently.
The first is that of a certain Marie Liebendall, wife of Gimeno Sanches, born at Düsseldorf and twenty-eight years of age. Accused of espionage, she was sentenced to death by the Council of War of the Fifteenth Region. She gave herself out to be a countess, but in reality is the daughter of the manager of the Mannesmann works at Munich. After residing in Germany and the United States, she came to France, under the cloak of her Spanish husband, and devoted herself to spying. She was arrested at Cerbère, at the very moment she was escaping into Spain. Imprisoned at Marseilles, she attempted to poison herself.
The second case is that of Frido J. C. von Meyerem, who was sentenced to death on September 6th last by the First Court-Martial in Paris and then tried again in November by the Third Court-Martial, the first sentence having been quashed owing to a technical fault in the procedure. Meyerem was accused of concealing his German nationality at Nice in March, 1916, and also of entering the entrenched camp of Paris in the same month. While at Nice he corresponded in invisible ink with an espionage agent, who sent him a cheque for about forty pounds. He was also charged with having furnished the enemy with information prejudicial to the operations of the army and compromising the security of the forts and other military establishments. Meyerem was again adjudged guilty and sentenced to death.
Thousands of these men and women, ready to risk their lives for the love of money and the German Fatherland, undoubtedly continue their dangerous work all over France to-day. The majority of them are women, either the German wives of French subjects or alleged "neutrals." They are thus free to go about under the protection of their borrowed or neutral flag, without let or hindrance. Some who are unmarried play, I am convinced, a more hazardous game by remaining in hiding until night, when they come forth like nocturnal birds of prey. This is by no means so difficult in a large city like Paris as one would think, as witness the case of an Austrian, Michel Augmeister, aged thirty-eight, a native of Martensdorf, who remained hidden away by his French wife in his apartment at 24, Rue Brey, for no less than twenty-six months. It was not until October 25th last that, as his health was suffering seriously from seclusion, his spouse considered it the wisest plan to give him up to the police.
IX—EXPOSURE OF THE "LONELY SOLDIER" TRICK
Among the multitudinous means employed by German female agents in France is the insertion of small advertisements in the Parisian papers proposing an exchange of correspondence with British officers at the Front. Until a stop was recently put to this practice, as the result of an inquiry at military headquarters, I frequently saw advertisements of this sort in a daily published in Paris. Here is a specimen of one announcement:—
"Refined Parisian lady wishes to exchange correspondence with cultured person at the Front, to improve knowledge."
A few days later the same advertiser varied the wording as follows:—
"Young Parisian widow, having greatly travelled, wants to exchange correspondence with cultured officer at the Front."
In a series of similar advertisements she became "an artist," "an actress," and "an independent lady." That a large number of "lonely" British officers were deceived and entered into correspondence with her is certain. It is satisfactory to be able to say that, through the vigilance of the authorities, she did not succeed in her object. A certain foolish young lieutenant had a narrow escape from falling into her clutches. He wrote—quite in good faith—that he would be glad not only to correspond, but also to meet her when he next came to Paris with his colonel, as he fairly frequently came to the capital, and put up at the Hôtel Continental. However, very fortunately for him, the meeting never came off, for before the letter had reached its destination the lady had received her warning and sailed for the United States.
X—TALES OF THE SPIES AT THE FRONT
Mr. W. Beach Thomas, the Daily Mail correspondent with the British Army, recounted on October 19th last a strange incident which occurred at Armentières, where the old and more regular method of warfare then prevailed. "Two days ago," he wrote, "a civilian was seen to leap over the parapet of our front trench and run for the German line, which is not far distant. He was shot dead before reaching it, and in the evening the Germans recovered his body. How had he reached our trench? Who was he? Was he spy or madman?" Few readers will hesitate over the answer.
There must indeed be numerous spies at the Front. I am told that in certain sectors the country people whose homes are still within the war area are frequently suspected, and wonder has often been expressed that the military authorities have not long ago ordered them to retire far to the rear.
I have heard of a ploughman who, for the guidance of Hun airmen, ploughed two converging furrows pointing directly to the position of a concealed battery, which was later severely shelled, and of a seemingly unsophisticated countrywoman who laid out a white sheet on the ground, wherein to pack her wares for market, hard by another important position that German planes were searching for. Both these people turned out to be disguised Boche agents.
The liberty of the mercantis, or itinerant merchants, who infest the rear and rob the French poilu or British "Tommy" by selling him wretched goods at an exorbitant price should likewise be curtailed.
Spies are to be divided into innumerable categories. Within the limits of a magazine article it is impossible to do more than touch on the fringe of this great topic. One could devote two or three chapters of a book merely to the subject of those spies who, from time to time, are carried at night-time within the French and British lines by German airmen, who pick them up again when dawn is about to break. This is the most perilous game which the spy is called upon to play. It leads to the most extraordinary adventures and hairbreadth escapes, and some of these I hope later on to have the opportunity of relating.