CHAPTER XIX MINISTERIAL, DIPLOMATIC, AND CONSULAR FAILINGS
Ambassadors Selected by Influence, not Merit—German Embassies Headquarters of Espionage—How English Embassies Hampered Secret Service Work—Bernhardi on the Blockade—England's Open Doors—A Minister's Failings—British Vice-Consul's Scandalous Remuneration—Alien Consuls—How Italy was Brought into the War—How the Sympathies of Turkey and Greece were Lost—The Failure of Sir Edward Grey—Asquith's Procrastination.
The Press, it will be remembered, was during the first few years of the war periodically almost unanimous in its outcry against the Government, particularly the Foreign Office. Having regard to the facts quoted, well might it be so. But the Foreign Office is somewhat in the hands of its Ambassadors and Ministers abroad, who unfortunately sometimes appear to put their personal dignity before patriotism, and threaten to resign unless some ridiculous, possibly childish, whim is not forthwith complied with. It seems hard to believe such things can be in war-time; yet it was so. If our Ambassadors and Ministers were selected by merit, and not by influence, a vast improvement would at once become apparent, and such things as were complained of would not be likely to occur or be repeated.
One Press writer pointed out that "Great Britain lacked a watchful policeman in Scandinavia." Perhaps he will be surprised to learn that about the most active non-sleeping watchmen that could be found were there soon after war started. But these watch-dogs smelt out much too much, and most of them were caught and muzzled, or driven away, or chained up at the instigation of the Embassies. The heaviest chains, however, get broken, whilst the truth will ever out.
Naturally one Embassy would keep in constant touch with another, and with regard to this question of supplying the enemy all three Scandinavian Embassies knew, or should have known to a nicety, precisely what was doing in each country.
We in the Secret Service had been impressively warned before leaving England to avoid our Ambassadors abroad as we would disciples of the devil. In so far as we possibly could we religiously remembered and acted upon this warning. But the cruel irony of it was, our own Ministers would not leave us alone. They seemed to hunt us down, and as soon as one of us was located, no matter who, or where, or how, a protest was, we were told, immediately sent to the Foreign Office, followed by hints or threats of resignation unless the Secret Service agent in question was instantly put out of action or recalled to England.
I was informed that several of my predecessors had been very unlucky in Denmark. One had been located and pushed out of the country within a few hours of arrival. Another I heard was imprisoned for many months. I was further very plainly told by an English official of high degree that if the British Minister at —— became aware of my presence and that I was in Secret Service employ, if I did not then leave the country within a few hours of the request which would with certainty be made, I would be handed over to the police to be dealt with under their newly-made espionage legislation.
Considering that the German legations in Scandinavia increased their secretaries from the two or three employed before the war to twenty or thirty each after its outbreak; considering that it was a well-known fact, although difficult to prove, that every German Embassy was the local headquarters of their marvellously clever organisation of Secret Service[15] against which our Legations possessed rarely more than one over-worked secretary, whilst the British Embassies were a menace rather than a help to our Secret Service, it did seem to us, working on our own in England's cause, a cruel shame that these men, who posed not only as Englishmen but also as directly representing our own well-beloved King, should hound us about in a manner which made difficult our attempts to acquire the knowledge so important for the use of our country in its agony and dire peril. Dog-in-the-manger-like, they persisted in putting obstacles in the way of our doing work which they could not do themselves and probably would not have done if they could.
If unearthing the deplorable details of the leakage of supplies to Germany evoked disgust and burning anger in the breast of Mr. Basil Clarke, the Special Commissioner of the Daily Mail, surely I, and those patriotically working in conjunction with me, always at the risk of our liberty and often at the risk of our lives, might be permitted to feel at least a grievance against the Foreign Office for its weakness in listening to the protests of men like these, his Britannic Majesty's Ministers abroad; real or imaginary aristocrats appointed to exalted positions of great dignity and possibly pushed into office by the influence of friends at Court, or perhaps because, as the possessors of considerable wealth, they could be expected to entertain lavishly although their remuneration might not be excessive. Had they remembered the patriotism and devotion to their King and country which the immortal Horatio Nelson showed at Copenhagen a hundred years previously, they too could just as easily have applied the sighting glass to a blind eye, and have ignored all knowledge of the existence of any Secret Service work or agents; unless, of course, some unforeseen accident or circumstance had forced an official notice upon them.
The Foreign Office would have lost none of its efficiency or its dignity, had it hinted as much when these protests arrived; whilst England would to-day have saved innumerable lives and vast wealth had some of the British Ministers in the north of Europe resigned or been removed, and level-headed, common-sensed, patriotic business men placed in their stead as soon after war was declared with Germany as could possibly have been arranged.