Britain's Deadly Peril: Are We Told the Truth?

by William Le Queux

Now with regard to the danger of illicit wireless. Early in January 1914—seven months before the outbreak of war—being interested in wireless myself, and president of a Wireless Association, my suspicions were aroused regarding certain persons, some of them connected with an amateur club in the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden. Having thoroughly investigated the matter, and also having been able to inspect some of the apparatus used by these persons, I made, on February 17th, 1914, a report upon the whole matter to the Director of Military Intelligence, pointing out the ease with which undesirable persons might use wireless. The Director was absent on leave, and no action was taken in the matter.

A month later I went to the Wireless Department of the General Post Office, who had granted me my own licence, and was received there with every courtesy and thanked for my report, which was regarded with such seriousness that it was forwarded at once to the Admiralty, who have wireless under their control. In due course the Admiralty gave it over to the police to make inquiries, and the whole matter was, I suppose—as is usual in such cases—dealt with and reported upon by a constable in uniform.

Here let me record something further.

In February last I called at New Scotland Yard in order to endeavour to get the police to make inquiry into two highly suspicious cases, one of a person at Winchester, and the other concerning signal-lights seen north-east of London in the Metropolitan District. I had interviews with certain officials of the Special Department, and also with one of the Assistant Commissioners, and after much prevarication I gathered—not without surprise—that no action could be taken without the consent of the Home Office! How this latter fact can be in accordance with the Home Secretary's statement in the House of Commons I confess I fail to see.

But I warn the Government that the alien peril—now that so many civil persons have been released from the internment camps—is a serious and growing one. The responsibility should, surely, not be placed upon, or implied to rest upon, Lord Kitchener, who is so nobly performing a gigantic task. If the public believed that he was really responsible, then they, and myself, would at once maintain silence. The British public believes in Lord Kitchener, and, as one man, will follow him to the end. But it certainly will not believe or tolerate this see-saw policy of false assurances and delusion, and the attempt to stifle criticism—notably the case of the Globe—of which the Home Office have been guilty. There is a rising feeling of wrath, as well as a belief that the peril from within with which the country is faced—the peril of the thousands of enemy aliens in our midst—most of whom are not under control—together with the whole army of spies ready and daily awaiting, in impatience, the signal to strike simultaneously—is wilfully disregarded. Even the police themselves—no finer body of men than whom exists anywhere in the world—openly express disgust at the appalling neglect of the mysterious so-called "authorities" to deal with the question with a firm and strong hand.

Naturally, the reader asks why is not inquiry made into cases of real suspicion reported by responsible members of the community. I have before me letters among others from peers, clergymen, solicitors, justices of the peace, members of city councils, a well-known shipowner, a Government contractor, Members of Parliament, baronets, etc., all giving me cases of grave suspicion of spies, and all deploring that no inquiry is made, application to the police being fruitless, and asking my advice as to what quarter they should report them.

All these reports, and many more, I will willingly place at the service of a proper authority, appointed with powers to effectively deal with the matter. At present, however, after my own experience as an illustration of the sheer hopelessness of the situation, the reader will not wonder that I am unable to give advice.

Could Germany's unscrupulous methods go farther than the scandal exposed in America, in the late days of February, of how Captain Boy-Ed, Naval Attaché of the German Embassy at Washington, and the Kaiser's spy-master in the United States, endeavoured to induce the man Stegler to cross to England and spy on behalf of Germany? In this, Germany is unmasked. Captain Boy-Ed was looked upon as one of the ablest German naval officers. He is tall and broad-shouldered, speaks English fluently, and in order to Americanise his appearance has shaved off his "Prince Henry" whiskers which German naval officers traditionally affect. When he took up his duties at Washington he was a man of about forty-five, and ranked in the German navy as lieutenant-commander. But his career of usefulness as Naval Attaché, with an office in the shipping quarters of New York, has been irretrievably impaired by the charges of Stegler, whose wife produced many letters in proof of the allegation that the attaché was the mainspring of a conspiracy to secure English-speaking spies for service to be rendered by German submarines and other German warships on the British side of the Atlantic.

The plot, exposed in every paper in the United States, was a low and cunning one, and quite in keeping with the methods of the men of "Kultur." Mrs. Stegler, a courageous little woman from Georgia, saw how her husband—an export clerk in New York—was being drawn into the German net as a spy, and she stimulated her husband to give the whole game away. To the United States police, Stegler, at his wife's suggestion, was perfectly frank and open. He exposed the whole dastardly plot. He stated that Captain Boy-Ed engineered the spy-plot that cost Lody his life, and declared that in his dealings with the attaché the matter of going to England as a spy progressed to a point where the money that was to be paid to his wife for her support while he was in England was discussed. Captain Boy-Ed, Stegler went on to say, agreed to pay Mrs. Stegler £30 a month while he was in England, and furthermore agreed that if the British discovered his mission and he met the fate of Lody, Mrs. Stegler was to receive £30 a month from the German Government as long as she lived!