The spies of Germany are to be found everywhere, yet the Home Office and the police have shown themselves quite incapable of dealing effectively with them. The War Office, under the excellent administration of Lord Kitchener, has surely been busy enough with military matters, and has had no time to deal with the enemy in our midst. Neither has the Admiralty. Therefore the blame must rest upon the Home Office, who, instead of dealing with the question with a firm and drastic hand, actually issued a communiqué declaring that the spy peril no longer existed!
As an illustration of Germany's subtle preparations in the countries she intends to conquer, and as a warning to us here in Great Britain, surely nothing can be more illuminating than the following, written by a special correspondent of the Times with the French Army near Rheims. That journal—with the Daily Mail—has always been keenly alive to the alien peril in England, and its correspondent wrote:—
"Nowhere else in France have the Germans so thoroughly prepared their invasion as they did in Champagne, which they hoped to make theirs. In the opinion of the inhabitants of Épernay, the saving of the town from violent pillage is only due to the desire of the Germans not to ravage a country which they regarded as being already German soil. The wanton bombardment of Rheims is accepted almost with delight, as being a clear indication that the enemy has been awakened by the battle of the Marne from those pleasant dreams of conquest which inflamed the whole German nation with enthusiasm at the outset of the war.
"The spy system thought out in time of peace in preparation for what is happening to-day has served Germany well, and every day the accuracy of German gunfire pays a tribute to the zeal and efficiency with which these loathsome individuals accomplish a task for which they have sold their honour as Frenchmen. Hardly a week passes without some fresh discovery being made. At the headquarters of the different army corps along this section of the front, hardly a day passes without the arrest and examination of suspect peasants or strangers from other provinces. Elaborate underground telephone installations have been discovered and destroyed.
"One day a gendarme who wished to water his horse approached a well in the garden of an abandoned house. At the bottom of the well there was not truth but treason. Comfortably installed in this disused shaft a German spy was engaged in making his report by telephone to the German Intelligence Department.
"The mentality of the spy can never be explained, for how can one account for the mixture of the fine quality of bravery and the despicable greed of money which will keep a man in a city like Rheims, exposed every hour of the day and night to death from the splinter of a shell fired at the town by his own paymasters? I do not suggest for a moment that of the 20,000 people who still inhabit the town of Rheims and its cellars there is any large proportion of traitorous spies, but to the French Intelligence Department there is no question whatsoever that there is still a very efficient spying organisation at work in the city."
Among us here in Great Britain, I repeat, are men—hundreds of them—who are daily, nay hourly, plotting our downfall, and are awaiting the signal to act as the German General Staff has arranged that they shall act. To attempt to disguise the fact longer is useless. We have lived in the fool's paradise which the Government prepared for us long enough. We were assured that there would be no war. But war has come, and thousands of the precious lives of our gallant lads have been lost—and thousands more will yet be lost.
We cannot trust the German tradesman who has even lived long among us apparently honourable and highly respected. A case in point is that of a man who, for the past twenty-six years, has carried on a prosperous business in the North of London. At the outbreak of war he registered himself as an alien, and one day asked the police for a permit to travel beyond the regulation five miles in order to attend a concert. He was watched, and it was found that, instead of going to the concert, he had travelled in an opposite direction, where he had met and conferred with a number of his compatriots who were evidently secret agents. This is but one illustration of many known cases in the Metropolis.
Can we still close our eyes to what Germany intends to do? The Government knew the enemy's intentions when, in 1908, there was placed before them the Emperor's speech, which I have already reproduced.
Perhaps it may not be uninteresting if I recount how I myself was approached by the German General Staff—and I believe others must have been approached in a like manner. The incident only serves to show the "astuteness"—as Lord Haldane has so well put it—of our enemies.
One day, in September, 1910, I received through a mutual friend, a lady, an invitation to dine at the house of a prominent official at the War Office, who, in his note to me, declared that he had greatly admired my patriotism, and asked me to dine en famille one Sunday evening. I accepted the invitation, and went. The official's name, I may here say, figures often in your daily newspapers to-day. To my great surprise, I found among the guests the German Ambassador, the Chancellor of the Embassy, the Military and Naval Attachés with their ladies, and several popular actors and actresses.
In a corner of the drawing-room after dinner, I found myself chatting with a German Attaché, who turned the conversation upon my anti-German writings. By his invitation, I met him at his club next day. He entertained me to an expensive luncheon, and then suddenly laughed at me for what he termed my misguided propaganda.
"There will be no war between your country and mine," he assured me. "You are so very foolish, my dear Mr. Le Queux. You will ruin your reputation by these fixed ideas of yours. Why not change them? We desire no quarrel with Great Britain, but we, of course, realise that you are doing what you consider to be your duty."