Diélette, the proposed German submarine base for the Channel, and adapted not only for military and naval purposes, but most conveniently situated for spying on Cherbourg, was used for the first time as a port only a week before the outbreak of war. On July 25th, 1914, the first big vessel arrived and was loaded in the record time of twenty-four hours. Under the superintendence of Raders, the chief spy, large quantities of explosives had been accumulated. The greater part was seized by the French Government, but when the authorities attempted to visit the mine it was discovered that many of the galleries had been wilfully flooded.

After all the arrangements had been made at Diélette, the Germans began to say that the carriage of iron ore thence to a German port had been found to be too costly, so they immediately began to acquire land and make arrangements for smelting on the spot. Furnaces were built at Caen, a railway line was constructed, the canal from that town to the sea was deepened, and things were so arranged that at any given moment Caen could be cut off from its natural port, Ouistreham. The electric cable transmitting the motive force for this port and for the opening and shutting of the bridges over the canal was aerial, and passed over land acquired by another of the prime movers of the Diélette and Caen schemes, a man named Thyssen, an intimate friend of the Kaiser. This cable was cut on August 12th, 1914.

The machinery and materials, directors and workmen of all these undertakings were German, so that, although some of the capital of the company was furnished by French shareholders, practically the whole of this part of Normandy was already, when war broke out, in the hands of the Huns. Normandy in their power, they set about getting Brittany. Private individuals bought up large tracts of land and islands, and there is no doubt that the splendid port of Brest would before long have been theirs. Was not one of the Kaiser's sons familiarly known in Berlin as the "Duke of Brittany?"

I have mentioned two of the chief spies connected with the Normandy plots, Raders and Thyssen. The former left the mine at Diélette on August 1st, but was arrested. Hefter, one of his subordinates, received a telegram that his brother had been run over by a train, and so got away on July 26th, whilst a third, a so-called Swiss, named Strobel, stayed in France for a month, and even returned to Diélette in January to destroy a trunk full of papers in a house which he had occupied.

Rheims, the cathedral city of saddened memories, was another of the great spy centres of France. More than seventy inhabitants, in every imaginable disguise, had to be shot, we are told by M. Léon Daudet, who before and since the war has thrown much light on German espionage. Every woollen mill in Rheims was known to the enemy, and at the time of the invasion they sent off to Germany more than a hundred wagon-loads of models and drawings of machines, and so on, together with multitudinous bales of merchandise. All account-books were soaked with paraffin and burnt, and all workmen's dwellings were systematically destroyed.

There is no doubt that as regards works, factories, and mills of all kinds, a systematic plan was followed wherever the German system of espionage operated. Those that could in any way be useful to the invaders during their occupation were carefully preserved, and those judged prejudicial to their future commercial prosperity were as ruthlessly destroyed. It was the same with private residences. Anything belonging to spies—many of them naturalized Frenchmen—was marked by advance guards in accordance with a carefully-prepared list, and was neither burnt nor pillaged when all around was destroyed.

Henkell, of Wiesbaden, had some years ago started a wine business at Rheims, and his warehouse was built between the barracks, the aviation ground, the military fodder stores, and other official buildings. From the windows of his establishment he and his employés could keep an eye on the movement of all military trains on the three lines leading from Rheims to Chalons, Charleville, and Laon.

VII—STORY OF HERMANN VON MUMM, "PRINCE OF CHAMPAGNE"

But this man Henkell was a mere underling compared with others. Hermann von Mumm, of champagne fame, was the high priest of the spies of Rheims. A multimillionaire, he owned a splendid residence in that city, another in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and a third in the Department of the Marne. He was served by a retinue of servants, most of whom were non-commissioned officers in the German army. Besides being an enthusiastic motorist, he kept a racing stable. Many German officers visited and stayed with him. Under cover of his wine business, the acquiring of vineyards or other land, these spies openly scoured the country until they knew it in its minutest details. Everything was thus foreseen and arranged for the German occupation—the position of trenches, good shelters, cemented platforms for heavy guns, and even stores of ammunition in disused quarries. It was entirely due to Mumm and his satellites that the Huns were able to establish themselves in Champagne so firmly. After the victory he was to have been Prince of Champagne.

Thanks to Hermann von Mumm's horse-dealings and the sumptuous fétes he was accustomed to give, he succeeded in establishing relations with innumerable people willing to uphold and help him in his nefarious work. At Chantilly, the racing centre, he had quite a little army of spies under his direction.