Chapter III: General Rule (8)

The pilot is the heart and brain of the whole flying apparatus. Parts of the airplane may break without serious result, but when the pilot breaks, even momentarily, nothing is left to direct the flight. The man and the machine come crashing to the ground. The early view that any one who “had the nerve” could fly caused hundreds of unnecessary deaths and an enormous avoidable waste of material. The lesson, for which we paid in bitter and costly experience, was that it is essential to choose flyers who are especially fitted for particular work, and then to keep them in condition to perform their duties at all times by using the same thought and care which is expended in the feeding, exercising, and conditioning of a race-horse. Nature, remember, never intended man to fly in the same sense that she did not intend him for life in a submarine. Conditions are unnatural from the time he leaves the ground until he returns. There are countless obstacles which he must overcome. He flies in an atmosphere deficient in that oxygen which is “the breath of life”; he is subjected in war to the shell-fire of antiaircraft guns and attack by enemy aircraft; he travels through space at a speed far exceeding that of the fastest express-train. In attaining altitudes and breathing rarefied air, the flyer is shaking his fist in the face of nature.

It is imperative, therefore, to classify the flyer for the kind of work he is physically capable of performing. Some men are not able to fly at higher levels than a few thousand feet without suffering deleterious effects, while others may operate at five miles above the surface of the earth without physical harm. It is necessary to know a flyer’s limitations before his training is specialized, for the saving of time and money, and, indeed, the flyer himself. Just as the trainer of a varsity track team classifies his available material into sprinters, distance men, broad jumpers, high jumpers, and weight throwers, so the director of a flying-school must classify his material into men fitted for combat, observation, and bombing. It would be an obvious waste of time and effort to train a man for combat work at high altitudes and then discover that his physical limitations permitted only of his doing bombing work at comparatively low levels. In order to accomplish this work of classification, branch research medical laboratories were established at the various flying-fields, which, by means of certain standardized tests, especially the one on the “rebreather” machine, placed the flyers in their proper categories. The rebreathing tests were conducted in a room so designed, by the gradual expulsion of its oxygen, as to create the exact and various conditions that would exist at any known altitude. Physicians and physiological experts, themselves supplied with oxygen through tubes, remained in the room throughout the tests, closely observing the effect produced on the candidate by the gradual decrease of the oxygen supply. It was soon found that a man’s faculty to respond to sight, sound, and touch becomes more dormant as the air becomes more rarefied, and it was to offset this condition that the oxygen apparatus which I have described in preceding pages was designed. The effect of low oxygen upon the mental process varies greatly, however, according to the individual. He usually becomes mentally inefficient at an altitude at which there is as yet no serious failure of his vital bodily functions. By simple tests of mental alertness during these rebreathing experiments, such as directing the candidate to press designated buttons controlling electric lights of certain colors, controlling a volume of sound by operating a pedal with his feet, and the like, it was easy to determine that one flier would lose his mental alertness at 15,000 feet, while another would retain full control of his faculties at nearly double that height.

In order to accomplish the best results, a comprehensive programme was undertaken, providing for the standardization of both tests and examiners. Sixty-seven military units were established, each examining from ten to sixty applicants a day, there being required, in addition to the complete physical examination embracing all the features ordinarily required of men entering the military service, rigid tests of the special senses of vision, hearing, and motion sensing. Yet, despite the severity of the tests to which the candidates were subjected, the records show that 70.7% of the applicants qualified. But the work of the surgeons did not end when they had passed a man as physically fitted for training as an aviator. On the contrary, it had only begun. The candidate was not only kept under the closest medical observation during his training days, but this observation did not relax even after he had become a fully fledged flyer with the silver wings embroidered on his breast, for the “flight surgeon” who was attached to every squadron was instructed to keep the flyers physically fit and to carefully investigate the causes of all such accidents as might be attributed to the mental or physical failure of the flyers themselves. Keeping the flyer fit was by no means as simple a matter as it sounds, for it included seeing that the men took the necessary amount of physical exercise, the provision of proper recreation, watching the state of fatigue of the individual, making arrangements for leave or furlough, determining the quantity and nature of their food and the questions of alcohol and tobacco, and re-examining them at frequent intervals. Any one who knows how temperamental many flying-men are inclined to be will realize that the flight surgeons held no sinecures.

During the last few months of the war an apparatus was perfected whereby students could acquire flying experience and training without leaving the ground. This machine, known as the “Ruggles Orientator,” is a modification of the universal joint, composed of three concentric rings so pivoted as to permit the fuselage, which is pivoted within the innermost ring, to be put through every possible evolution experienced in actual flying—the candidate being able to experience, while safely on the ground, the sensations of nose-diving, tail-diving, side-slipping, looping the loop, and all the rest—everything, in fact, except forward progression. I feel certain that a man of Mr. Ruggles’s amazing ingenuity could have satisfied both the parent and child of the ancient verse:

“‘Mother, may I go in to swim?’
‘Yes, my darling daughter.
Hang your hose on a hickory limb,
And don’t go near the water.’”

VII

“M. I.”

In writing the story of Military Intelligence I feel as though I were picking my way along a narrow and slippery path which is bordered on either side by precipices and is in places obscured by fog. On the one hand, I am in danger of unconsciously overemphasizing the mysterious and sensational aspects of the subject; on the other, of making it appear more commonplace and prosaic than it really is. And, at every few steps, I find my progress hindered by the veil of secrecy which necessarily enveloped certain activities of the division during the war, and which it has not been deemed wise entirely to lift with the return of peace. And there is still another difficulty. The public has in a large measure obtained its conceptions of military intelligence work from the novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mr. Robert W. Chambers, and Mr. E. Phillips Oppenheim. So, if the pages of this narrative are not filled with alluring adventuresses of dazzling beauty, cloaked assassins, secret agents flitting about the countryside in high-powered cars, German barons disguised as head waiters, mysterious signals flashed by night to lurking U-boats, messages written in invisible ink, and midnight meetings in subterranean chambers, my readers will be disappointed and dissatisfied and will probably believe in their hearts that I am holding something out on them.

The story depends, after all, on the angle from which you look at it. I know an officer of the Military Intelligence Division who goes about on tiptoe, figuratively speaking, with his finger always on his lips. He is so tight-mouthed that Colonel House seems garrulous beside him. This officer has been of enormous service to his country, and the importance of his work fully justifies the secrecy and mystery with which he surrounds it, yet his duties have been performed at an office desk in Washington, with a table of logarithms at his elbow, and, so far as action and adventure are concerned, his life has been about as exciting as that of a professor of mathematics. I know another man, likewise connected with the Military Intelligence Division, who, assuming the guise of a workman, succeeded in obtaining admission to the councils of the I. W. W. and of criminals operating in the forests of the Northwest, and who did more than any single person, perhaps, to unearth the conspiracy which had for its object the crippling of our airplane programme. For weeks on end he carried his life in his hands, for, had his identity been suspected, he would have met a sudden and mysterious end by knife or bullet. Yet he speaks of his adventures as casually as though he had been in no greater danger than a Fifth Avenue policeman.

The fact is that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes represented by these two instances. The opportunities which have been afforded me to investigate the subject lead to the conclusion that, though Military Intelligence is, in many of its phases, as hard-boiled and unromantic as Standard Oil, it is nevertheless thickly sprinkled with incidents and episodes which would have provided material for the creators of LeCoq and Sherlock Holmes. Though a fairly careful perusal of the files of “M. I. D.,” as the Division of Military Intelligence is commonly referred to in the army, discloses no evidence that German spies of the caliber of Karl Lody and Bolo Pasha operated in this country during the war, they do contain the _dossiers_ of enemy agents whose personalities and exploits meet all the requirements for characters in spy fiction. Probably the nearest approach to the high-class spy, as made familiar by the articles in the Sunday supplements and the magazines, was Captain Franz von Rintelen, naval attaché of the German Embassy in Washington, who is now enjoying an enforced sojourn in a large stone château as the guest of the government. Though the equally notorious Madame Victorica, a titled adventuress in the pay of the Wilhelmstrasse, filled several of the specifications of the secret agent of fiction, truth compels me to destroy certain illusions which the public has held concerning this lady by stating that she was by no means young, that she was only passably good-looking, and that she was so far from clever that her own boastfulness led to her apprehension. The other enemy agents who operated in this country were, for the most part, former privates in the German Army or petty officers and stewards on German liners, the most picturesque of the lot, a man named Bode, being so inefficient that he was dismissed by his own government, whereupon, being without funds, he surrendered himself to the American authorities. He will receive board and lodging at government expense for some years to come. Though the beautiful young Madame Storch, who died under mysterious circumstances at Ellis Island a few days after her arrest, possessed a certain romantic interest, she and her three companions were so weak in character and of such small-caliber intelligence, that it is exceedingly doubtful if the Wilhelmstrasse ever intrusted them with any important work or confided to them any important secrets. Let it be perfectly clear, however, that nothing is further from my intention than to minimize the deadly gravity of the German-spy menace in this country during the war, or to suggest that, had no steps been taken to check it, it would not have caused the loss of millions of American dollars and thousands of American lives. That the national safety was not more gravely imperilled by these enemy agents was not due to their inefficiency, or to the weakness of the German espionage system, but to the efficiency, resourcefulness, and unremitting vigilance of the Division of Military Intelligence, which, I might add, frequently carried on its work under the most disheartening condition.

Military intelligence is the term applied to all such information as may be of value to the successful prosecution of a war. The Military Intelligence Division is that branch of the General Staff which is organized to secure this information. Its field of inquiry includes the investigation of active and potential enemies, allies, and neutrals; their military, political, and economic condition; their state of mind, their secret activities at home and abroad, and their strategic and tactical plans for present or future campaigns. A well-organized intelligence service provides, moreover, for estimating and safeguarding the resources of its own country; for protecting war industries and means of transportation; for stimulating the morale of its troops and of the civil population; for frustrating enemy agents and preventing the dissemination of enemy propaganda. Thus arises the distinction between the positive and the negative aspects of the service. The former, known as Positive Intelligence, concerns itself with the collection and distribution of information. It publishes estimates of the military, economic, political, and psychological status of various countries; prints maps of enemy districts, with particular reference to fortifications, harbors, and routes of travel; deciphers intercepted messages, and translates foreign documents. The Negative Branch of the service concerns itself with the frustration of all agents, military or civil, who are consciously or unconsciously of value to the enemy. This is known as Counter-Espionage, or Negative Intelligence. It establishes a system of propaganda designed to neutralize the propaganda of the enemy; it detects and causes the arrest of spies among the troops as well as in the civil population; it censors news and information given to the public; it prevents enemy agents from entering or leaving the country, and it investigates the causes of economic disturbances and unrest.

Though military intelligence work was undertaken by the army in 1885, in response to a demand for information from the Secretary of War, it was not until the United States found itself an actual belligerent in the Great War that the immense importance of the work was fully realized. Incredible as it may seem, when General Pershing set sail for France in the spring of 1917, the entire personnel of the Military Intelligence Section, as it was then called, consisted of four officers (of which one was myself) and three clerks. Due, however, to the forcible arguments and the breadth of vision of its first chief, Colonel Ralph H. Van Deman, the foundation was laid for the present vast organization, whose activities expanded, at the demands of war, until, when the Armistice was signed, they virtually covered the globe. In addition to the huge military intelligence personnel in Washington, a carefully organized intelligence service is maintained in each camp, post, and station, as well as in the field. Though these officers are appointed by their respective division or department commanders, the responsibility for their instruction and the control of their counter-espionage activities rest upon the Director of Military Intelligence, at present (June, 1919) Brigadier-General Marlborough Churchill. During the war the Military Intelligence Division maintained the closest liaison with the Director of Naval Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the agents of the departments of State, Labor, and the Treasury, the War Trade Board, the War Industries Board, the Censorship Board, the National Research Council, the American Protective League, and the Council of National Defense, all of these organizations being able, through the medium of their countless branches, agents, and correspondents, to provide Military Intelligence with enormous amounts of valuable information which it could not otherwise easily have secured.

The Administrative Branch of the Military Intelligence Division, referred to, for the sake of convenience, as M I 1, co-ordinates the activities of the other eleven sections, six of which, M I 2, M I 5, M I 6, M I 7, M I 8, and M I 9, form the Positive Branch of the service, the Negative Branch consisting of M I 3, M I 4, M I 10, M I 11, and M I 13. The Second Section (M I 2) is divided in turn into five subsections, four of which—Combat, Political, Economic, and Psychologic—devote themselves to the collation of information, the maintenance of the “Current Estimate,” of which more hereafter, and the furnishing of special reports. Another subsection deals with the preparation of military monographs. M I 5 collects information for the use of the Positive Branch and supervises the military attachés. M I 6 concerns itself with the translation of documents for all branches of the War Department. M I 7 has charge of all maps and photographs, one of its subsections devoting itself to map construction and another having the custody of the War Department map collection. To M I 8 is intrusted the solution of codes and ciphers, the study of shorthand systems, encoding and decoding, the compilation of codes, and the maintenance of a laboratory for the detection of invisible inks. M I 9 has supervision of the training of intelligence officers and men for work in the field. Turning to the Negative Branch of the division, M I 3 is charged with counter-espionage within the military establishment, together with collateral activities directly affecting the army. The eleven subsections of M I 3 deal with such diverse subjects as the preparation of bulletins, summaries, and surveys; and of instructions for intelligence officers, counter-espionage in prison camps, disciplinary barracks, the District of Columbia, the various branches of the Staff and Line, and among conscientious objectors, and the investigation of applicants for commissions. M I 4 conducts counter-espionage outside the military service in the United States and abroad, with particular reference to sabotage and the protection of plants and means of communication, its activities covering nearly the entire world. M I 10 is charged with the censorship of letters, books, newspapers, and periodicals, telegraphs and telephones, and radiophotographs and motion-pictures, and with a general supervision of the foreign-language press. M I 11 passes on passport applications and, in co-operation with certain other bureaus, has charge of port control. M I 13 is the Graft and Fraud Section, its work being principally concerned with criminal activities which may affect the army. The present Morale Branch of the General Staff consists, as its name indicates, in maintaining the morale of the army, which includes the encouragement and supervision of soldier publications, military advertising, camp-posters, and the treatment of the foreign-speaking and negro soldier problems originated as the Military Morale Section of Military Intelligence.