The German secret-service corps which Stieber organised is a matter of three main departments: the military, the naval, and the diplomatic spy corps. Under the last-mentioned head must be grouped the work of Germans in foreign countries, notably in France and to a certain extent in England, with a view to influencing labour by means of strikes and industrial unrest, a system of influence which often approaches closely to and sometimes interlinks with commercial espionage, though it is primarily directed to the paralysis of a possible enemy in case of war, and the facilitating of a German attack on the country in which the work is being done. For always German strategy has been that of attack; whatever protestations of peaceful intents the German nation may make, there can be no doubt of its real designs when one considers the trend of all its policy in recent years, the nature of its naval and military increase of effort, and, as far as revelations show, the methods pursued in its espionage system. Germany as a whole has meditated attack with a view to extension of territory and commercial advantage for years, and no apologist can adduce evidence to justify, on the score of a defensive policy, such preparations for war as the country has made. One instance of the methods pursued by the espionage department will illustrate this.
The fortifications of Maubeuge, the French fortress which fell to the German attack in so marvellously short a time, were proof against anything short of the heaviest siege-artillery, and, before this class of artillery can be mounted for use against a town or fortress, gun-platforms levelled and supported by masonry equal to the strain imposed in firing the guns must be constructed. The construction of these platforms involves much calculation and measurement, and is not a matter of such time as was involved in the fall of Maubeuge, but of a much longer period. The explanation of the use of siege-guns against Maubeuge, and the rapid reduction of the fortress, is said to lie in the purchase of about 600 acres of the woods of Lanières, about four miles from Maubeuge, by an agent for Frederic Krupp, the builder of the siege-guns with which Maubeuge was reduced. The firm of Krupp, for whom this purchase was made as far back as 1911, announced its intention of building a locomotive factory on the ground acquired; but, long before the present war was declared, Krupp constructed the platforms on which siege-guns could be mounted to command Maubeuge, and totally neutralised the value of the fortifications as well as turning out locomotives.
Here is evidence, if evidence were necessary, of Germany’s deliberate intent to make war in its own good time; not merely to defend German frontiers, but to attack and reduce a neighbouring State by the use of methods which any nation save this one would regard as too dishonourable for use. Since the system of espionage has reached to such lengths as this, it will be seen that the stories of spies and their work, in which the public delights, are built up out of the doings of comparatively innocent agents, who are credited with dangerous tendencies and many melodramatic and impossible actions. That minor plans and persons do exist is certain, but for the most part the spying of which the public hears is merely incidental to the great whole—a whole composed for the most part of far different elements from the clerks, hotel-waiters, and other minor incidentals on which the imagination is fed, in order that the reality may more easily escape detection.
There are in existence many books purporting to tell the actual work of spies and to expose the system under which these spies work, but it may be said at the outset that no full exposure of the spy system of Germany has ever been made. Stieber, in his Memoirs, told exactly what it suited him to tell, but he did not give away any essential secrets of organisation, nor has any other writer done this, up to the present. All that we have in the way of real evidence consists in things as well attested by fact and result as the incident of Maubeuge and the gun-platforms, related above; in selections from the Memoirs of spies of those portions which bear in themselves evidence of truth, and in reports of police-court proceedings in England and France. From these sources we can piece together a fairly accurate conception of the whole business of the spy; but, as regards books purporting to detail the experience of spies, or the character of the organisation under which they work, we must accept these experiences and the rest with all possible reserve, remembering that, the more melodramatic and the more plausible they may be, the more they should be questioned as regards accuracy.
Moreover, there is sufficient evidence to show that the system is so extensive, and that its ramifications are so far-reaching, that no one book could contain all details of the various kinds of work entailed on the German spy system. It is possible only, in a book dealing with the system, to indicate the main lines on which spies in connection with military and naval matters work, and to give some concrete examples of their failures and successes. Naturally, there is far more material available as regards failures, for the work of the successful spy is of such a nature that it rarely comes to light; it is more often unheard of until, as in the case of the gun-platforms constructed in time of peace about Maubeuge, the work itself is put to use.
Chapter Two.
Stieber.
Those who label Stieber as “von” in speaking of him are about on a level with any who would choose to confer on Crippen, of unlamented memory, the title of baronet, for the two pretensions are about equal, so far as right to them is concerned. Karl Stieber was born at Mersebourg, a town of Saxony in Prussia, in the year 1818. His parents were people of the middle class, good and inconspicuous Prussians who destined their son for the profession of the law, in which he qualified as a barrister, but in which he achieved no distinction. It was not until 1847, when he was nearly thirty years of age, that Stieber first came to notice. In that year he obtained employment in the factory of Schoeffel Brothers in Silesia, where the Socialistic movement that has gained so great a hold on modern Germany was even then beginning.