Upon his arrival in Berlin, or wherever he may be bound, the traveler must present himself in person at the nearest police station. There his passport is again viséd, and he is given official permission to remain for a given period. But every time he makes a trip he must report himself going and coming....
III—THE COUNTRY THAT WENT "SPY MAD"
In every hotel are to be met spies in the form of guests, waiters, chambermaids, telephone operators, and bartenders. In the early part of the war these last proved their worth often, for men otherwise cautious and reticent became outspoken under the influence of a few Scotches or cocktails, which are still in vogue in Germany despite their American origin.
At one of the biggest of the Berlin hotels it is a noticeable fact that all the floor waiters are young, active, highly intelligent men. When they are asked why they are not serving at the front all have excuses on the score of health. The truth is that they are all governmental agents whose duty it is to familiarize themselves with the details of every visitor's business. That they do well. Every stranger's papers are thoroughly investigated, no matter how securely they may be locked up, before he has been in the city two days, assuming he leaves them in his room. Two members of the American diplomatic corps who made short stays in Berlin can tell singular stories on this point.
The chief of the floor waiters at this hotel—and it is illustrative of all the others—is a polished-mannered young fellow of about thirty-two who speaks English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Danish with the same facility that he reads them, and he reads them as well as he does his native German. I noticed the chief of the telephone operators, who while discharging the duties of his lowly job wore livery, attending the races in an English sport-coat, with glasses strung over his shoulders, and he went to and from the course in a taxicab, the height of luxury in wartime Berlin. One would hardly credit his income solely to the measly wages he received from his work at the switch-board. He, too, as well as his assistants, was an accomplished linguist.
It must not be thought that espionage is confined to the Americans. On the contrary, even the subjects of Germany's allies receive this attention. Austrian, Bulgarian, or Turkish, it makes no difference; all are put under the scrutiny of the secret eyes and ears of the Kaiser. Almost it is more difficult to obtain a passport permitting one to travel to Austria than it is to obtain one for a journey to America, and the examination at the Austrian border is just as severe as at the frontier between Germany and Denmark.
German spies travel on all the transatlantic liners running from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Holland to America, and back again. They find out as much as they can about their fellow-travelers, so that the secret police may be forewarned as to whom and what they are to receive. These agents are rarely employed by the German Government for the secret transmission of mail; that is usually done by men of solid reputation, American or other neutrals who are persuaded to accept the task on the ground of a service to the empire. Obviously, they must be violently pro-German before they are asked to assume the undertaking.
The difficulty of communication is one of the severe hardships that the German Government and people suffer. Mails to and from the empire are seized by the Allies, and if delivered at all, are so belated as to make them valueless. Only such cables as the Allies choose to pass are permitted transmission. Male Germans are not permitted to travel on the seas. So German communication is restricted to the wireless, to supposedly neutral couriers, and to submarines, both of the commercial type as the Deutschland, and of the war type, which have been secretly conveying important German mail to Spanish waters, where it is loaded upon friendly neutral vessels, which carry it into Spanish ports and thence forward it to America and other points. This last method has been a carefully guarded secret of the German Government. Mail sent out by Spain is not seized and censored by the Allies....
IV—A VISIT TO GENERAL LORINGHOVEN