GERMAN SPIES AND THEIR METHODS
German spies who looked like "movie" detectives hung about and followed us on the journey from Berlin to Switzerland, France and Spain. There were even suspicious characters among the Americans with German accent who came on our special train from Germany to Switzerland.
Berne is now the champion spy centre of the world. Switzerland, a neutral country, bordering on Germany, France, Italy and Austria, is the happy hunting ground and outfitting point for myriads of spies employed by the nations at war. The Germans, however, use more spies than all the other nations together.
Bismarck said that there are male nations and female nations, and that Germany was a male nation—certainly the German has less of that heaven-sent feminine quality of intuition than other peoples. The autocrat, never mingling with the plain people of all walks of life, finds the spy a necessity.
Spy spies on spy—autocracy produces bureaucracy where men rise and fall not by the votes of their fellow citizens but by back stairs intrigue. The German office-holder fears the spies of his rivals. I often said to Germans holding high office during the war, "This strain is breaking you down,—all day in your office. Take an afternoon off and come shooting with me." The invariable answer was, "I cannot—the others would learn it from their spies and would spread the report that I neglect business!"
While in Spain I met the then Premier, Count Romanones, a man of great talent and impressive personality. He told me of the finding of a quantity of high explosives, marked by a little buoy, in one of the secluded bays of the coast. And that day a German had been arrested who had mysteriously appeared at a Spanish port dressed as a workman. The workman took a first class passage to Madrid, went to the best hotel and bought a complete outfit of fine clothes. Undoubtedly the high explosive as well as the mysterious German had been landed from a German submarine. Whether the explosive was destined as a depot for submarines or was to help overturn the Spanish government was hard to guess, but Count Romanones was worried over the activity of the German agents in Spain.
It has been very easy for German agents in America to communicate with Germany through this submarine post from Spain to Germany, the letters from America being sent to Cuba and thence on Spanish boats to Spain.
At all times since the war the Germans have had a submarine post running direct from Germany to Spain. Shortly after our arrival in Spain Mrs. Gerard received mysteriously a letter written by a friend of hers, a German Baroness, in Berlin. This letter had undoubtedly been sent through the very efficient German spy system.
Sometime in 1915 a German soldier, in uniform, speaking perfect English, called one day at the Embassy. He said that his name was Bode and that he had at one time worked for my father-in-law, the late Marcus Daly. Of course, we had no means of verifying his statements and Mrs. Gerard did not remember any one of that name or recall Bode personally. He said that he was fighting on the East front and that he had a temporary leave of absence. I gave him some money and later we sent him packages of food and tobacco to the front, but never received any acknowledgment.
In Madrid one of my assistants, Frank Hall, while walking through the street, ran across Bode, who was fashionably attired. His calling cards stated that he was a mining engineer from Los Angeles, California. He told Hall a most extraordinary fairy story, saying that he had been captured by the Russians on the East front and sent to Siberia, that from Siberia he had escaped to China and from there he had gradually worked his way back to America and thence to Spain.