“There are others—certain others too—whom we may also judge by their works,” remarked Trustram grimly—“their subtle, fiendish works, aimed at the downfall of our Empire. If the truth had been realised when Lord Roberts started out to speak—and when the whole Government united to poke fun and heap ridicule upon the great Field-Marshal, who knew more of real warfare than the whole tangle of red-tape at Whitehall combined—then to-day thousands of brave men, the flower of our youth, who have laid down their lives in the trenches in Flanders, would have been alive to-day. No!” he cried angrily. “There are traitors in our midst, and yet if one dares to suspect, if one dares to breathe a word, even to inquire and bring absolute evidence, the only thing which the khaki-clad Department will vouchsafe to the informant is a meagre printed form to acknowledge that one’s report has been ‘received.’ After that, the matter is buried.”
“Perhaps burnt,” laughed Sir Houston.
“Most probably,” Trustram asserted. “To me, an Englishman, the whole situation is as utterly appalling as it is ludicrous. We must win. And it is up to us all to see that we do win.”
“Excellent!” cried Sir Houston. “And so we will—all three of us. I’ll go to the War Office to-morrow and try and see someone in authority. You, Sainsbury, will come with me, and you’ll make your statement—you’ll tell them all that you know. They must take some notice of it!”
“I should be quite ready,” was Jack’s reply. “But will they believe me? They didn’t believe poor Jerrold, remember—and he actually held proof positive of certain traitorous acts. The whole idea of the Intelligence Department is to pooh-pooh any report furnished by a civilian. Indeed, Jerrold showed me a signed statement by a British officer whom the authorities had actually threatened to cashier because he had assisted him to investigate some night-signalling in Surrey!”
“Impossible!” cried Sir Houston.
“It’s the absolute truth. I’ve had the statement in my own hands. He was an officer stationed in a town in Surrey.”
“Well,” remarked the great pathologist. “Let us allow the past bygones to be bygones. Let us work—not in resentment of the past, but for our protection in the future. What shall we do?”
The two men were silent. On the one hand they saw the fortress-wall which the War Office placed between the civilian and the man in khaki. Reports of espionage were extremely unwelcome at Whitehall. And yet how could men in khaki and assistant-provost-marshals, with their crimson brassards of special-constable or veteran volunteer conspicuousness, ever hope to cope with the clever, subtle and wary spies of Germany? The whole thing was too farcical for words.
The British public, trustful of this cult of khaki and of a Cabinet who daily bleated forth “All is well!” had no knowledge, for instance, of the cleverly-laid plan of the enemy in Russia—the plot to blow up Ochta, the Russian Woolwich. Later, the English, in their ignorance of German intrigue, asked each other why no forward move was being made—the move promised us in the spring. They knew nothing of that great disaster, so cleverly accomplished by Germany’s spies, the blowing up of Ochta, that disaster which entirely crippled Russia, and which resulted, later on, in her retreat from Warsaw. It was this—alas that I should pen these lines!—which prevented the British and French from advancing during the whole spring and summer of 1915.