Further, the naval spy is made acquainted with the build and outline of every class of naval vessel in the world. He is first schooled in the details of the various battleships, cruisers, and smaller craft belonging to the Great Powers, and, later, is taught to recognise these vessels by silhouettes, from which he gains sufficient knowledge to recognise any ship either by day or night—assuming that the night is of such a character that the ship is at all visible. He studies uniforms and insignia of rank, signals and codes, and at the end of his training is a fully qualified naval officer so far as the theory of naval matters goes. In the yards of Wilhelmshaven and Kiel is opportunity of putting his knowledge to the test, and he has to satisfy his examiners on all the points on which he has been coached.
With regard to diplomatic espionage, the coaching bestowed on the two branches already mentioned is not undertaken, for the diplomatic spy—in the narrower sense of the phrase, since all spies must be extremely diplomatic—is chosen, as a rule, from among the ranks of naval and military spies. In order to undertake diplomatic missions, and supplement the work of the German embassies in the various European centres, a spy must be a very good man indeed, as far as his work is concerned. He must be as was Stieber, absolutely ruthless and without scruple; he must be a good linguist, a man of good presence and address, and a tactful man as well. The corps of diplomatic spies is a small one, for this work is the best paid of all, the most delicate and intimate of all, and it is not a class of work of which there could ever be enough for a large staff, even in the state of European politics that existed at the outbreak of this last German war, since the diplomats of Germany are themselves sufficient, as a rule, for all needs of this kind. The diplomatic spy is called in for services which a diplomat is unable to undertake, and also as a check on the work of diplomats—he is, as it were, a member of a system which assures the efficiency of the diplomatic system.
His training lies in the commissions entrusted to him in military and naval capacities: by super-excellence in the performance of his duties in these departments, he shows himself sufficiently able and efficient to warrant his being trusted with less obvious and more confidential tasks. He works, as do all the members of the German spy system, independently of all other workers for the good of the State. For in every case the spy works alone, lest in compassing his own downfall he should bring about that of others as well. This was a principle inaugurated by Stieber, who believed in trusting no man more than was absolutely unavoidable.
It must not be thought, from these few details of the training given to the official spies of the German system, that every member of the espionage corps is thus trained. Training such as is detailed here is only for the chief spies, the picked men who accomplish great things; few men could come out satisfactorily from the examinations set to these military and naval spies—few men, that is, of the class from which spies are recruited. The spies at “fixed posts,” for instance, get very little training, since their duties do not involve nearly as much technical work as do those of the travelling members of the fraternity. Since much of the total of about 780,000 pounds per annum known to be distributed among the members of the German secret service (in addition to the probably larger sum of which no records are available) goes to the occupants of these fixed posts, it is obvious that the highly trained spy is in the minority. The highly trained spy, however, forms the nucleus and head of the system—he is a superior officer to the fixed post man or German tutor in a foreign family.
The military and naval branches of the service are controlled by the Great German General Staff, while the diplomatic branch is controlled direct by the German Foreign Office, and, although recruited from among the military and naval branches, is independent of General Staff control.
These divisions of the system must be taken as only approximate, for they interlink and work in and out each other to such an extent that no definite line can be drawn between them as regards actual work. They are all extensions of the plans that Stieber planned, and in all that pertains to the work of German espionage his hand is evident, his work persists, more than twenty years after his death.
Here a word on the influence of Prussian militarism may well be spoken, for the influence of that cast-iron administration is evident even in the organisation of the secret service of Germany. It is now twenty-two years since Stieber passed out from the system, but so unimaginative is the militarist rule of German statecraft that Stieber’s ways have not been improved on. They have been altered in minor details, but the plan has been retained, and, though it may be urged that since Stieber’s system was the most perfect known there was no need to change it, yet the passing of years has revealed many of the details of that system, and it would have been better for Germany if the espionage system had been more flexible, more experimental. Though the very inner workings of Stieber’s system are secrets from ordinary people to this day, they are no secrets from other Governments; the German methods have been copied and improved on by more than one Government, and in some things Germany, which had the only perfect system of espionage in 1870, is actually behind the rest of the world now. For craft has been met with craft, and while the protective measures of other nations have advanced, Germany has stood still.
With regard to matters military, Beyerling emphasises this fully in his book, “Jena or Sedan?” but, of course, no emphasis has been possible in the case of the spy system. Yet evidence is afforded in the trial of Karl Gustav Ernst at Bow Street, to which further reference will be made later, and in many other cases which prove that German spies are known and their methods known to the Governments of other countries, where ample protective measures have been taken. The character of the spy himself is such that changes in the system which controls him are necessary—constant changes—but the mould in which the German mind is shaped is such that this fact has never been sufficiently appreciated, even by the Great German General Staff. The German spy system is still a dangerous organisation, but there are others equally well planned and equally efficient. Had there been another Stieber to take control, Germany might still have had the only perfect system of espionage; but such genius as he displayed only comes once to a people in a century, and a second Stieber has yet to be found in Germany to make its secret service as efficient as in the days when Stieber maintained control.