The statement in court of facts like these points not so much to the cunning of the man Graves, but to the way in which, from the time of his taking up residence in Edinburgh as “a medical student,” he must have been shadowed and kept under observation. The deciphering of the code, the certainty as to paper and envelopes used, and other things that came out at the trial, are small points in themselves; but they go to show that, if the German secret service were relatively as good to-day as in the days when Stieber used his intelligence to keep the system ahead of all others, Graves would never have come to a British jail; for, in the first place, the German secret service would not have employed a man who already knew too much, and, in the second place, as soon as any methods were known to the British police they would have been changed for others, even to the code which could be interpreted without the aid of a key.
With regard to the quality of treachery, latent in all spies, the German secret service does its best to overcome this difficulty by the retention of a certain portion of the pay with which the spies are credited. When once a man or woman has fairly entered on the work of espionage a proportion of the pay is held back by the paymaster, so that there is always a considerable sum owing. This is supposed to act as an incentive to loyalty, and in most cases it undoubtedly has that effect, for no man likes to commit an act which will involve the forfeiture of a sum of money really due to him. Bearing in mind the cupidity of the average spy, it will be seen that no stronger deterrent of treachery could be devised.
In the case of the military spy, the French service affords more opportunities for the German agent than does the British. In the British service the officers of commissioned rank have many faults, but they are in nearly every case gentlemen, in the best sense of that much-abused word. In the citizen army of France, on the other hand, an officer may be anything—and in this is intended no disparagement on the brave Army of our present allies. The Republican system admits all to its ranks—perhaps it would be better to say that it compels all to enter its ranks—and the Republican ideal places a commission in the reach of all, without regard to birth or social standing. In many ways this is to the good, for it fosters the Republican spirit in the Army, and at the same time makes an efficient fighting machine; but it admits to the commissioned ranks, perhaps once in five hundred times, a man who is sufficiently unworthy of his country and its uniform to be guilty of acts which point to his openness to corruption. The case of Ullmo, though it concerns a naval officer, was one in point; it is not to be alleged that a British officer, enslaved by drugs and otherwise debased, would not have done as Ullmo did; but it is to be alleged that the debasing of Ullmo, which brought him down to the point at which subsequent corruption was not only possible but easy, is almost impossible in the British service—such a man would have been cashiered before he reached the point at which Ullmo fell to actual treachery and crime. The Republican system has its drawbacks, and a retention of the laws of caste to an extent which compels all commissioned officers to an acknowledgment of caste, is not altogether undesirable—except from the view-point of the spy. On the confession of a French writer on the subject, there are officers in the French service who form a “class of officers whose private life is no better regulated than their professional conduct.” In such the spy finds comparatively easy prey; but their counterparts do not exist in the British services, for the caste laws of Army and Navy alike forbid ill-regulated lives, and officers of both services must be above suspicion when off parade. The universal service of France renders such a state of affairs almost impossible in the Republican Army. Where every man is a soldier, the staff of officers is so much greater that the presence of a few black sheep is practically unavoidable—and it must be said in common fairness that the French officer is more sternly supervised than his British confrère—yet lapses on the part of commissioned officers are more common than in the British services.
Yet one other point must be borne in mind in connection with the general work of the spy. Happenings in 1870, combined with Stieber’s Memoirs, make clear that the hanging of peasants in the later stages of the war excited even the criticism of stone-hearted Bismarck, who saw in these occurrences a policy which might some day bring retribution. But to this Stieber answered: “In war one must take the measures of war. It is the duty of our soldiers to kill the soldiers of the enemy who from motives of duty oppose our march. We spies claim the right to hang those who spy on us.”
The declaration is illuminating. Here were the members of the German secret service facilitating a conquest by dastardly measures, by abuse of the hospitality of the country which the Prussian troops subsequently invaded. Yet, if the inhabitants of that country dared to attempt to give information to their own countrymen, they were to be hanged. Espionage is responsible for many evils: Stieber shows here that it is responsible for the blunting of the moral sense of his fellow-countrymen, and that the espionage system of 1870 laid the foundations of the Prussian disregard of human life, and the utter brutality and savagery displayed by Prussians in this present war of 1914.
“A peasant was caught in the act of watching a Prussian convoy,” Stieber writes in his Memoirs, “and was falsely accused of having fired upon it; he was hung up by ropes under his arms in front of his own house, and was slowly done to death with thirty-four bullets fired in succession. In order to make an example, I decided that the body should remain hanging for two days, under the guard of two sentries.”
A thing like this is worth memory to-day, in view of what has happened at Louvain and Aerschot and other scenes of Belgian outrage. The germ of Prussian barbarism must have been in the race, but Stieber and his kind have fostered it and caused its growth to the extent that has made of Germany a name of shame among the nations of the earth.