The Duchess of Portsmouth
The Duchess of Portsmouth
Passing over to Georgian times we find that the employment of spies was common in all departments of life, and there can be little doubt that the Hanoverians brought to England many men and women who had learned the arts of espionage at the best of all possible schools—namely, Berlin. The history of England of those days shows us nothing in the way of pre-eminent exponents ofthe business, nor can espionage be said, in its political aspects, to have reached to that excellence of organisation which it attained later in the times of Pitt, whom the ever-present activities of Bonaparte compelled in the interests of our security to develop a secret-service system the operations of which were inferior to none in Europe. It remains a matter of record that in the days of the French Revolution certain political leaders in England were in the pay of the Committee of Public Safety presided over by Robespierre. This fact was communicated to Pitt through his own spy, a professedly violent Jacobin, who by means of cipher and anagrammatic correspondence, carried on with a relative in Italy, was transmitting by that roundabout route the most minute and accurate accounts of the Committee's proceedings to the English Premier. The sums paid for such dangerous work, while never, of course, disclosed, were undoubtedly very large, seeing that the all-observant Saint-Just was moving at the time through Revolutionary circles. The failure of the French invasion of Ireland in December 1796 is also set down to an act of paid treachery on the part of the captain of one of the French vessels, the story being that he took advantage of prevailing foul weather to decline approaching the Irish coast for several days, and since the general commanding the expedition was on board, the brave venture became a foregone failure. Charles Lever, who, it will be remembered, acted as British Consul at Spezzia andTrieste, introduces us on more than one occasion to a kind of consular or ambassadorial spy, an individual who in those days was as regular a member of a chancellery as its archivist is in our own.
In the time of Napoleon, Charles James Fox, an admirer and friend of the First Consul, found himself, all unconsciously, caught in the vast woof of the Fouché-Talleyrand system of intelligence, thus becoming an unwitting agent in communicating to the French Government certain of the designs of the British Government for the destruction of Bonaparte's Continental policy. The fact that Fox was a desperate gambler, and ever in debt, was not of course allowed to escape the notice of his few, but bitter, enemies, who in this case were obviously moved by malice rather than by anything they really knew. The cleverness of Canning in procuring private information regarding the secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit between Alexander of Russia and Napoleon is commonly regarded as among the greatest achievements of diplomacy in all time. How the British foreign minister obtained this information will probably remain a secret for ever; but the momentous results of his cleverness are indisputable, since they led to the seizure of the Danish fleet and broke up the northern confederation of powers by which Napoleon still hoped to invade England, and some analogy to which is found at our own time in the occupation of Belgium by the Germans, England having been themain objective in both cases. Conjecture is, of course, not wanting as to the means which placed this intelligence in the hands of Canning. According to one writer, a certain Lady Sarah Spencer, in a letter addressed to her father at Althorp, declared at the time that "Lord G. L. Gower had got possession, for £20,000, of the original treaty of Tilsit and that one of the secret articles stipulated that the Danish fleet should be employed against us, which induced Ministers to adopt such measures." It is declared by a member of the Mackenzie clan that one Colin Mackenzie, who perfectly understood and spoke French, disguised himself as a Cossack and was one of the attendants chosen to accompany the Russian Emperor to the raft on which the interview with Napoleon was held—a story which does not, it must be said, meet with very cordial acceptance. Again it is asserted that the famous Launay, Count d'Antraigues, obtained the treaty from a friend in Russia, a version which seems disproved by the fact that the Count was at that time in disgrace in England. On Sir Robert Wilson has also been conferred the distinction of discovering the secret understandings of Tilsit, while the tradition of the Foreign Office is that the information came indirectly from the Emperor Alexander and was given publicity through some blunder on the part of the Russian Ambassador in London—most probably the correct facts.
The enactment of the Union between England and Ireland led in its time to the commission ofuntold treacheries. Until within a score of years ago there stood in the private offices of Dublin Castle two iron-clamped chests filled to the top with papers relating to pre-Union days. These chests bore the Government seal and on them was inscribed the legend: "Secret and confidential—not to be opened." For close upon a century, these chests remained unexplored until, leave having been given for their examination, hundreds of betrayals and treacheries leapt to light. Men of the highest names, says Dr Fitzpatrick, in effect, were found to have been spies of the Government and practicallyagents provocateurs, although to the outer world they bore themselves as high-souled patriots of unimpeachable honour. The various causes in which these men served were not less filled with the foulness of secret crime than outwardly they proved to be fraught with deliberately constructed outrage and injustice to a whole nation. Coming down to more modern days, we seize upon the story of Major Le Caron. This man's adventure among the open and admitted enemies of England shows us the meagre extent to which our Government is prepared to subsidise its agents abroad. Le Caron is not singular in his criticism of the British authorities who, by a consistent policy of paying starvation pay, have reduced the secret service to the proportions of a vanishing quantity. Le Caron warned the authorities of their fatal and improvident parsimony in his time. "Some day," he said, "a big thing will happen about whichthere will be no leakage beforehand and then the affrighted and indignant British citizen will turn on his band of thirty secret-service men and rant and rave at them for their want of capacity and performance. The fault will be the want of a perfect system of secret service, properly financed. If plots are to be discovered in time, they can only be discovered through information coming from men associated with them. If it is to be made worth their while to speak, then the price offered by the British Government must be higher than that of the other paymasters." Le Caron's words are clearly based on the assumption that men enter into revolutionary movements rather for what there is in them, than from any spiritual or ethical motives. Until far more evidence than we possess is afforded us, we fear that the spy must be held to be right, for the tortuous path of political agitation is a path which is ever crowded with self-seekers and one on which the altruist is always the loneliest of pilgrims.
In the course of the trials of Captains Trench and Brandon at Leipsic in 1910, the public prosecutor emphasised his view that British gold had bought up the services of hundreds of agents scattered throughout Germany, all of them engaged in the business of transmitting important information to the British Admiralty and War Office. Visitors to what is known as the Black Country of Westphalia will recollect, too, how ordinary English tourists who arrive at towns in the neighbourhood of Essen, the home of Krupp,such as Bochum, or Wesel, or Elberfeld invariably become the objects of police attention from the moment of their arrival at local hotels. It is certain that espionage on the part of the foreigner excites more real concern in Germany than is the case in England, a fact that we must put down to her geographical position which leaves her, despite vast armaments and preparations, an ever-possible object of attack to heavily armed nations which surround her on all sides. Even, however, if it be the fact that England has held her spies within Germany itself, few will be found to argue that it is not a legitimate use of secret service funds, as well as a matter altogether apart from the infamy which attaches to the person who accepts money in return for the betrayal of fatherland. It is, nevertheless, very questionable if any information really worth having, in the military sense, ever escapes the record of duly appointed military attachés, whose official existence dates from 1864 and whose admitted business it is to keep themselves professionally posted as to the resources of a possible enemy. In regard to Germany, it may be said that in the business of spying, she occupies a class by herself, since professional espionage is not looked upon by the people as in any way degrading or underhand. An easy tolerance of this kind towards a trade which is in itself intrinsically base cannot, it must follow, be without a corresponding reaction on the common mind in regard to spying for the benefit of foreign powers, and we may reasonablyassume it to be the fact that in such cases the British authorities go far less frequently in quest of native spies, than the native spies come in quest of British gold. A sum of less than £40,000 is annually set aside for the purposes of the British Secret Service, according to official books. The smallness of the sum must clearly be some index of the limits of our secret-service operations, although no one is asked to suppose that the amount in question covers the entire expenditure made on account of useful information given up. Germany, it is known, makes a public appropriation of, roughly, £1,000,000 sterling for the secret-service system. Russia's budget for the same object amounts to £500,000, while that of France is less than £200,000, as far, in all cases, as public figures are available. The public appropriations do not, of course, reveal anything like the entire sums expended, the facts as to which could be realised only by a survey of the various accounts of consular offices and embassies throughout Europe.
Much ink has been spilt and many public utterances have been made with the object of showing that the British Government had taken but perfunctory measures in order to fight the system of espionage which was preparing England for invasion, even as France had been prepared for invasion in 1870. Writers in the daily Press and members of Parliament had declared, by the end of August 1914, that anything more inadequate than the British system of what is known ascounter-espionage—that is to say, the organising of spies to watch and report on Germans who were obviously overrunning the country in quest of information of military value—was inconceivable. After all, results afford the best test of the precautions taken, and it is on record that the ease and rapidity with which the authorities rounded up over 14,000 German and Austrian potential spies, within a few weeks of the outbreak of the war, came as an illuminating shock to the German Secret Service authorities themselves who had based their warlike decisions largely upon the hypothesis that England was still asleep. A well-known authority on such matters at the Home Office informed the writer in September 1914 that even the so-called "incendiary points"—that is to say, localities which had been marked out as suitable for the setting fire to houses, in the event of aerial raids on London—were being gradually and completely scheduled by vigilant officers of our Secret Service, and in such a way that nothing was left to assist the operations of possible spies who have succeeded in eluding enumeration by our somewhat silent and unofficious, but nevertheless eternally wakeful police. As we have said in another place, the German organisation of spies, internal and external, had been raised to a point under Stieber, beyond which, given the present conditions of the world and mankind, it was practically impossible to go, and since for the past twenty years and more, we have been in possessionof the technical details of Stieberism, we may rely on it that the authorities, on their side, have not read in vain. Shortly after the outbreak of the Great War, and in order to allay the anxiety created by critics of such departments as are charged with the duty of watching the enemy in our midst, the Home Office issued the following statement dealing with measures which had been undertaken with a view to counteracting the operations of foreign spies scattered throughout the Islands:—
"In view of the anxiety naturally felt by the public with regard to the system of espionage on which Germany has placed so much reliance, and to which attention has been directed by recent reports from the seat of war, it may be well to state briefly the steps which the Home Office, acting on behalf of the Admiralty and War Office, has taken to deal with the matter in this country. The secrecy which it has hitherto been desirable in the public interest to observe on certain points cannot any longer be maintained, owing to the evidence which it is necessary to produce in cases against spies that are now pending."It was clearly ascertained five or six years ago that the Germans were making great efforts to establish a system of espionage in this country, and in order to trace and thwart these efforts a Special Intelligence Department was established by the Admiralty and the War Office which has ever since acted in the closest co-operation withthe Home Office and Metropolitan Police and the principal provincial Police Forces. In 1911, by the passing of the Official Secrets Act, 1911, the law with regard to espionage, which had hitherto been confused and defective, was put on a clear basis and extended so as to embrace every possible mode of obtaining and conveying to the enemy information which might be useful in war."The Special Intelligence Department, supported by all the means which could be placed at its disposal by the Home Secretary, was able in three years, from 1911 to 1914, to discover the ramifications of the German secret service in England. In spite of enormous efforts and lavish expenditure of money by the enemy, little valuable information passed into their hands. The agents, of whose identity knowledge was obtained by the Special Intelligence Department, were watched and shadowed without in general taking any hostile action or allowing them to know that their movements were watched. When, however, any actual step was taken to convey plans or documents of importance from this country to Germany the spy was arrested, and in such case evidence sufficient to secure his conviction was usually found in his possession. Proceedings under the Official Secrets Acts were taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and in six cases sentences were passed varying from eighteen months to six years' penal servitude. At the same time steps were taken to mark downand keep under observation all the agents known to be engaged in this traffic, so that when any necessity arose the Police might lay hands on them at once, and accordingly on August 4, before the declaration of war, instructions were given by the Home Secretary for the arrest of twenty known spies, and all were arrested. This figure does not cover a large number (upwards of two hundred) who were noted as under suspicion or to be kept under special observation. The great majority of these were interned at or soon after the declaration of war."None of the men arrested in pursuance of the orders issued on August 4 has yet been brought to trial, partly because the officers whose evidence would have been required were engaged in urgent duties in the early days of the war, but mainly because the prosecution, by disclosing the means adopted to track out the spies and prove their guilt, would have hampered the Intelligence Department in its further efforts. They were, and still are, held as prisoners under the powers given to the Secretary of State by the Aliens Restriction Act. One of them, however, who established a claim to British nationality, has now been formally charged, and, the reasons for delay no longer existing, it is a matter for consideration whether the same course should now be taken with regard to some of the other known spies."Although this action taken on August 4 is believed to have broken up the spy organisation which had been established before the war, it isstill necessary to take the most rigorous measures to prevent the establishment of any fresh organisation and to deal with individual spies who might previously have been working in this country outside the organisation, or who might be sent here under the guise of neutrals after the declaration of war. In carrying this out the Home Office and War Office have now the assistance of the Cable Censorship, and also of the Postal Censorship, which, established originally to deal with correspondence with Germany and Austria, has been gradually extended (as the necessary staff could be obtained) so as to cover communications with those neutral countries through which correspondence might readily pass to Germany or Austria. The censorship has been extremely effective in stopping secret communications by cable or letter with the enemy; but, as its existence was necessarily known to them, it has not, except in a few instances, produced materials for the detection of espionage."On August 5 the Aliens Restriction Act was passed, and within an hour of its passing an Order-in-Council was made which gave the Home Office and the Police stringent powers to deal with aliens, and especially enemy aliens, who under this Act could be stopped from entering or leaving the United Kingdom, and were prohibited while residing in this country from having in their possession any wireless or signalling apparatus of any kind, or any carrier or homing pigeons. Under this Order all those districts where theAdmiralty or War Office considered it undesirable that enemy aliens should reside have been cleared by the Police of Germans and Austrians, with the exception of a few persons, chiefly women and children, whose character and antecedents are such that the local Chief Constable, in whose discretion the matter is vested by the Order, considered that all ground for suspicion was precluded. At the same time the Post Office, acting under the powers given them by the Wireless Telegraphy Acts, dismantled all private wireless stations; and they established a special system of wireless detection by which any station actually used for the transmission of messages from this country could be discovered. The Police have co-operated successfully in this matter with the Post Office."New and still more stringent powers for dealing with espionage were given by the Defence of the Realm Act, which was passed by the Home Secretary through the House of Commons and received the Royal Assent on August 8. Orders-in-Council have been made under this Act which prohibit, in the widest terms, any attempt on the part either of aliens or of British subjects to communicate any information which 'is calculated to be or might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy'; and any person offending against this prohibition is liable to be tried by court martial and sentenced to penal servitude for life. The effect of these Orders is to make espionage a military offence. Power is given both to thepolice and to the military authorities to arrest without a warrant any person whose behaviour is such as to give rise to suspicion, and any person so arrested by the police would be handed over to the military authorities for trial by court martial. Only in the event of the military authorities holding that there is no prima facie case of espionage or any other offence triable by military law is a prisoner handed back to the civil authorities to consider whether he should be charged with failing to register or with any other offence under the Aliens Restriction Act."The present position is, therefore, that espionage has been made by statute a military offence triable by court martial. If tried under the Defence of the Realm Act, the maximum punishment is penal servitude for life; but if dealt with outside that Act as a war crime the punishment of death can be inflicted."At the present moment one case is pending in which a person charged with attempting to convey information to the enemy is now awaiting his trial by court martial, but in no other case has any clear trace been discovered of any attempt to convey information to the enemy, and there is good reason to believe that the spy organisation crushed at the outbreak of the war has not been re-established."How completely that system had been suppressed in the early days of the war is clear from the fact—disclosed in a German Army Order—that on August 21 the German Military Commanderswere still ignorant of the despatch and movements of the British Expeditionary Force, although these had been known for many days to a large number of people in this country."The fact, however, of this initial success does not prevent the possibility of fresh attempts at espionage being made, and there is no relaxation in the efforts of the Intelligence Department and of the Police to watch and detect any attempts in this direction. In carrying out their duties, the military and police authorities would expect that persons having information of cases of suspected espionage would communicate the grounds of the suspicion to local military authority or to the local police, who are in direct communication with the Special Intelligence Department, instead of causing unnecessary public alarm, and possibly giving warning to the spies by public speeches and letters to the Press. In cases in which the Director of Public Prosecutions has appealed to the authors of such letters and speeches to supply him with the evidence upon which their statements were founded in order that he might consider the question of prosecuting the offender, no evidence of any value has as yet been forthcoming."Among other measures which have been taken has been the registration, by Order of the Secretary of State, made under the Defence of the Realm Act, of all persons keeping carrier or homing pigeons. The importation and the conveyance by rail of these birds have been prohibited; and,with the valuable assistance of the National Homing Union, a system of registration has been extended to the whole of the United Kingdom, and measures have been taken which it is believed will be effective to prevent the possibility of any birds being kept in this country which would fly to the Continent."Another matter which has engaged the closest attention of the police has been the possibility of conspiracies to commit outrage. No trace whatever has been discovered of any such conspiracy, and no outrage of any sort has yet been committed by any alien—not even telegraph-wires having been maliciously cut since the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, it has been necessary to bear in mind the possibility that such a secret conspiracy might exist or might be formed among alien enemies resident in this country."Accordingly, immediately after the commencement of hostilities, rigorous search was made by the police in the houses of Germans and Austrians, in their clubs and in all places where they were likely to resort. In a few cases individuals were found who were in possession of a gun or pistol which they had not declared, and in one or two cases there were small collections of ancient firearms, and in such cases the offenders have been prosecuted and punished; but no store of effective arms—still less any bombs or instruments of destruction—have so far been discovered."From the beginning, any Germans or Austrians who were deemed by the police to belikely to be dangerous were apprehended, handed over to the military authorities, and detained as prisoners of war; and, as soon as the military authorities desired it, general action was taken to arrest and hand over to military custody Germans of military age, subject to exceptions which have properly been made on grounds of policy. About 9000 Germans and Austrians of military age have been so arrested, and are held as prisoners of war in detention camps, and among them are included those who are regarded by the police as likely in any possible event to take part in any outbreak of disorder or incendiarism."
"In view of the anxiety naturally felt by the public with regard to the system of espionage on which Germany has placed so much reliance, and to which attention has been directed by recent reports from the seat of war, it may be well to state briefly the steps which the Home Office, acting on behalf of the Admiralty and War Office, has taken to deal with the matter in this country. The secrecy which it has hitherto been desirable in the public interest to observe on certain points cannot any longer be maintained, owing to the evidence which it is necessary to produce in cases against spies that are now pending.
"It was clearly ascertained five or six years ago that the Germans were making great efforts to establish a system of espionage in this country, and in order to trace and thwart these efforts a Special Intelligence Department was established by the Admiralty and the War Office which has ever since acted in the closest co-operation withthe Home Office and Metropolitan Police and the principal provincial Police Forces. In 1911, by the passing of the Official Secrets Act, 1911, the law with regard to espionage, which had hitherto been confused and defective, was put on a clear basis and extended so as to embrace every possible mode of obtaining and conveying to the enemy information which might be useful in war.
"The Special Intelligence Department, supported by all the means which could be placed at its disposal by the Home Secretary, was able in three years, from 1911 to 1914, to discover the ramifications of the German secret service in England. In spite of enormous efforts and lavish expenditure of money by the enemy, little valuable information passed into their hands. The agents, of whose identity knowledge was obtained by the Special Intelligence Department, were watched and shadowed without in general taking any hostile action or allowing them to know that their movements were watched. When, however, any actual step was taken to convey plans or documents of importance from this country to Germany the spy was arrested, and in such case evidence sufficient to secure his conviction was usually found in his possession. Proceedings under the Official Secrets Acts were taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions, and in six cases sentences were passed varying from eighteen months to six years' penal servitude. At the same time steps were taken to mark downand keep under observation all the agents known to be engaged in this traffic, so that when any necessity arose the Police might lay hands on them at once, and accordingly on August 4, before the declaration of war, instructions were given by the Home Secretary for the arrest of twenty known spies, and all were arrested. This figure does not cover a large number (upwards of two hundred) who were noted as under suspicion or to be kept under special observation. The great majority of these were interned at or soon after the declaration of war.
"None of the men arrested in pursuance of the orders issued on August 4 has yet been brought to trial, partly because the officers whose evidence would have been required were engaged in urgent duties in the early days of the war, but mainly because the prosecution, by disclosing the means adopted to track out the spies and prove their guilt, would have hampered the Intelligence Department in its further efforts. They were, and still are, held as prisoners under the powers given to the Secretary of State by the Aliens Restriction Act. One of them, however, who established a claim to British nationality, has now been formally charged, and, the reasons for delay no longer existing, it is a matter for consideration whether the same course should now be taken with regard to some of the other known spies.
"Although this action taken on August 4 is believed to have broken up the spy organisation which had been established before the war, it isstill necessary to take the most rigorous measures to prevent the establishment of any fresh organisation and to deal with individual spies who might previously have been working in this country outside the organisation, or who might be sent here under the guise of neutrals after the declaration of war. In carrying this out the Home Office and War Office have now the assistance of the Cable Censorship, and also of the Postal Censorship, which, established originally to deal with correspondence with Germany and Austria, has been gradually extended (as the necessary staff could be obtained) so as to cover communications with those neutral countries through which correspondence might readily pass to Germany or Austria. The censorship has been extremely effective in stopping secret communications by cable or letter with the enemy; but, as its existence was necessarily known to them, it has not, except in a few instances, produced materials for the detection of espionage.
"On August 5 the Aliens Restriction Act was passed, and within an hour of its passing an Order-in-Council was made which gave the Home Office and the Police stringent powers to deal with aliens, and especially enemy aliens, who under this Act could be stopped from entering or leaving the United Kingdom, and were prohibited while residing in this country from having in their possession any wireless or signalling apparatus of any kind, or any carrier or homing pigeons. Under this Order all those districts where theAdmiralty or War Office considered it undesirable that enemy aliens should reside have been cleared by the Police of Germans and Austrians, with the exception of a few persons, chiefly women and children, whose character and antecedents are such that the local Chief Constable, in whose discretion the matter is vested by the Order, considered that all ground for suspicion was precluded. At the same time the Post Office, acting under the powers given them by the Wireless Telegraphy Acts, dismantled all private wireless stations; and they established a special system of wireless detection by which any station actually used for the transmission of messages from this country could be discovered. The Police have co-operated successfully in this matter with the Post Office.
"New and still more stringent powers for dealing with espionage were given by the Defence of the Realm Act, which was passed by the Home Secretary through the House of Commons and received the Royal Assent on August 8. Orders-in-Council have been made under this Act which prohibit, in the widest terms, any attempt on the part either of aliens or of British subjects to communicate any information which 'is calculated to be or might be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy'; and any person offending against this prohibition is liable to be tried by court martial and sentenced to penal servitude for life. The effect of these Orders is to make espionage a military offence. Power is given both to thepolice and to the military authorities to arrest without a warrant any person whose behaviour is such as to give rise to suspicion, and any person so arrested by the police would be handed over to the military authorities for trial by court martial. Only in the event of the military authorities holding that there is no prima facie case of espionage or any other offence triable by military law is a prisoner handed back to the civil authorities to consider whether he should be charged with failing to register or with any other offence under the Aliens Restriction Act.
"The present position is, therefore, that espionage has been made by statute a military offence triable by court martial. If tried under the Defence of the Realm Act, the maximum punishment is penal servitude for life; but if dealt with outside that Act as a war crime the punishment of death can be inflicted.
"At the present moment one case is pending in which a person charged with attempting to convey information to the enemy is now awaiting his trial by court martial, but in no other case has any clear trace been discovered of any attempt to convey information to the enemy, and there is good reason to believe that the spy organisation crushed at the outbreak of the war has not been re-established.
"How completely that system had been suppressed in the early days of the war is clear from the fact—disclosed in a German Army Order—that on August 21 the German Military Commanderswere still ignorant of the despatch and movements of the British Expeditionary Force, although these had been known for many days to a large number of people in this country.
"The fact, however, of this initial success does not prevent the possibility of fresh attempts at espionage being made, and there is no relaxation in the efforts of the Intelligence Department and of the Police to watch and detect any attempts in this direction. In carrying out their duties, the military and police authorities would expect that persons having information of cases of suspected espionage would communicate the grounds of the suspicion to local military authority or to the local police, who are in direct communication with the Special Intelligence Department, instead of causing unnecessary public alarm, and possibly giving warning to the spies by public speeches and letters to the Press. In cases in which the Director of Public Prosecutions has appealed to the authors of such letters and speeches to supply him with the evidence upon which their statements were founded in order that he might consider the question of prosecuting the offender, no evidence of any value has as yet been forthcoming.
"Among other measures which have been taken has been the registration, by Order of the Secretary of State, made under the Defence of the Realm Act, of all persons keeping carrier or homing pigeons. The importation and the conveyance by rail of these birds have been prohibited; and,with the valuable assistance of the National Homing Union, a system of registration has been extended to the whole of the United Kingdom, and measures have been taken which it is believed will be effective to prevent the possibility of any birds being kept in this country which would fly to the Continent.
"Another matter which has engaged the closest attention of the police has been the possibility of conspiracies to commit outrage. No trace whatever has been discovered of any such conspiracy, and no outrage of any sort has yet been committed by any alien—not even telegraph-wires having been maliciously cut since the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, it has been necessary to bear in mind the possibility that such a secret conspiracy might exist or might be formed among alien enemies resident in this country.
"Accordingly, immediately after the commencement of hostilities, rigorous search was made by the police in the houses of Germans and Austrians, in their clubs and in all places where they were likely to resort. In a few cases individuals were found who were in possession of a gun or pistol which they had not declared, and in one or two cases there were small collections of ancient firearms, and in such cases the offenders have been prosecuted and punished; but no store of effective arms—still less any bombs or instruments of destruction—have so far been discovered.
"From the beginning, any Germans or Austrians who were deemed by the police to belikely to be dangerous were apprehended, handed over to the military authorities, and detained as prisoners of war; and, as soon as the military authorities desired it, general action was taken to arrest and hand over to military custody Germans of military age, subject to exceptions which have properly been made on grounds of policy. About 9000 Germans and Austrians of military age have been so arrested, and are held as prisoners of war in detention camps, and among them are included those who are regarded by the police as likely in any possible event to take part in any outbreak of disorder or incendiarism."
Napoleon it was who once expressed the view that if not impossible, it was rare to find a Frenchman who could really put his heart into the business of spying, whether military or civil, and it was his custom, as far as possible, to employ in either capacity men of that cosmopolitan or unnational type of which we have spoken. The Emperor's view would hardly seem, however, to fit in with the preconceived notion entertained by most of us. Regaled as we have long been with the fantasies and fictions of modern French writers and their inspired master detectives, we find ourselves almost invariably crediting the French system of secret service with being, in respect of its excellence, an exemplar to all other kindred bodies. No satire, so far as we know, of the stolen-white-elephant type has ever yet been written with the object of pointing out the futility of its processes or the imbecility of its methods, and in any case, it is a matter of statistical record that the amount of undiscovered crime in France is twenty per cent. lower than that of any other country in the world. Here, it must be admitted, we seem to be confusing the business of the detector of crime with that of thesecret-service agent; in most countries, nevertheless, the two departments work largely in conjunction, and it may be, in general, fairly presumed that a service which is likely to provide a good corps of detectives is also capable of producing an able body of spies. It would seem that in no age in French history was the system of organised spying so complete as during the ascendancy of Richelieu, when clerical influences, supported by a vast network of espionage, were everywhere overwhelming, and again during the times of Napoleon's military empire, a contrast in conditions which suggests the idea that governments which are based on autocratic or non-representative principles invariably require the help of intrinsically corrupt and vicious influences to enable them to maintain their existence. For all the lauded excellence of the imperial German organisation of spies, that of France may be said, when we take into consideration the lighter political and social machinery of a Republican country, to be hardly less comprehensive, as well as quite as effective in its results.
Paris is, of course, the centre of the French organisation. Here it works craftily and silently and though rarely coming into contact with the work of the President or his Cabinet, is permanently in touch with departmental officials in all the great public offices. It is declared on the authority of a now-retired divisional chief of the French secret service, Saint-Just, that even the Prefect of Police in Paris only rarely hears of thebusiness details of his own department, though it is very doubtful if such a statement could be made about M. Méline, whose omnivorous activities and private information during his tenure of that office are said on more than one occasion to have extricated the Republic from a difficult international impasse. As a rule the divisional chiefs of the system only invite the attention of the titular head of the service in the event of acause célèbrein which great names are mentioned, or else in cases in which international complications, as in the Dreyfus drama, are to be feared. The French Secretary for Foreign Affairs can alone be said, in regard to the work and the results of the French spy system, to be in close touch with it; and in all certainty this was true about M. Delcassé in the perilous period of the Moroccan imbroglio of 1906. Other Ministers, all of whom, like the Prefect of Police himself, hold office by virtue of their being party men, know as a rule less about what is taking place in the underground of political movements than much humbler civil servants. The divisional chiefs without doubt are the real controllers of the police organisation; these men are practically irremovable and they are invariably so well acquainted with inside working of state affairs that no Government dares dismiss one of them without grave reason. Colonel Henry, whose momentous knowledge of the real motives which underlay the Dreyfus affair made his own removal by suicide or murder—who can tell which?—an insistent necessity, had actedas a go-between from a divisional chief to an important political personage in France and consequently learned, in the course of his dealings with them both, that formidable secret which eventually cost the Colonel his life.
The spy system of France is largely based nowadays, as in the time of Fouché, on theDossier. In France any person who has had, or even who is likely to have, anything like a career which is of a public nature is duly taken cognisance of by the police, and all and everything in the way of private information or gossip or documentary evidence and the like is collated against all possible eventuality and upshot, the result being forthwith archived in the offices of the chief of police. The merest novice who enters in any capacity into the limelight of publicity, even artists, literary men, frail queans of thedemi-monde, financiers, politicians, social fancy-men, jockeys, actors, clerics, opulent mistresses, editors—all these in point of personal "pedigree," to cull an expression from the American police vocabulary, are better known to the secret service than to their own parents. And so it happens, when a man attains to high political power and is courted by ministers, he invariably makes it his business to become as intimate as possible with the Chief of the Police, his object being to recover and destroy all incriminating documents concerning his past life. In former times, we have all read, kings were wont on occasion to ask useful retainers if they had anything to solicit in the way offavours. If a French President were nowadays to invite a rising or, better still, a risen politician who had served the party well, to make his particular request, it is certain that first, and before all things, the politician would ask to be put in possession of hisdossier, since no man, great or small, cares that the world should know by what arts he taught himself to rise, as Pope puts it. It is an undoubted fact that thedossieris frequently asked for by arrivals at high political position, and the police, of course, make a pretence at surrendering it. But do not think for a moment that they actually surrender each and all of the documentary proofs and tit-bits of private intelligence which have come into their possession regarding the person most concerned. The great man is, of course, given adossierof sorts. Yet a year or so later, when the politician has fallen from his high office, the "pedigree" is replaced in the police archives, often fatter and more succulent than ever. Since the days of Fouché, who was the inventor of thedossier secret, this has been a fixed official custom of the French Police and the cost of its maintenance is charged on the municipal rates. It is also certain that no constant visitor to Paris, no matter whence he comes or what his nationality, provided he possesses high political or social importance, or even notoriety, in his own country, all unconsciously goes through the ordeal of having his pedigree taken, as they say in New York. And again, since the art of police photography hasbecome common, as often as not, and unknown to himself, the visitor has to submit to the official process of having his portrait taken, or being "mugged," as the American police so expressively describe it.
Years back, in the time of Napoleon the Third, there existed a system of spying throughout France, known as that of the "White Blouses," these being a ubiquitous band ofagents provocateurswho were paid to incite the people to riots and so furnish the police with pretexts for incarcerating leading popular spirits who were likely, if allowed their freedom, to become dangerous to the stability of the Empire. The fall of that fabric in 1870 led to the partial break-up of this monstrous organisation, and many who were known to be its paid agents were very deservedly shot in the days of the Commune. After the establishment of the Republic the spy police was reorganised and a special brigade of secret-service agents was formed whose object was—and still is—to spy upon all those political sects at the head of which stand pretenders like the Duke of Orleans, or Prince Napoleon, or the late General Boulanger. At any grave political crisis in France these political sects display more than their usual energies, trusting more or less, as they do, in the star of their particular candidate, and at such times the corps of spies become correspondingly active. This especial body is said to have constituted far more than any other force to the permanent stability of the present Republicanregime. Most of its special spies are recruited, it is known, among the newspaper reporters and writers of Paris and the larger towns of France, and for the reason that their business affords them better opportunities than are given to most men of coming in touch with people who are anxious to "move the public mind" in regard to pet principles, or in simpler words, who have an axe to grind. This service was the invention of the celebrated Prefect of Police Andrieux, who also organised a system of fractional divisions of his police which still exists, and which is also associated with the body that spies upon the movements of anarchist societies in France, Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Holland and the United States, with all the chief bureaux of which countries it continues to remain in permanent affiliation. Its magnificent work undoubtedly accounts for the chronic failure of the militant anarchists to do serious damage or outrage in anything like proportion to the fiery sentiments which they profess to entertain towards all reasoned systems of government, or even in proportion to their numbers.
The real chief of the French Secret Service is, as we have told, not the Prefect of Police, who is a politician and a party man. The traditions of a generation will it that the active headship of that service be taken over generally by the chief of what is officially known as the Third Division of the Police. Under this functionary's control are the head of the First Bureau in which thedossiersare kept, and the head of the Second Bureau which deals with the reports of political agents and which also directs the notorious Black Cabinet having charge of the opening of all private letters passing between suspected persons; when read these letters are photographed and archived. The Third Bureau has been made famous in recent times by the Panama, Dreyfus and Humbert scandals in which its large corps of handwriting experts and interpreters came on the scene. In the First Division the various bureaux are made up as follows: (A) Spies upon persons of note; thus Esterhazy during the Dreyfus case had seventeen members of this division following him in all places and at all hours. (B) The corps of men who are detailed to watch women frequently visited by prominent politicians, and who are, when it is found necessary, instructed to "engage the sentiments" of the ladies at their dwelling places, cash-expenses being allowed the spies in proportion to the cubicular tariff of any given lady who may be suspected of knowing anything. (C) The body of spies who are detailed to spy upon the actions and movements of notable foreigners. This body includes those spies who are available for hire by great bankers, the heads of large business houses, the chiefs of great newspapers, or any other private individuals of great wealth and position who for reasons of their own, wish to have their employees, their acquaintances, or their mistresses followed and their movements reportedupon. Foreigners and others whose presence is not considered desirable in France are invariably tracked down by the spies of this department. (D) The service of spies whose qualifications enable them to look out for traits of insanity or eccentricity, especially in persons of wealth and "in the interests of public health and security," it is officially stated. There is then the Second Division, which is composed mainly of a bureau the agents of which are stationed at the different ports of France and who watch all suspicious characters landing in or leaving France, or who, as occasion requires, visit foreign ports in quest of criminal evidence; a subsidiary body of its spies are detailed to watch malefactors and politicians of the municipal order. Finally there is the "laboratory" to which the late M. Bertillon, the anthropometrician, has given celebrity as chief of its Identification department, in which criminals are measured or identified. In this department, should the police be very anxious to possess the "identification dossier" of any person who is suspected of criminal relations, the chiefs have the suspect arrested on some pretext or other. He is at once haled to the Identification bureau, where the officials go through the mock process of recording his measures. Subsequently it is discovered that, after all, he is not the person required, and he is released with much apology. The bureau authorities nevertheless retain his card and when, if ever, the suspect is caught in the act, he is sure to beconfronted with his record in measurements even though he have never so many aliases.
As in Germany, so in France, that type of inferior spy who is known by the termmouchardis generally to be found among the municipal inspectors of lodging-houses, the supervisors of night-houses, those detectives whose business is the watching of the street-police, all of which individuals have opportunities for picking up clues to more or less important crime. There is also an inferior corps ofmouchardswho are known by the expressive termremueurs de casseroles—that is to say, persons whose business it is to stir up the social saucepan in any district in order to bring minor details to light. As may be supposed from their name, they move in the very lowest circles of the unchosen races of evil and are generally to be hired, for a franc or two the job, among waiters, money-lenders' touts, race-course "narks" and such gentry. Spies are also, it is well known, sent in the guise of convicted offenders among those already undergoing imprisonment, with the object of bringing to the knowledge of the police further details as to crimes already committed. Such a person is usually known among French professional criminals by the name "mouton." All these classes of spies may be said to come under the supervision of the chief of the Third Division, who also takes charge of that portion of the system which is detailed to watch the mining, the manufacturing and the wine districts for the purposes of reporting on anythingin the way of "syndicalist" disaffection. The politicalcorps d'espionnagein France numbers, it may be said, some 1000 paid agents of all grades of society, men and women. They are expected to earn their living among the class of people upon whom they report to the police, so that being in regular employment their movements shall not be open to suspicion. When the chief-of-division requires the service of a particular spy at an established point, the individual chosen is requested formally to present himself at district headquarters. Here he is informed by the presiding chief that some details have been gathered concerning his relations with a dishonest and punishable piece of business which had taken place perhaps ten years before in, perhaps, another neighbourhood, or even a different town. The visitor admits the fact, but pleads that the occurrence is really statute-barred. The police official declares himself ready to forget the matter provided his visitor will consent to work on his behalf among the people of his factory, or store, or municipality, as the case may be. There will be a little money in it—according to the man's standing, and all he is required to do is to forward once or twice weekly a letter detailing conversations, opinions expressed by others, various acts, trysts and so on of any or all of those with whom he works and consorts. The prospective spy does not know, nor will he ever know, what object the police have ultimately in view, or how important it is, or for what stakes they are playing. He isin reality on the outside rim of some gigantic movement the penetration of the inmost workings of which is being sought. Naturally he consents and enters the public service as an "agent of record."
In France, it is well established, each great newspaper has a spy who is in receipt of occasional tips from the proprietor. His duty is to watch editors, writers and reporters, their movements, the quality of the people they visit and how they spend their spare hours. These newspapers also employ their agents in other offices in order that items of special interest in the way of news shall not be omitted by their own papers. In the great banking-houses of Paris there are spies paid from inside to spy upon employees and spies paid from outside to spy on the especial details of the business, its investments, its intentions and plans, and even these men are spied upon in their turn to prevent their abusing their information on the Bourse. Politicians, senators—all these are watched by colleagues who draw salaries from the secret-service funds. Going back many years, it will be recalled that at a critical moment in his political career, General Boulanger fled from Paris because, as he explained to the reporters in Brussels, his enemies had decided upon his seizure and imprisonment. It was afterwards shown that the General's valet, one Georget, was a paid spy in the service of the police, and Boulanger had taken him to Brussels. Furthermore, the maid who waited upon Madame deBonnemain, Boulanger's mistress, was the sweetheart of Georget, and she also was a paid police spy, the result being that the movements of both were perfectly well known to the secret-service agents, who could have arrested the General at any one of the twenty stations between Paris and Brussels. The police were fully aware, indeed, as Boulanger himself was, that, his cause being discredited, he no longer counted in politics or society.
The French War Office is now as well informed as any war office in Europe and the war of 1914 may be held to have disproved the opposite view. Into its secret intelligence bureau flows information from every part of Europe. The military attaché of the present day is responsible for much that is pigeon-holed in its offices—services of transportation, war material, armaments, railroads, mobilisation plans, finances—and there is little of moment in any other country upon which French emissaries cannot throw all necessary light in the way of special information. From the General Staff down every military official collects his quota. He is trained what to observe, what to ask about, what to look for and what to expect—plans of fortifications, new guns, or parts of guns and so forth. Accordingly it is not surprising to hear that France, which had neglected to watch, or who more probably despised the internal enemy in 1870, had by 1914 perfected a system of counter-espionage which totally neutralised that of Germany in all directions. Since 1895 the French Code has been increased bypractically only one item of importance in regard to spies. The clause in question states that "all dealings with the enemy, by private French citizens, which shall have the effect of conveying knowledge that hostile armies can make use of in war shall entail penal servitude for life. In the case of officers or officials who are found to be transmitting information to the enemy the penalty shall be death."
Renan has declared that, to the honour of France, it has ever been found impossible to discover a traitor in her hour of trial. On the whole this statement may be taken as representing the truth, and in flagrant cases in which French citizens have been proved to have betrayed their country, it has almost invariably been proved that the offenders were of German origin.
In order properly and fully to understand the nature of the German system of spying, it is essential that we go down to fundamentals. The principles on which it is based may be said to have their roots in the character of the Germans themselves and that character has been largely developed by a special type of ethical education, the lines of which were to a great extent conceived by Frederick the Great as especially applicable to the qualities of his people, and subsequently elaborated into a kind of national philosophy by writers like Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi and others, all of whom were the leaders of that extreme pragmatical school of which we have spoken. Frederick, it may be said, was like his descendant[1]of to-day, William the Second, a man who outwardly professed religious principles and held the view that Religion is absolutely necessary in a State government. In the famousMatinées du Roi de Prusse, published in 1784, the Prussian monarch is made, however, to say that the value of religion for the people consists mainly in the fact that it enables their rulers to hold them more completely in subjection. For a King to haveany religion whatsoever is, he is also said to have declared, a very unwise policy, and for the reason, he adds, that "if a King fears God, or more exactly, if he fears a future punishment, he becomes a greater bigot than any monk. If a favourable opportunity presents itself of taking forcible possession of a neighbouring province, immediately an army of demons seems to him ready to defend it; he is weak-minded enough to think he is going to commit an injustice and he proportions the punishment of his crime to the extent of his evil designs. When he is about to conclude a treaty with some foreign power, all is lost if he stops to remember that he is a Christian, for by doing so, he will always suffer himself to be duped and imposed upon."
It is only right to state here that theMatinéeshave been disavowed as the work of Frederick himself, and in the British Museum catalogue are placed among the "doubtful and spurious" works relating to the King of Prussia. It may be pointed out, however, that the "Testament of Peter the Great" was also in its time disavowed, although the policies it lays down for the Russianisation of the Near East have always been followed to the letter by successive Tsars. It is certain, too, that the successors of Frederick the Great on the Prussian throne have followed in every sense the spirit of their ancestor's alleged teachings and counsels, as far as indicated by the work under consideration, and since the policies in regard to the conduct of war and government, whichwere counselled as far back as 1784, are to-day being followed and improved upon by German commanders, we make no apology for assuming that theMatinéesfully represent the mind of the monarch to whom they are attributed. As regards war, for example, here is the alleged opinion of Frederick: