Tjaard Kruger was succeeded in office by a most clever and interesting celebrity, Dr. Leyds, Secretary of State, who was the only man who made the department a success. He showed the unfailing tact of the born diplomat. He was a great reader of character and formed a pretty accurate estimate of a person in a surprisingly short time. He conducted his affairs so delicately and diplomatically that he won universal esteem and the staunchest and most loyal adherents. He would hand over disagreeable work to a subordinate so gracefully that it gave the impression that he was relegating the work, not because it irked him, but because he had found a man more capable than himself—the man whom he had long sought.
Dr. Leyds' letters of instructions to his agents were clear, precise, and exacting, and provided for every possible contingency; yet had they fallen into the hands of the unauthorised they would have conveyed little. These letters bespoke the diplomat. They would have come safely out of an investigation by a committee of suspicious spy-hunters.
When he required to "draw" any person he would instruct his agents to ascertain carefully that person's tastes, habits, prejudices, and amusements. These he would study to the minutest trifle, and by skilful play upon a weakness, or by the evidence of a similar taste, he would successfully penetrate to the most exclusive and jealously guarded sanctum sanctorum.
Mr. Hamil Grant is an author who may be congratulated upon his carefully-compiled work, entitled, "Spies and Secret Service," which contains the history of espionage from earliest times to the present day. He shows how the practice was used by Joshua, David, Absalom, and the mighty warriors whose deeds of valour are recorded in the Old Testament. He quotes Alexander Mithridates, the King of Pontus, who made himself the master of twenty-five languages and spent seven years wandering through countries he subsequently fought and vanquished. He traces developments from Alexander the Great, who lived 300 years before Christ and was the first known to start secret post censorship; from Hannibal, who could never have crossed from Andalusia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into the plains of Piedmont to fight the battle of Trebia (218 B.C.) without the assistance he received from the intelligence scouts who preceded him. He points out how Cæsar and the great generals who conquered Europe invariably used scouts and intelligence agents. He quotes Napoleon's admission of indebtedness to Polyænus for original strategic ideas of espionage; whilst he has much to say in proving that no war of either ancient or modern times was successful without it.
His most interesting chapters are those dealing with the rise of the Prussian empire, which he claims to have been built almost entirely upon such an unenviable foundation. The author has taken the liberty of quoting somewhat numerous extracts as follows:
"The Modern System of espionage seems to have been originally conceived by Frederick the Great of Prussia and subsequently elaborated into a kind of National Philosophy by writers like Nietzsche, Treitschke and Bernhardi. But a nation which is ruled as if it were a country of convicts actual or potential cannot fail inevitably to develop in a pronounced degree those symptoms of character and predisposition which land its converts in the correction institutions where they are most commonly to be found.
"Baron Stein, a well-known statesman of the Napoleonic period, was responsible for the practical application of the theories in the philosophy of Frederick the Great. He was followed by the celebrated Dr. Stieber, who had the handling of millions of pounds at his discretion and whose character had all those elements which were associated with the criminal who operates along the higher lines. He was a barrister, born in Prussia in 1818, and he first curried favour with the officials by persuading his friends and relations to enter into illegal acts in order that he might betray them for his own advantage. The German word stieber seems appropriate; in our language it means sleuth-hound. In appearance he represented an inquisitor of old. His eyes were almost white and colourless, whilst there were hard drawn lines about his mouth. With subordinates he adopted the loud airs of a master towards slaves. In the presence of high authorities he was self-abasing and subdued, with a smile of deferential oiliness and acquiescence, with much rubbing of hands.
"He seemed to have commenced Secret Service work with a standing salary of £1,200 a year, in addition to which he received side emoluments. He organised an internal and external service with complete independence from all other official bodies, subsidised by full and adequate appropriations from Parliament. His system was thorough. He commenced by spying into the privacies of the Royal family and Court and Government officials, Army and Naval officers, and everybody of the slightest importance, down to the labourers' and the workmen's organisations. In a very few years his nominal salary had risen to £18,000, but about 1863, in spite of his having been honoured with every German decoration conceivable, he was for a couple of years suspended from office, during which period he organised the Russian Secret Police.
"With Stieber's assistance, Bismarck struck down Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870. Even Moltke, the great Prussian organiser of victory, was astonished and astounded at the vast amount of valuable military information by which Stieber had facilitated the rapid advance of his armies.
"As a preliminary journey into France in 1867, Stieber appointed 1,000 spies, within the invasion zone, with head centres at Brussels, Lausanne, and Geneva; and on his return he handed over to Bismarck some 1,650 reports which contained full military and original maps of the French frontiers and the invasion zone. Year by year this army of spies was increased, until in 1870 Stieber had between 30,000 and 40,000 on his pay-roll.
"In 1867 an attempt was made on the life of Alexander the Second of Russia when on a visit to Paris in order to create a closer Franco-Russian Alliance, which dastardly act was planned by Stieber in order to be frustrated by him. When the assassin was tried for his life the jury were bought by Prussian gold to acquit the accused in order that the two nations could be kept apart and the object of the journey thereby frustrated, but whether it was the fertile brain of Bismarck or Stieber who planned the scheme of the plot will never be known.
"In 1870 Stieber boasted that he controlled the opinions of some eighty-five writers in the French daily and weekly newspapers, furthermore that he had paid sympathisers on the Austrian, Italian, and English Press in addition.
"By 1880 Stieber and Prince Bismarck had extended their organised system materially as well as personally, which can be seen in the present day network of railway lines and stations controlled solely for militarist uses rather than for the development of the country; whilst the funds demanded yearly from the Reichstag for Secret Service work increased proportionately.
"No one but a native of Prussia was allowed to hold any responsible position in Prussia, yet in 1884 there were 15,000 Germans or semi-foreigners serving on the French railways, all of them more or less in the employ of the German Espionage Bureau and prepared to destroy the plant, the lines, the buildings, and to paralyse French mobilisation at the word of command.
"In addition to this, Stieber's plans embraced upheavals in all industrial classes.
"It was German gold which instigated and carried through the Dreyfus agitation, also the Association Bill which brought about the disestablishment of the Church of France and the so-called Agadir incident in the spring of 1911, which coincided so remarkably with the devastating strikes in Great Britain.
"It is a cry of the Fatherland that every good citizen is required to pay taxes, build barracks, and shut his mouth.
"The recent agitations in Ireland and practically all the strikes in England have been indirectly supported by German gold; to which the circulation of the extraordinary manifesto in August, 1914, was also directly traceable. £4,000 was used for the purposes of the French Railway Strike of 1893; in the same year a local subscription of £48 was raised for a bootmakers' strike at Amiens, whilst an alleged sympathetic £1,000 was sent from Frankfort.
"The English suffragettes are also said to have received thousands of pounds from unknown sources which in reality were German.
"Stieber died in 1892, possessed of over £100,000.
"As a part of his deep-rooted policy multitudes of Germans were sent to France, England, and elsewhere to establish small businesses, practically every one of which was subsidised by the German Secret Service Office; as also were German clerks and others who could obtain positions giving access to information of any value. Stieberism practically demoralised the entire German nation, whilst it inoculated its poison into other European countries in such a manner that their energies and sound judgment seem to have been paralysed in more ways than one.
"Stieberists follow the same creed as Jesuits, 'All is justifiable in the interests of the future of the Fatherland.'
"Major Steinhauer succeeded Stieber, and the present Secret Service Bureau of Berlin was in his hands when this war started. He also was a past master in the art of organisation. The entry into Brussels of 700,000 men without inconvenience or mishap was practically entirely due to his organisation. Over 8,000 spies had been placed on the various routes between Aix-la-Chapelle and Saint Quentin, whilst those in the Belgian capital had some two or three years previously actually worked out on paper the billets and lodgings for all those troops in advance.[6]
"The ordinary German Secret Service agent started with a salary of £200 a year and 10s. a day expenses, with a bonus for each job to an unlimited amount. Whilst abroad or on any matter of delicacy, out-of-pocket allowances were increased to £2 a day, but 33% of all current monies owing was kept back as a safety-valve until he left the service.
"Amongst the members were to be found Princes, Dukes, Counts, Barons, Lawyers, Clergymen, Doctors, Actresses, Actors, Mondaines, Demi-Mondaines, Journalists, Authors, Money-lenders, Jockeys, Printers, Waiters, Porters; practically every class of society was represented.
"The remuneration cannot be considered high when compared with the dangers undertaken, and since no official countenance was ever given (nor indeed expected) on the part of the agents once one of them fell into the hands of the enemy, the game was far from being worth the worry and strain it entailed.
"The training and examination before efficiency was reached were far more difficult than our cadets would have to pass at Woolwich or Sandhurst, or even officers for a staff college appointment."
The head offices of the German Secret Service Department, which was presided over by the Kaiser himself, were situated in Berlin at Koenigergratzerstrasse No. 70. So far as callers were concerned the same routine was followed as at our War Office and Admiralty: the portals were guarded by commissionaires who kept records of every visitor, with such particulars as they could gather. Army or Naval officers were in charge of all departments. They planned the work, but they never or very rarely executed it. The secretaries and general assistants were all civilians. No Ambassadors, Ministers, secretaries of legation, envoys, plenipotentiaries, consuls, or recognised officials were permitted to interfere in any way with the work of this department, although they undoubtedly gave it every material assistance whenever they could. History has clearly proved this. No jealousies or acts of favouritism to relatives and the nominees of indirect influences were countenanced. For such an offence the very highest in office would at once be deposed and punished, whilst there was no appeal to a Parliament, Congress, Chamber of Deputies, or political newspapers, against the Kaiser's decision. He was not only the supreme head of what he himself described as "My army of spies scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South America, as well as the other parts of the world, where German interests may come to a clash with a foreign power," but he took a very keen interest in their individual work. Efficiency and obedience only counted in his estimation.
The persons selected for this work were specially trained in preparation for the prospective tasks ahead of them. For days, weeks, and months, as the case may be, they were grounded in topography, trigonometry, mechanics, army and naval work; with a mass of detail which might be of service, possibly when least expected. Their studies embraced visits to the big Government construction works and yards; they were made familiar with all necessary knowledge concerning war-ships, submarines, torpedoes, aircraft, guns and fortifications; silhouettes of vessels; uniforms of officers; secret surveys of interesting districts; signals, codes, telegraphs and multitudinous other matters which the thorough-going German considered absolutely essential to the training of an efficient Secret Service agent.
Mr. Le Queux, to whom all honour is due for his persistent and patriotic efforts in unmasking German spies, their systems and organisations in this country, corroborates Mr. Hamil in recording that the German Secret Service dates back to about 1850, when an obscure Saxon named Stieber began the espionage of revolutionary socialists, from which original effort the present department originated. Also that the work was fostered under the royal patronage of Frederick William, the King of Prussia, which guarded it against anti-counter plotting from both militarism and police, and which permitted it to grow and flourish until it ultimately became the most powerful and feared department of the State. In August, 1914, with an income approximating £750,000 per annum, the agents of the German Secret Service extended all over the world, organised to perfection as are the veins and arteries perambulating the flesh and tissues of a man's body.
Herr Stieber's present-day successor, Herr Steinhauer, also seemed to enjoy the full confidence of His Majesty the Kaiser. He was then between forty and fifty years of age, charming in manners, excellent in education and of good presence. This officer of the Prussian Guard is well known throughout the capitals of Europe. He has collected information concerning every foreign land which is almost incredible. He had maps of the British Isles which in minute detail and accuracy surpass our own Ordnance Survey. The Norwegian fiords were better known to German navigation lieutenants than to the native pilots and fishermen who daily use them. These are facts which practical experts in many countries have seen put to successful tests since the world-war started.