Chapter XXIII: Conclusion: Bibliography 309 (6)

In regard to the second part of his programme—namely, that which was to create factions, unrest and revolutionary conditions in countries which were to become the objects of German military aggression—Stieber developed the ideas which still hold good in the plans of the German Secret Service. The main principle underlying his plan of campaign was the fomenting of industrial disorders. In each case a literary propaganda was to precede action, which was first to be undertaken by trained spies and _agents provocateurs_ who were capable, by the common methods of political and industrial agitators, of promoting class antipathies. German enterprise in this respect has not been confined to France, but has been active in every country in Europe, including England. In 1893 the successor of Bismarck, Count Caprivi, signed an appropriation of £4000 for the purposes of "providing foreign pamphlets and publications useful to the policy of the Empire." In later years the sum was increased to £20,000, while a number of paid agitators, inciting the great industrial centres of France, of Belgium, of Russia and (it is recorded) of England, is said to have drawn large sums from the German funds. The recent epidemic of industrial strikes in France, Russia and England is declared to have been fomented by paid agitators working on behalf of German authorities—some of them unconsciously, and as a result of the influence exerted by publications which had been subsidised by German gold. There are French writers who still maintain that the Dreyfus agitation was initiated and supported with the connivance of the highest military authorities in Berlin for the purpose of destroying one of the most potent forces in France—namely, belief and trust in the Army. Most of us, at all events, will recollect how towards the close of the momentous _Affaire_, when the Republic was already weakened by the series of national and international crises attending on the entire event, ominous threats of mobilisation were more than once made from Berlin. Again, the memorable Associations Bill, which enacted the disestablishment of the Church in France, was said to have owed its conception to German secret-service agents. To this movement—bound in any case to awaken the cupidity of venal politicians, in view of the vast Congregational possessions involved—succeeded the era of Syndicalist unrest, and finally the outbreak of the war of 1914. Nor can Englishmen forget that the so-called Agadir incident of the spring of 1911 coincided with one of the most devastating strikes Britain has yet known. In view of what we now know, there can hardly be a doubt that German plans and policies had meditated the paralysing of our transport system and our coal-supplies. Nor is there, again, the least possible doubt that for many years past German "philosophers," drawing pay from the secret-service funds, have been instructing British as well as French and Russian workmen in the art of combining "in defence of their rights" against the privileged classes. In Germany such revolutionary doctrines never leave the theoretical stage, nor could they do so, given the system of government which is in principle and practice hardly different from martial law. Most people who have been resident for any time in Germany will, in this regard, recollect an old piece of advice which friendly elders are accustomed to give their juniors—namely, that in the Fatherland every good citizen is required to "pay taxes, build barracks and shut his mouth." When one considers this pearl of civic wisdom in conjunction with the unwritten law which requires that even the public portraits of all royal and princely personages shall be criticised favourably, or not at all, one is bound to admit that anything like Anglo-Saxon liberty of opinion or outspokenness is still far removed from the ordinary life of your German of to-day.

In order to indicate the operation of the German secret service in regard to the spreading of revolutionary unrest among neighbouring countries, we cannot do better than cite the publication which was addressed to Ireland, the supposedly "revolted province," in the early days of August 1914. Here are the terms of that historic manifesto which moved all Ireland to mirth for many a day:

"IRISH FOOLS!

"Have you forgotten that England is your only enemy?

"Have you forgotten, Kathleen, that you are willing to shed your blood to win England's battles?

"Have you lost your wits that you believe all the ridiculous lies published against the Germans in the Jingo papers?

"Have you forgotten how the English treated the Boers?

"Have you forgotten Ninety-Eight?

"Have you forgotten the Manchester Martyrs?

"Have you forgotten the K.O.S.B. murders?

"Have you forgotten that the Future lies in your hands?

"Have you forgotten that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity?

"GOD SAVE IRELAND."

It is hardly necessary to say that so obviously crude and inartistic an appeal had no effect upon an essentially acute and artistic race; and its positive inartisticity bears the hall-mark of your Prussian's incapacity for entering into the more intimate feelings of men of other nations, a point which need hardly be laboured, having in view recent and current bovine misconceptions on the part of German diplomatic agents both in Europe and America.

A more serious attempt to "revolutionise" French railway systems was made in 1893 some few months after the granting of £4000 from the secret-service funds for the purposes of international pamphleteering. In August of that year the Mesnard pamphlet made its appearance containing an appeal to all workers connected with the railroad systems of France and urging them to take advantage of their country's dependence upon them in order to wring concessions in money from the Government, failing which a general and permanent strike was to be declared having the inevitable result of paralysing the country's energies and exposing it to attack on the part of its traditional enemy. The pamphlet was proved to have been issued from Geneva, a chief centre of the German international secret-service body. It was promptly disavowed by the labour unions of France, and it was well recognised at that period that its appearance was timed to create an industrial upheaval to coincide with the friction which the Dreyfus Affair was then causing between French and German diplomatists. During the course of several general strikes which have taken place in France within the past twenty years, it has clearly come to light that the charitable subscriptions made in support of the families of strikers by Frenchmen have been exceeded by contributions coming from German "sympathisers," in the proportion of twenty sovereigns to one. In the famous strike of boot-makers at Amiens in May 1893, for example, local subscriptions amounted to £48. At least £1000 was sent direct from Frankfurt![2] "In the last fifteen years," wrote Lanoir in 1910, "the instigation of strikes in French industries has been raised by the directors of the German Secret Police to the degree of a real principle of government." The same authority states that in 1893 he heard an ultra-Radical parliamentary candidate for the Seine Department declare that a German admirer, whom he did not know, had sent him £100 towards his election expenses. Stieber in his Memoirs affects to believe that this sum is commonly sent to any French parliamentarian who advocates a policy which is thought to be useful to German imperial interests.

Stieber died in 1892, being honoured with a public funeral at which the highest personages in Berlin were officially represented. His fortune amounted to nearly £100,000 of our money and he possessed both a town residence in Berlin and a villa in the Hartz Range. He had been successful in accumulating throughout his public career twenty-three decorations testifying to his _Honour_, and as this would appear to have been his chief ambition in life, there can be little doubt that the sleuth died happy. It is customary to say that Stieber took with him to his grave the essential secrets underlying his organisation of a national system of internal and external espionage. Frankly we think that this can hardly have been the case, since the operations of German espionage have at all times clearly proved themselves traceable to definitely ascertainable objects and plans. Nor do we think that the German system holds anything more in the way of elemental secrets to be revealed, and the excellent systems of counter-espionage adopted by British and French authorities justify us in our belief. Price Collier's pregnant statement that the Germans have organised themselves into an organisation, ahead of which they are incapable of thinking or planning, may well be held to apply to their organised espionage, and Stieber's elaboration of its arts may be taken to have reached the highest possible point. In bursts of friendly confidence, and presumably as a matter of proving the ineluctable superiority of the Teuton over the poor Anglo-Saxon, German lecturers in English universities have occasionally permitted their patriotic sentiments so far to exceed the bounds of official reticence as to throw a certain amount of light upon this mystic bag-of-tricks which is going to assure to the House of Hohenzollern the overlordship of the five continents and the seven seas. According to one of these German professors whom we well and, indeed, affectionately remember, the high priests of the policy of Prussianisation have thought out the whole matter along lines alleged to have been laid down by the Hebrew Elders in accordance with their policy of recovering the world for the Chosen Race. According to this interesting system of Jewish Eugenics, the racial stock of Sem is to be permanently assured as to its integrity by enforcing the marriage of all male Jews with Jewesses. Result: all-Jewish offspring. The superfluous women of the Hebrew families are to be distributed as far as possible among the Gentile males, especially among those who possess means, with the object of ensuring that the resultant offspring shall possess such an admixture of Jewish blood as to make it at least sympathetic towards Jews and Jewish ideas. And as sympathetic qualities come in the main from the distaff side, the eugenic results must inevitably favour Hebrew propagandism. We might go further into this matter and point out that the Jewish rite of circumcision was not meant to be simply hygienic in its effects and reach. We will not labour the point, however, but proceed to indicate the analogy—according to the learned German lecturer.

Prussia, said our authority, had appropriated large sums from the indemnity of £200,000,000 sterling which she had obtained from France in 1870, for the purpose of establishing her "national missionaries" in every quarter of the world. Men were chosen according to their abilities to preside over the destinies of foreign commercial houses, banking institutions, agencies of all kinds, commission and money-lending businesses and contracting corporations. These men were really in the pay of the Berlin authorities who were financing the various firms in question and paying their agents large or small profits in proportion to the turnover of each particular business. It was, however, certain that every German, no matter what his position, was really acting in the interests of Germany, and so the ubiquitous German clerk was enabled to undersell the labour of the British clerk for the good reason that the deficit was offset in his particular case by a quarterly grant from official German sources. The intermarriage of Germans with British women was not only smiled upon, but a premium was actually paid in each case and unknown to the women. The children were, as far as possible, brought up in sympathy with German institutions and ideas and taught to revere the chief of Hohenzollern as the potential overlord of every country which came within the operations and purview of German ambitions and land-lust. In the event of war and in accordance with this propagandism, "everything went," as the Americans say. In the early days of the conquest of Belgian territories in 1914 we saw how particular attention was paid to the younger unmarried women, as in Louvain, to give but one example. These women were interned in a sort of concentration camp and systematically seduced, making it a last possible hope for many a hapless victim to accept a German husband, who in his own turn was offered either a premium or promotion, whether civil or military, for marrying the lady, as the saying is. It is not necessary to pursue this theme to the extent to which it is capable of being emphasised. It is sufficient for us to reflect that the main principles upon which German ideas of conquest are based are not only vicious and immoral in themselves, but are openly admitted and encouraged by the German civil, military and cultural authorities who have raised their apostolic voices in the cause of Prussian propagandism. Those who possess even an elementary acquaintance with the history of nations do not require to be told that, with the object of forcing "sympathies," methods quite as outrageous as those cited above have more than once been resorted to and, notably, in the early days of Rome's founding. It has been well said that Stieberism has had the result of demoralising the entire German nation by putting a premium on treachery and immorality in the pursuit of special information and so has made that trade a career open to the talents of all who care to adopt it. Responsible ministers have declared more than once in the imperial parliament at Berlin their concurrence in the view that "all is justifiable" in the interests of the future of the Fatherland, and in this regard we remember that not so long ago Herr Richter, the leader of the Opposition, raised a protest reflecting on the doubtful character of the secret-service agents of the Government only to receive from Puttkamer the now-stereotyped retort:

"It is the right and duty of the German Imperial Government to employ all possible and necessary methods in order to secure for the State the benefits of useful intelligence, and if the Minister of Police has had success by employing doubtful persons for his purposes, I personally express to him my satisfaction and thanks."

The particular methods to which Richter had taken exception included the bribing of magistrates, politicians and wealthy industrialists to give up information in their possession. Some of the most disreputable night-houses in Berlin were protected by the police for the reason that they had become the fashionable rendezvous of officers and diplomatists who, in their cups, were easily induced to give up information regarding their superiors, which the secret-service sleuths were anxious to obtain with the object of creating situations that left important public men at their own mercy or else at the mercy of men immeasurably higher up. Much has been written about the "high sense of virtue" which prompted the famous revelations which were made by Harden in his publication _Die Zukunft_ in 1907. We do not personally question the sense of virtue possessed by the German editor, but it is certain that the opinion was current in Berlin in the succeeding year that reasons of State had required the removal from official life of many of the high social and political personages implicated in the scandals, and that the apparently "private" information possessed by an editor was selected as the easiest means of forcing them irrevocably from public life. Knowing what we do of the exiguous liberties of the Prussian Press, it is quite obvious that the life of an editor who should venture, of his own initiative and authority, to divulge a tenth part of the story which was printed in the _Zukunft_, would not have been worth an hour's purchase in militaristic Berlin. And here we recur to the statement once made by an old servant of Frederick the Great to the famous Count d'Antraigues: "That day on which you begin to imagine your services are indispensable to him will be your last day. He has no heart, and the very thought that you possess a claim on his friendship will suffice to destroy you."

It is essential before passing from Stieber to consider his methods of covering a foreign country with a fully organised system of German spies, and all the more so because the work done in modern days by Steinhauer and his congeners is based altogether on the conceptions of Bismarck's sleuth. We have seen that in 1870, when the German armies crossed the frontiers of France, they had already been assured, through the energies and foresight of Stieber, of the co-operation of some 36,000 spies in Northern and Eastern France who were to smooth the way for von Moltke's advancing legions. Indeed, Stieber's work largely discounts that of both Bismarck and von Moltke, if it does not wholly supersede it. In his Memoirs the sleuth tells how Bismarck, when told that Jules Favre was putting out feelers for the surrender of Paris in 1871, sent for his lieutenant, instructing him to keep Favre under the closest possible observation during the course of the negotiations. The Prussian and French statesmen met at Versailles, where Stieber had made all necessary arrangements for lodging the visitor. He selected for this purpose, and unknown, of course, to Favre, the headquarters of the German Secret Police Service—Stieber's own office. The Frenchman was given as valet a man whom the proprietor highly recommended. This valet was Stieber himself, who, during Favre's whole stay at Versailles, acted for the statesman in the most menial capacities, taking care during his master's absence to ransack the latter's luggage and examine all his voluminous correspondence entering from Paris. Stieber boasts that much of the information he thus obtained formed the basis of the negotiations on which peace terms were concluded. Moritz Busch in his Memoirs makes no especial mention of the sleuth's services in this regard, and we may dismiss Stieber's claim to have counted for much in the peace negotiations as being characteristically overdrawn.

He was, however, active in the remapping of the invasion zones in 1871 for the operations of his _corps d'espions_, the members of which, in regard to all French territories, were from that year chosen mainly from among the French-speaking Swiss. He laid it down as a condition of the "fixed-point" spy's employment that he should be the keeper of a shop of some kind, a public-house, a tobacconist's, an hotel, a grocery of an established character and certain to attract custom from the townspeople. Each spy was to assume the character of an honest peace-loving citizen, anxious to give public service and make himself personally popular. He was to receive in payment some £4 a week besides out-of-pocket expenses to Brussels, or Lausanne, or Geneva where his particular reports were made and whence his salary was paid every month in the form of business remittances. The system of counter-espionage adopted in France during the past five and twenty years has undoubtedly had the effect of neutralising the work of the fixed-point agent. Nevertheless, it is certain that in August 1914 there were some 15,000 of them still operating throughout France. Paul Lanoir gives a specimen of the remittance letters which pass between the chief spy inspector and his agent, the fixed-point expert. In some cases they are ordinary business letters; but in the larger number they affect to be communications between relatives. Thus:

"MY DEAR GEORGE,—I am sending you the interest on your loan. We never can forget your generous act in coming so promptly to our assistance. Things are not going too badly; next year, perhaps, you may have a larger share in our profits, and we are anxious you should have as much as possible. But write more often giving us fuller news. Do not abuse Uncle Charles; he is a very good man who is to be trusted always. We are all well here, but have only just managed to pull through a hard winter. My husband and the children send you our greetings, as also do Charlotte, Charles and Frederick. Your loving sister."

Occasionally a man is suspected of being a spy. He is asked to produce his foreign correspondence, and does so, giving some such letter as the above in token of his integrity.

"There!" he is certain to say, "that's the sort of spy _I_ am—a kind and loving brother who has lent money to his relatives to keep them out of the poorhouse. And this is a letter which encloses me the interest on my loan." And then, of course, the fixed-point agent gives way to tears. Nevertheless, the above apparently harmless message is well understood by our spy who reads it as follows:—

"I enclose your salary for the past month. Your reports of last month are not bad. On the whole your work is satisfactory and next year you may get a better salary. Nevertheless, your reports are too few in number; work harder, send more. Don't trouble about Uncle Charles; we have all the information we require. We got through the last inspection without loss of salary. Keep up your relations with your correspondents."

It is obvious that our residential spy is not allowed to select his place of business at random. His location is at some strategical point in the line of military advance, mapped out some years ahead. Thus, our agent can spy upon the local garrison, upon a military post, a railway depot, a terminal, and at any critical moment he has his own corps of agents—some of them, alas, unconscious traitors—ready, for a few francs, to do his bidding, among them, perhaps, a poor charwoman or an unemployed labourer. In country towns in France it is not hard for a prosperous man of business to make friends with the officers of the garrison. Sooner or later and after a series of visits to the billiard-table, or the hotel bar, he discovers among his military acquaintances needy young officers who are in debt, who have lost heavily on the race-courses, and it is not long before he begins to talk of his large winnings on the turf. The way is quickly opened to a loan, and then the German Secret Service begins to find out things. Naturally our residential spy keeps his book of expenses and is duly recouped for his outlays on drinks, dinners, race-course visits and loans, with interest at 5 per cent. And if the spy is unable to make headway with a young officer, there is always a possibility of his being able to bribe the officer's wife or mistress, and his allowance of earnest-money is practically unlimited. So that, when we consider how our agent is a man of leisure who fishes the local streams, and has plumbed their various depths; how he keeps horses and knows the average amount of forage available in his town at any given moment; how he has shot over the outlying country and knows the lie of the land for miles around; how he is on visiting terms with every local farmer and knows his resources—why, it is not surprising that when German armies are moved across the frontiers, they should know every step of the country much better than the inhabitants themselves are likely ever to know it. And so with Belgium and England, where there is not a farmhouse, a strategic copse or upland, the depth of a river, or military capacity of a given road, which is not as well known to the headquarters staff in Berlin as to our own ordnance-surveyors.

XIII

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_

The strategic ideas laid down more than two thousand years ago by Polyænus, of whom we have spoken in an earlier chapter, and to whom Napoleon admitted some indebtedness, are evidently rated high among the military authorities of the Berlin military academies. It is therefore not surprising to learn that in accordance with the Greek's teachings every foreign general or superior officer of note who is considered likely ever to play a prominent rôle in European wars, is in each case as well known to the German military authorities as he is to his own military superiors. His personal character, disposition, virtues, vices and foibles, once an officer reaches to high rank and acquires a reputation as a possible commander, all form the subject of one of those _dossiers_ with which the Dreyfus case made us so familiar. It is a main part of the duty of our fixed-point agent to collect all sorts of information regarding the chief garrison officers at the town in which they are established and transmit the resulting data to their inspectors by whom, when verified, they are forwarded to military headquarters. The especial categories which claim the attention of the German authorities are the following:—

(_a_) Generals and officers of superior rank and high repute.

(_b_) The staff-college professors at Saint-Cyr, the École Polytechnique and Saint-Maixent, the disciplinarians, bursars and superior employés of these institutions.

(_c_) The managers of all arsenals and military establishments.

(_d_) All aides-de-camp and staff-officers.

(_e_) All superior employés in the department of the Ministers of War and the Navy.

(_f_) Special information as to the financial and domestic conditions and relations of all those officers mentioned in the above categories who are known or thought to be "unsettled" in their mode of life.

It is also stated that promising cadets from the military and naval academies are at once registered at Berlin and honoured with their respective _dossiers_. Lanoir is the chief authority for the above-mentioned details, and as a trained journalist, he gives an instance of the working of the spy in a case which came directly under his notice. The fixed-point agent in question had found it somewhat difficult to penetrate into the society of the superior officers at a garrison town. He therefore decided to find out all he required through certain subaltern officers who were accustomed to frequent his place of business—an hotel, as it happened. Accordingly he called in the services of an occasional visitor at the house—a commercial traveller who was also a spy in German pay. Possessed of all those gifts of the genial man of the world, the supposed commercial traveller found no difficulty whatever in winning the confidence of junior officers whose social talents were far in excess of their means and who were quite willing to overlook the inferior rank of their new acquaintance when they discovered that with him the spending of money was altogether a small consideration. It was not long before one of the subalterns had confessed that inability to keep up his position had necessitated sending in his resignation, which had been duly forwarded to the authorities. Expressing sympathy in a fatherly way, the traveller requested the young officer to inspect his own military papers. "You will see that I, too, have done my duty to France," he said, handing over some forged certificates attesting military service, for the manufacture of which Berlin has a special department. "Knowing me for a good Frenchman, perhaps you will treat me with more confidence." The commercial man goes on to propose that the subaltern shall enable him to do business with the officers of the garrison. His particular line of goods is hosiery, which he is willing to sell to officers, since he is an ex-soldier himself, at almost cost price. The subaltern is naturally interested, but declares that he knows nothing about business. The tempter then tells his young friend that in reality he is travelling for his own firm and can make a profit on the goods even if he allows the subaltern 50 per cent. on everything sold. "For every £4 worth of hosiery I sell, you shall have a cheque for £2. As for the difficulty of introductions—just say I am your cousin; it is done every day and all over France. It will be worth £250 a year to you." The poor subaltern is not long in falling, and by the end of the next month the commercial traveller has wormed his way into the officers' quarters, has learned all there is to be known about the ammunition and ordnance stores, together with personal details about superior officers, which he could never have obtained in any other way. German money is making up the deficit on hosiery sold at cost price, but in return Germany is getting far more than her money's worth in military intelligence.

Lanoir also gives an instance in which one of the most promising French officers of his generation was, less than a score of years ago, paid £8000 by a supposed man of wealth, a casual garrison-town acquaintance, in order to rescue his father from bankruptcy. The information had come to the ears of the German tutor of a French General to whom our young officer was acting as aide-de-camp; the tutor forthwith informed the German fixed-point agent, with the result that the offer of £8000 was subsequently made and accepted, the young officer in question ultimately transferring his services to the _dossier_ bureau attached to the Secret Police in Berlin. Another officer is said to have been given a sufficient fortune by the German War Office to make him an eligible _parti_ in the eyes of the daughter of a well-known French General who was said to possess especial knowledge regarding mobilisation plans and arsenal material. The officer, whose heart was elsewhere, as they say, accepted the commission from Berlin, paid half-hearted court to the lady in question, but was seen sufficiently often in her company to justify the local agent's belief in the young man's assertion that things were going on famously. On his promise to supply Berlin with copies of documents belonging to his _fiancée's_ father, they consented to advance £10,000. He thereupon drew up plans of mobilisation of his own, as well as details regarding artillery, which he had himself thought out. Eventually the price was paid in full, our officer promising to reveal much more when the wedding was over. Then he went off with the other lady, and Berlin was badly beaten, though not, it is certain, for the first time. Within the past ten years it is well known that large sums of money have been on several occasions paid for intelligence regarding French and Russian fortifications, the plans and specifications having been drawn up by individuals who had deliberately devoted themselves to military studies in order scientifically to produce the "information" in question. Such a set of plans was sold to Germany in 1909 by a Pole, for a sum exceeding £4000. It is, however, not often that the German military experts are caught nodding, their sources of primary information being as a rule excellent. They take few risks, but then there is no source of possible information which they overlook. This being so, the extravagant wife of an army man is always an object of interest to them, and many an officer has fallen, owing to his desire to shield a venal wife, blackmail, in such a case, being invariably the method of coercing the husband.

If ever a nation has proved to the world that she is devoid of essential military genius, that nation is Germany. Her successful campaign of 1870 was almost entirely due, as we have seen, to the preparations and plans laid down by Stieber and his co-adjutors as well as the fact that France had relied too much upon the traditional ability of the French armies to cope successfully with those of Germany. The same may be said of Germany's "marvellous advance" towards Paris in 1914, which was really a triumph for organised espionage and by no means a proof that military genius was inspiring the movements of the Kaiser's hosts. This organised system of espionage has for some years been in the hands of Major Steinhauer, the present chief of the Berlin Secret Service, and evidently a worthy successor to Stieber. Belgium, as all know who have studied German methods in what has been long known as the "penetration area" of the Netherlands, was so completely in the hands of German spies at the outbreak of the war, that it was only the failure, by a rare miscalculation, of the Berlin military authorities to have forwarded adequate siege-guns to Liège which prevented the Imperial armies marching through the country in a week and reaching France sooner. The entry into the Belgian capital of 700,000 men, without confusion or mishap, has been credited to the military genius of von Kluck and his lieutenants, the fact being entirely overlooked that in view of the inevitable war which Berlin expected to take place before 1915 (as a well-known German newspaper-proprietor told American and Canadian reporters in 1910) the German Secret Service authorities had made an especial appropriation from their funds for the purpose of placing some 8000 spies on the various routes of march between Aix-la-Chapelle and Saint-Quentin. As a result, the very quarters of the various regiments of German invading forces had been marked out for occupation by the Berlin authorities at least two years ahead, while for the purposes of lodging important personages, special hotel managers had been installed several months before August 1914. In Brussels as well as in Paris the city had been so well mapped out that, as American correspondents reported, distinguished officers arriving by rail at the Gare du Nord or the Gare de l'Est gave their instructions as couriers might have done, without doubt or hesitation, to the cabmen at the stations. All these preparations had been made by German fixed agents whose various residences throughout the line of advance bore the familiar caricature of "Kluck's cow." As the event proved in Belgium, such fixed spies had become, from lengthy and normal residence in the various cities, so familiar to Belgian inhabitants that these last supposed them to be either the victims of the German billeting process, or else compulsory agents under the terms of martial law. In Paris matters had been prepared so far in advance that it had been decided to give a representation of Sudermann's _Heimath_ at the Comédie Française, at which the Kaiser and his Staff were to be present. That chronically disappointed potentate was to reside, the German papers of the time declared, at the Élysée, the President's abode, while the procuresses of Paris, mostly Germans, felt, in view of the commissions already distributed in advance among them, emphatically assured that their financial millennium was to arrive with the German Staff. It had even been arranged, by way of a spectacular _revanche_, that the so-called War Lord was to visit the Invalides, where Napoleon's body reposes, and there possess himself of the great soldier's sword, as the Corsican had, in 1806, possessed himself of the sword of Frederick the Great, saying as he took it, "Ceci est à moi"—this is mine. The military set-back was in all probability the least which the Emperor William suffered by his failure to "hit" Paris as a Westerner might put it, seeing that the Kaiser can hardly be called a military man in any practical sense of the term.

In regard to the fixed spies in Belgium, it has to be noted that they were not all, as far as is known, natives. Competent Belgian journalists declared at the outbreak of the present war that, at the defeat of France in the war of 1870, Germany had already laid down plans for eventually overrunning and annexing both Belgium and Holland. With a view to carrying out her plans, she made in 1872 definite appropriations for the covering of both countries with a system of what was known at Berlin as "Germanising influences." It was based on a principle of giving to deserving minor tradesmen in the Rhineland districts sums of money sufficient to set them up in business in the so-called Belgian "penetration area." Preference was given to couples with young children who had been born on German soil. The people of the Rhineland and Westphalia are for the most part Catholics; large numbers of them speak both French and Flemish, or at least "Plat-Deutsch," while from a mental point of view, there is very little difference between them and the populations of Liège and Limburg. Once settled on Belgian soil, it was easy for them to adapt themselves to the people and bring up their children as Belgians. It was part of the agreement, however, that the children, after attaining a certain age, should return to the Fatherland, there to undergo a process of re-Germanisation, at the close of which, having resided with close relatives and passed through German schools, they returned to Belgium ostensibly pro-Germans. In the meantime their parents were being helped to enrich themselves by acting as commission-agents for large industrial houses on the German side. It was supposed that this scheme—an invention of Bismarck—would prove the key to the conquest of the Netherlands, for the plans were also put into operation in Holland. As a matter of fact, the results of the scheme were far from coming up to expectations, and if any proof were wanting to demonstrate the elemental incapacity of the German for assimilating another race, here it was. The Belgian and the Dutchman both proved their capacity (and at the same time their racial superiority) for assimilating the Germans to the point at which the latter became anti-German—even as is the case with the German-Americans of to-day, who are Americans first and Germans last of all. By the mid-nineties it was hoped that a large nucleus of Germanophile Belgians and Dutch would be preparing for the easy (and perhaps peaceful) conquest of the Low Countries. Bismarck had realised, however, by 1890 that "the German is not by nature or disposition a good coloniser," whatever virtues he may possess as a colonist, and for that reason was opposed to his new Kaiser's ambition to push the frontiers of the Fatherland farther than they had already gone. At all events, the organised system of the Germanising influences proved, to a large extent, a failure in the Low Countries. It is precisely because it had not proved so to the whole extent that Belgium fell so easy a victim to the German aggressive advance, once Liège had fallen, in 1914. For as a result of the system of 1872 and onward, it was hard for Belgians themselves to know who was in 1914 an agent for Germany and who was not. In this connection, and as the analogy holds in some degree, it may be stated that the main objection to the Oxford Scholarships founded by the late Mr Rhodes was based on an argument advanced by observant German professors who had seen Britain's system at work—namely, that the German citizen was too easily assimilable by stronger and superior types to allow of his passing three or four years at the intellectual hub of the British Empire without detriment to his German patriotism.

While discussing Belgium we are reminded of the fact that at the University of Louvain many theological students from Germany were in residence before the war and were, therefore, enabled to keep their correspondents in Germany in touch with matters of importance as to the feeling of Belgian professors and the Belgian hierarchy generally towards Germany and German aspirations in Belgium. It is not so commonly known, however, that every German army includes in its ranks a number of renegade priests, or priests in minor orders, who are sufficiently well acquainted with religious matters to be able to impose upon villagers, or local parish priests and nuns. The non-Catholic forces which arrived at Louvain in September 1914, when they came into conflict with the Catholic Bavarian troops, were entirely to blame for the mutilation of the historic city, since reprisals on the part of the inhabitants—if any serious reprisals ever took place—were said by American and Australian correspondents to have probably been due to the fact that many of these ex-priests had been given clerical attire from the military clothing department and sent to visit the local religious houses, not as soldiers, but in their clerical capacity. The result was a series of outrages both at convents and colleges, the recital of which has already been officially given to the world by Belgian authorities. Stieber placed much reliance on this peculiar class of spy in the Austrian campaign of 1866 and again in that of 1870. The German authorities continue to employ them and they are ever willing to serve, since as a rule they belong to a class whose poverty and rakishness are known throughout Germany. They are not, it may be said, confined to any particular religion, and in the present war their functions have been exercised mainly in ministering to the wounded, from whom they are successful enough in extracting information as to the movements of opposing forces. Readers do not require to be told at this juncture of the unscrupulous use which German armies have made of the Red Cross ambulances in the war of 1914. Not only have they clothed the most notorious creatures of German towns in nuns' attire, but in many cases youthful soldiers have been dressed as Red Cross Sisters and have thus been enabled to pass through the enemy's lines, ostensibly on errands of mercy, but in reality in order to spy out the situation. That German commanders have little regard for the lives of their men is better known, perhaps, than a common ruse to which they resort when looking for artillery range. At nightfall two recruits are invariably asked to volunteer for duty with the wire-coil. They advance towards the enemy's lines which they are instructed to inspect, paying out the coil of wire as they advance. Naturally they are shot as they approach the other camp; their officer's object has, however, been accomplished, and when his end of the coil ceases to "pay out" he is in possession of the range.

The present war, experts assure us, has not developed anything new in the way of cipher messages, and it is now generally admitted that man has yet to devise a cipher which, given time to solve its principle, will continue long to remain a puzzle to inquiring minds. Napoleon adopted a cipher with which he communicated on many occasions with his chief-of-staff, Berthier, whose only recorded witticism is that the Emperor's handwriting was the hardest cipher he knew. By Napoleon's directions, a certain pamphlet was to be employed according to the day of the week or the date. The names of these were of course known beforehand. The instructions ran: "The first figure will give the number of the page; the second figure will give the line; the third number will serve as index to the required word, or letter, and give its position in the line indicated by the second figure; if the figure denotes a whole word, it will explain itself; if it only means a letter the fact will be shown." The whole system was found, however, to be too slow for the most impatient of commanders, and as a result was rarely called for by the Emperor. The Great War has disclosed the fact that old Indian tricks of conveying information over long distances have been resorted to, particularly the Red Man's signals by smoke which ascends at various points along a given line and the different readings of which are settled by agreement in advance among those sending and receiving the signals. It is now known that information as to "range," which, at the opening of the war, German artillerists were able to discover with a rapidity and a precision which were not less than miraculous, was being transmitted to the enemy by fixed spies in towns behind the French and British positions by means of smoking fires built upon upland territory according to indications previously agreed upon and based mainly on the number and arrangement of the different volumes of smoke. The ruse was quickly penetrated however, and thereafter German gunners proved less expert in judging distances. We also heard much at the beginning of the war, both on the Continent and in England, of the "window-light" and the "window-blind" system of communicating intelligence to the enemy on land as well as on the coastline. All these tricks have been discovered, and as a result of the most stringent exercise of precautions, as well as the insistence upon martial-law regulations at nightfall in the fighting areas, military spies have been forced to rely more largely on personal adventure and its risks, than was the case in the earlier phases of the conflict. Spies sent in advance of an army, disguised as peasants of the countryside, can keep their friends informed of the movements of the enemy by various signals also drawn from the Red Man's code, such as the breaking of trees or branches, cutting up squares of turf and disposing them in a certain order near trees, by chalk-marks not very dissimilar to the "marks" used by English and American tramps or by the placing of stones at certain distances—all signs which can be read according to previous arrangement. In regard to these ruses it may confidently be said that modern man is far behind primitive or uncivilised man in the effective employment of them, and, in any case, there were few of those now recently in use which were not commonly practised by Napoleon and his commanders.

XIV

GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_

The man who now occupies the chair at the headquarters of the Berlin Secret Police is called Steinhauer. For the past two decades he has been one of the most important officials connected with the bureau and was responsible for the commissions given to Turr, Windell, Graves, Lody, Ernst and a host of experts, the majority of whom have engaged in espionage both in France and England and unfortunately remained uncaptured. Steinhauer's contribution to the German system of spying has been connected mainly with the adoption to its ends of modern scientific inventions. At the outbreak of the War of 1914, for instance, it is certain that in Paris alone, his agents were manipulating a round dozen of wireless apparatus concealed, in several cases, on the roofs of hotels which were, of course, under German management, and in other cases in private houses, as well as on private yachts on the coasts of France. Much of Steinhauer's money has also passed into the hands of British manufacturers of automobiles and makers of British military uniforms who were, all unconsciously, selling their goods to the Berlin sleuth's emissaries in Britain and France, to be used for the purposes of espionage in time of war. A writer in the _Petit Parisien_ has stated that the Berlin military authorities possess uniforms of all grades capable of clothing an army corps composed of all the different types of soldiers in Europe, while their batteries of foreign-made automobiles can only be numbered in terms of hundreds. Steinhauer is a firm believer in the arts of "demoralising" by scares the non-combatant population of an enemy country. Those notorious but substantial rumours, which occasionally ran through England, of Zeppelin raids upon Newcastle and Colchester, and which were subsequently proved to be groundless, all emanated from servants of the chief of the Berlin Secret Police operating in Britain. The French writer, Elme Caro, has drawn the attention of his countrymen to this form of espionage in the following words:—

"There is above all one especial ruse in which our enemy excels, and that is in spreading false reports and rumours. We are forced to believe that this characteristic must have its roots deep down in the traditions of Germans and the institutions of their race, since it called forth the especial indignation of Immanuel Kant. Their methods of applying treachery and bad faith to the arts of war are peculiarly a Prussian talent and one which in the war of 1870 cost us more than one bloody defeat. What is the process? We are given just that particular brand of news which is likely to please us and lull us into a fancied security, such news being, if necessary, invented for the purpose. These experts in the arts of deceit and trickery are past-masters in demoralising the enemy by conveying to him news which suggests the idea that peace is close at hand. During such lulls, one's courage begins to weaken, the soul of a great city begins to find itself growing unaccustomed to the idea of war, our firm resolutions are soon forgotten and we go back to the old routine of life with relieved minds and hearts. Our will-power is broken and the enemy then seizes his opportunity to attack us with many chances in his favour. To prevent us from getting good news, to convey to us the worst, to invent it if necessary—this is the policy of the leaders of German armies and diplomacy. Bismarck possessed all this talent and carried it out with the prescience of a master in the art of judging and estimating the weaknesses of common human kind."

Steinhauer was also responsible for the rumours of 1909 and 1910 in regard to the alleged nocturnal visits of aircraft to the east coast of England, and his henchmen in the Press go so far as to declare that in 1911 a Zeppelin visited the London area on more than one occasion for the purpose of "taking time-distances," so that in the day of war any given airship would know by the time schedule where to drop its bombs, in such a way as to destroy buildings which had been previously marked out for attack. By this method, it is said, a Zeppelin can act independently of fog, and indeed, would be enabled to carry out its work more effectively because of fog, provided it was favoured by fair winds—a view supported by Mr Graves, who also maintains that Zeppelins have already in peace-time "stood over" London. "A mysterious sky-monster," says Graves, "which carried a complement of five-and-twenty men and twelve tons of explosives, sailed across the North Sea, circled over London and returned to Germany. This new dreadnought of Germany's flying navy was aloft ninety-six hours and maintained a speed of thirty-eight miles an hour in the face of a storm-pressure of almost eighty-three metres." The German Press, in November 1914, declared that its airship fleet was three times as large as that which already existed in 1910, and through its confidential writers in the Dutch papers, it asserted that the German General Staff had produced Zeppelins which were "75 per cent. more air-worthy and safe" than the passenger-Zeppelins which travelled over Germany in 1909—all of which claims are purely "scare-work" of the Steinhauer bureau, for obviously enough, Berlin's military authorities would long ago have acted against Paris and London had they been able to do so, time being such a tremendous factor in their campaign. We pass over the cases of Schultz and Ernst as being still fresh in public memory to take up that of Lieutenant Turr, one of the most important spies who has operated in Europe since Steinhauer has been connected with the Berlin Secret Police. In regard to the man Ernst, the Islington hairdresser, who received at first £1, and subsequently £1, 10s. a month from Berlin, it is certain that the Berlin authorities showed themselves, in modern times, as inept in their naval and military espionage, as they proved to be in their diplomacy, for all the information they obtained through the instrumentality of their North London barber collaborant. Indeed, at this writing, it is rumoured that Dr Steinhauer has been disrated in his Berlin office and is about to take the road into retirement with many more of the Kaiser's incompetent servants.