“Well,” remarked the diplomat, “I used to stop at the Hotel Grandeur, but Count ——” (mentioning the name of a diplomat of a nation with which his country was at war) “persisted in having my baggage searched every day. So I moved to the Hotel Excellency; but I found things no better there.”
“Didn’t you complain to the management?”
“Ah, no,” answered he gravely, “but every time the Count stops at the Hotel Elaborate, I have his baggage searched, too.”
Perhaps the diplomat was not serious, but in days when the destiny of nations was at stake, it was likely that he was speaking none too lightly of a game that had doubtless cost him many an hour of the keenest anxiety.
Of all the secret service systems, the German is the most elaborate and machine-like. It has been organized not merely to gather information, but to trample upon the laws of the United States, in order to hinder any project of the Entente Allies. Constructed in the hours of peace with the utmost care and foresight, it was easily expanded in the United States at the outbreak of the war into such a vast network that if a representative of the Allies suddenly retraced his steps or halted suddenly when around a corner, he was almost sure to bump the shins of a German spy. Germany, always methodical and thorough, possessing a genius for moulding a multitude of details into an effective whole, had prepared her secret service system with the same efficiency with which through scores of years she had equipped her military forces for battle; indeed, her secret service was a part of her military forces.
The system is based on the principle of “Lass die linke Hand nicht wissen was die rechte tut”—“let not the left hand know what the right is doing.” So thoroughly is this maxim followed that two German spies may be working side by side and not be aware of the fact. Though groups of Germans may engage in some activity with a thorough understanding of the aims of another, still the order of silence is rigorously enforced. The agents hand their information to a superior, who in turn transmits it to somebody higher up. One spy knows only the person or group of persons with whom he directly deals, sending information along devious and hidden routes up to the final assembling point.
Germany’s spy system has been the sword hand of her statesmen and her diplomats. When this war is over and the world learns of the moves, counter-moves, and Machiavellian methods of German diplomats, with their intrigues, secret understandings, and their daring attempts to force this country into dangerous situations, people will realize more clearly than to-day what a marvellous system has been behind many seemingly casual developments in this country. It will be shown how German agents have violated our laws in order to gain secret information for the benefit of Germany; how her secret agents have committed crimes in order to coerce diplomatic negotiations.
RAMIFICATIONS OF UNDERGROUND PLOTS
So perfectly organized and so responsive to the slightest suggestion from Berlin is the American branch of the Kaiser’s secret service that vast undertakings—some legitimate, many in violation of American laws—were carried out.
The magician, who invented the wireless, enabled the German General War Staff to move to New York. The splash and splutter of electricity over oceans and continents virtually transported Germany’s leading statesmen, tacticians, and scientists at will to hold sessions in Manhattan on matters arising in America and bearing on the battle-front in the many theatres of actual warfare. For instance, how many people know that the secretary to one of the generals on the Western Line was a brother to one of the most notorious woman plotters in America? Germany had foreseen the possibilities of the wireless in war and had developed secret methods of sending code messages by radiogram, when apparently only ordinary messages were being transmitted, and she had also, some way or other, got possession of the code ciphers of other nations. Every night messages have been sent out from Germany, apparently blindly, addressed to no one and have been picked up by hidden receiving stations in America and other countries.