The German and Austrian agents at Monte Carlo, Nice, and elsewhere along the French Riviera hid their plans so carefully that the observation of direct spying was rare. Yet on other occasions than the one related above, as testified by M. Georges Prade, they were caught in the very act. The following striking instance came to the notice of this well-known sportsman in April, 1914, a few months before the war, when he was organizing the motor-boat races at Monaco.
An extremely powerful motor-glider, with an engine of four hundred horse-power, attained the enormous speed of sixty-two miles an hour in that year. Boat and motor were built by M. Despujols, a Paris manufacturer, and the glider was entered in the programme of events as piloted by a Spaniard named Soriano. On the last day of the races everybody heard with surprise that the boat would not take part in the trials, as the motor had already been taken to pieces and sent away. A little later it transpired that a buyer, name unknown, had paid no less than two thousand four hundred pounds for this specialized motor, and, though it was utilizable only for racing, had withdrawn it from the contest. The mystery deepened when it was further learnt that the motor had been sent first to Lyons, and thence to the well-known electrical and dirigible manufacturing firm of Siemens-Schuckert, at Biesdorf, near Berlin.
The whole truth came out in the course of an official inquiry conducted by M. Prade, to whom M. Despujols confided the details of the strange affair. The purchaser was an individual named Schmidt, who pretended he was a Russian, but who always steered German motor-boats and raced under the German flag. He was to have competed against M. Despujols' boat, but preferred to kill two birds with one stone and buy him out. Working in league with an engineer of the famous firm of Bosch, the magneto manufacturers, who represented the German house of Siemens, and with a workman who, although he was known to be earning only two pounds a week, was discovered to have distributed bank-notes very lavishly in return for information, Schmidt learnt that the motor in question was just what he was looking for. Sent to Berlin at the end of April, 1914, it was destined to form part of a curious motor-boat torpedo, filled with explosives, running automatically, and controlled from a distance by Hertzian waves. The value of such an engine as this in a naval engagement, had it been brought to perfection in all its parts, is self-evident.
Industrial espionage, of which this motor story is a typical example, was practised on a very large scale at Nice. The capital of the Riviera, where the Italian population is very numerous, was regarded by the Germans as one of the best centres for their operations when Italy came into the war on the side of the Entente Powers. Hence the completeness of their spy organization. Their principal meeting-place was at the bookshop of Hohberg, a vender of German "Kultur" in the Rue Maccarani. Hohberg was the publisher of a paper called Deutsche in Nizza, which had a circulation of twelve thousand copies weekly and contained articles with such titles as "In the Interests of Germanism." It heartily recommended its readers to patronize the Reichsadler-Apotheke, which masqueraded as an Anglo-Russian pharmacy, or the notorious spy Hübner, a florist of the Rue Masséna. It warmly upheld a campaign in favour of Riviera sanatoriums—run by German or Austrian doctors—such as the ones near Gorbio and Mentone, and which were admirably suitable as hiding-places for German officers, supposed to be convalescing but really spying. It contained a complete list of German doctors, tailors, etc., and frankly invited every Boche to pay a call at the Nice office, which thus served as a central organization for all the spies who, as tourists, naturalists, botanists, masseuses, chiropodists, and quacks overran that town and the whole of the beautiful Alpes-Maritimes.
"The man's topographical knowledge is extraordinary," said a Nice friend of mine one day, referring to a young Austrian, the tutor to the children of Jellineck-Mercédés, who used to spend every available holiday tramping about the lavender-covered hills near Breil and the Franco-Italian frontier. "Although I've carried my beehives from place to place in these parts during more than twenty years, and pride myself on knowing every inch of the ground, yet he has often astonished me by his references to this or that mountain pathway or little-known landmark. These Austrians and Germans, almost without exception, possess a faculty for geographical surveying, linked with a strange liking for pedestrianism in the neighbourhood of frontiers and forts. Can that be merely a coincidence?"
This was some years before the war, and at the time my friend's declaration produced no more than a passing impression. But I have since come to see what an important truth and warning it contained, the very kernel of the thesis which another clear thinker and Alsatian patriot, the Abbé Wetterlé, developed with great skill at the general meeting of the Touring Club de France on December 5th, 1915.
IV—HOW EVERY GERMAN TOURIST BECAME A SPY
The Abbé Wetterlé showed in his lecture how every German, through his civil and military education, has become a potential spy; how, on going forth to spend his holidays in France or elsewhere abroad, he could not help being the active agent of those directors of his conscience, the Pan-Germanists.
"Recollect, everywhere and always, that you belong to the supreme race," they said to him, through their newspapers, pamphlets, and tracts. "Even if you know the language of the country where you are travelling, speak nothing but German. Never put up at any hotels but those kept by Germans, and amongst these choose only the ones kept by compatriots who you know have preserved all their attachment for the Fatherland. Insist in these establishments that they serve you with German products, and that the bill of fare is drawn up in your native tongue. Drink only beer imported from Germany. In the shops buy only those goods which bear the mark 'Made in Germany.' Praise wherever you go German industry, German methods, German science. To keep your feet on the right path, we will supply you with guides, in which you will find every needful address. Our good counsel will accompany you everywhere. And thus, whilst amusing and instructing yourself, you will render signal service to your country and will become a pioneer of Germanism in those countries which we wish, progressively, to dominate. Moreover, never forget in the course of your travels that you can make a thousand useful observations. Note down what you see and send us the information you collect. Details apparently the most insignificant may be of use to our industrial, commercial, and patriotic societies. Finally, strengthen the patriotic feeling with our compatriots established abroad. Tell them that Germany does not forget them, and that it is to their interest to remain in close relations with it. If you act in this way—and you cannot do otherwise, for we shall keep a sharp eye on you—you will contribute largely to the glory of Germany, which to-morrow will dominate the world."
This picture is in no way exaggerated. Identical language was addressed to German tourists by the Pan-Germanist Association and the Deutschtum im Ausland Society, and the guides they published inculcated the principles of the most barefaced espionage.