"GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Dec. 1.—There is a certain monotony about the scientific murder of the firing line—a routine repetition of artillery duels, alarums, and excursions which can be and are being vividly described by 'war correspondents' from the safe vantage ground of comfortable cafés miles away. The real human interest end of this ultra-modern war is to be gleaned from rambling around the operating zone in a thoroughly irresponsible American manner, trusting in Providence and the red American eagle sealed on your emergency passport and a letter from Charles Lesimple, the genial Consul at Cologne, to keep you from being shot."For instance, you get some interesting first-hand knowledge as to how spies can 'get away with it' in spite of the perfect German military system of controls and passes. There is no 'spy hysteria' in Germany but none the less the German authorities know perfectly well that there are swarms of spies in their midst and are hunting them down with quiet, typically Teutonic thoroughness. But the very perfection of the German military machine is its weak spot, and on this, my second visit to the German Great Headquarters, I was able to give the astonished authorities a personal demonstration as to how any smooth-tongued stranger could turn up at even this 'holy of holies.' The nocturnal trail led in a military train from Luxemberg over Longwy to Longuyon."From here I started out on a foot tour, and entered the Grosses Hauptquartier (Great Headquarters) unchallenged, by the back door. Journalistically it was disappointing at first, for it was Sunday morning and apparently Prussian militarism keeps the Sabbath holy. There was no one interviewing the Kaiser, for he had gone 'way down East' and with him his war minister,Gen.von Kalkenhayn. The courteous commandant,Col.von Hahnke, was not on the job. Even the brilliant chief of the press division, Major Nikolai, was out of town when I called on the Great General Staff. But there were compensations, for at a turn of the road I saw a more impressive sight than even themotoring Kaiser—a mile of German cavalry coming down the straight chausse, gray horsemen as far as the eye could see and more constantly coming over the brow of the distant hill, with batteries of field artillery sandwiched between."On the next day I again dropped in on the great General Staff and found it not only at home, but very much interested on discovering that I had no pass to come or go or be there at that time. The war-time mind of Prussian militarism is keen and right to the point. It saw not the chance of getting publicity in America, but the certainty that other more dangerous spies could come through the same way. By all the rules of the war game, Prussian militarism would have been thoroughly justified in treating me as a common spy in possession of vital military secrets, but it courteously contented itself in insisting on plucking out the heart of the journalistic mystery. All attempts at evasion and humour were vain—here was the ruthless reality of war. It was the mailed Prussian Eagle against the bluff American bird of the same species, and the unequal contest was soon ended when Major Nikolai, Chief of DivisionIII.of the great General Staff, stood up very straight and dignified and said:"'I am a German officer. What German violated his duty? I ask you as a man of honour how was it possible for you to come here?'"The answer was quite simple: 'The German military machine was so perfect that it covered every contingency except the most obvious andguarded every road except the easiest way. All you have to do is to take a passenger train to Luxemberg, and hang around the platform until the next military train pulls out for Belgium or France, hop aboard, and keep on going. In case of doubt utter the magic phrase, "I am an American," and flash the open sesame, the red seal of the United States of America—to which bearded Landsturm guards pay the tribute of regarding it as equally authoritative as the purple Prussian eagle stamped on a military pass.'"Followed a two-hour dialogue in the private office of the chief of the Kaiser's secret field police, as a result of which future historians will find in the Kaiser's secret archives the following unique document, couched in Berlin legal terminology and signed and subscribed to by theTimescorrespondent:"'Secret Field Police, Great Headquarters, Dec. 1, 1914."'There appears the American war correspondent and at the particular request of the authorities, explains:"'On Saturday, Nov. 30, I arrived at Trier on a second-class ticket at about 10.30P.M.There I bought a third-class ticket and boarded a train leaving Luxemberg at about 12.15A.M.I did not go into the railroad station, but trusting to my paper, boarded a military train leaving at 12.45A.M., going over Longwy to Longuyon, where I arrived at 3.30A.M., Sunday. Therean official whose name I do not know took me to a troop train and made a place for me in the brake box. I left the train at X and went on foot to H (the Great Headquarters), where I reported myself to the Chief of Police."'I recommend that a sharper control be exercised on the station platform at Luxemberg as it is a simple matter to avoid the only control which is at the ticket gate, by simply not going out and therefore not having to come in.'"
"GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Dec. 1.—There is a certain monotony about the scientific murder of the firing line—a routine repetition of artillery duels, alarums, and excursions which can be and are being vividly described by 'war correspondents' from the safe vantage ground of comfortable cafés miles away. The real human interest end of this ultra-modern war is to be gleaned from rambling around the operating zone in a thoroughly irresponsible American manner, trusting in Providence and the red American eagle sealed on your emergency passport and a letter from Charles Lesimple, the genial Consul at Cologne, to keep you from being shot.
"For instance, you get some interesting first-hand knowledge as to how spies can 'get away with it' in spite of the perfect German military system of controls and passes. There is no 'spy hysteria' in Germany but none the less the German authorities know perfectly well that there are swarms of spies in their midst and are hunting them down with quiet, typically Teutonic thoroughness. But the very perfection of the German military machine is its weak spot, and on this, my second visit to the German Great Headquarters, I was able to give the astonished authorities a personal demonstration as to how any smooth-tongued stranger could turn up at even this 'holy of holies.' The nocturnal trail led in a military train from Luxemberg over Longwy to Longuyon.
"From here I started out on a foot tour, and entered the Grosses Hauptquartier (Great Headquarters) unchallenged, by the back door. Journalistically it was disappointing at first, for it was Sunday morning and apparently Prussian militarism keeps the Sabbath holy. There was no one interviewing the Kaiser, for he had gone 'way down East' and with him his war minister,Gen.von Kalkenhayn. The courteous commandant,Col.von Hahnke, was not on the job. Even the brilliant chief of the press division, Major Nikolai, was out of town when I called on the Great General Staff. But there were compensations, for at a turn of the road I saw a more impressive sight than even themotoring Kaiser—a mile of German cavalry coming down the straight chausse, gray horsemen as far as the eye could see and more constantly coming over the brow of the distant hill, with batteries of field artillery sandwiched between.
"On the next day I again dropped in on the great General Staff and found it not only at home, but very much interested on discovering that I had no pass to come or go or be there at that time. The war-time mind of Prussian militarism is keen and right to the point. It saw not the chance of getting publicity in America, but the certainty that other more dangerous spies could come through the same way. By all the rules of the war game, Prussian militarism would have been thoroughly justified in treating me as a common spy in possession of vital military secrets, but it courteously contented itself in insisting on plucking out the heart of the journalistic mystery. All attempts at evasion and humour were vain—here was the ruthless reality of war. It was the mailed Prussian Eagle against the bluff American bird of the same species, and the unequal contest was soon ended when Major Nikolai, Chief of DivisionIII.of the great General Staff, stood up very straight and dignified and said:
"'I am a German officer. What German violated his duty? I ask you as a man of honour how was it possible for you to come here?'
"The answer was quite simple: 'The German military machine was so perfect that it covered every contingency except the most obvious andguarded every road except the easiest way. All you have to do is to take a passenger train to Luxemberg, and hang around the platform until the next military train pulls out for Belgium or France, hop aboard, and keep on going. In case of doubt utter the magic phrase, "I am an American," and flash the open sesame, the red seal of the United States of America—to which bearded Landsturm guards pay the tribute of regarding it as equally authoritative as the purple Prussian eagle stamped on a military pass.'
"Followed a two-hour dialogue in the private office of the chief of the Kaiser's secret field police, as a result of which future historians will find in the Kaiser's secret archives the following unique document, couched in Berlin legal terminology and signed and subscribed to by theTimescorrespondent:
"'Secret Field Police, Great Headquarters, Dec. 1, 1914.
"'There appears the American war correspondent and at the particular request of the authorities, explains:
"'On Saturday, Nov. 30, I arrived at Trier on a second-class ticket at about 10.30P.M.There I bought a third-class ticket and boarded a train leaving Luxemberg at about 12.15A.M.I did not go into the railroad station, but trusting to my paper, boarded a military train leaving at 12.45A.M., going over Longwy to Longuyon, where I arrived at 3.30A.M., Sunday. Therean official whose name I do not know took me to a troop train and made a place for me in the brake box. I left the train at X and went on foot to H (the Great Headquarters), where I reported myself to the Chief of Police.
"'I recommend that a sharper control be exercised on the station platform at Luxemberg as it is a simple matter to avoid the only control which is at the ticket gate, by simply not going out and therefore not having to come in.'"
The so-called mystery of the notorious Chevalier d'Eon has long since been proved to have been no mystery at all. The question of his sex was, during his whole life, a matter of fierce dispute and much speculation in many countries. At his death in London, in the year 1810, an English doctor, Courthorpe by name, gave full attestation to the fact that the deceased Chevalier was neither a female nor an hermaphrodite, but a complete man. D'Eon, it is hardly to be disputed, must rank among the great diplomatic spies whom the world has produced and even in his own age, when the mystery attaching to his person made him an object of extraordinary social interest, all men were willing to bear testimony to his courage, physical energy, industry, audacity and wit. In all probability no one was ever made the confidant of his reasons for adopting female dress, but in every likelihood there was nothing more romantic in his peculiarity than the mania for being conspicuous and attracting attention, unless indeed, as has been suggested, he chose to wear woman's dress for the reason that it was more comfortable than that of man and had the advantage of making him appear taller than hereally was. About the Chevalier it is known for a certainty that one Douglas, a Scottish diplomatic agent, when proceeding to Russia in 1755, on a mission to the Empress Elizabeth, in the interests of LouisXV., took the clever youth with him—at the suggestion of d'Eon himself—dressed him as a female and introduced him to the Court of Russia, where his knowledge of languages soon obtained for him a post as reader to the Empress, over whom for a short season he obtained an ascendancy which enabled him to turn her sympathies towards an alliance with France. LouisXV., as we remember, had never possessed any real political or diplomatic power within his own realm, and in order to offset his official impotence, thought out his famous private organisation of court and political intrigue-mongers, which eventually became known as "The King's Secret." Douglas was among the men employed in this body, the Prince de Conti, Duc de Broglie and many other nobles, both French and foreign, also assisting the King in the conduct of a conspiracy the real object of which is not very apparent, if it was not for the pure love of the mystery and intrigue surrounding the whole business.
The Chevalier d'EonAfter a painting by Angelica Kauffmann
The Chevalier d'EonAfter a painting by Angelica Kauffmann
The Chevalier d'Eon
After a painting by Angelica Kauffmann
Practical results were, however, achieved in the case of d'Eon. According to the Duc de Broglie, Douglas had proved himself an unacceptable person at the Russian Court and it was only through the employment of the services of the youthful Chevalier, then about eight andtwenty years old, that he was enabled to attain his mission's object. Far from resenting the trick, when d'Eon, on asking to be released from his position in order to return to France, at the same time revealing the real nature of his sex, the Empress Elizabeth was delighted at the manœuvre and made her reader a handsome present on his departure. He was described about this time as highly educated and capable of writing with distinction on literary subjects; very much devoted to the study of law and philosophy, but, one is somewhat uneasy to hear, as indifferent to female beauty as was Frederick the Great. It is in 1759 that he is to be found working for Louis as a spy upon the official French envoys. In that year the Duc de Choiseul was sent to Russia with the object of inducing the Empress Elizabeth to mediate for peace in the Seven Years' War. The Chevalier was at the same time deputed to go to Russia, where his earlier exploits had given him favourable notice, and bring about the failure of Choiseul's mission. Accordingly d'Eon became possessed of an important French secret which Louis was not disposed to have revealed to his contemporaries; he was given at the successful issue of his mission, a sum equal to £1200 yearly of our money and was sent to the army of the Upper Rhine as aide-de-camp to Marshal de Broglie, where the King hoped a bullet might remove him. The Chevalier appears, however, to have exhibited prowess as a soldier, and in 1762 we find him secretary to theFrench Embassy in London, where he was instrumental in rifling the portfolio of an important English Foreign Office attaché by resorting to the somewhat vulgar expedient of giving the diplomat too much to drink, the inference being that the wine was drugged. His success must have been important, for in 1763 he was resident Minister in London. In this capacity he began to organise a scheme on behalf of Louis for the invasion of England, and as Horace Walpole states, the importance both of his rôle and position began to prove too great for his usually cool intelligence. As a result of a few sharp repartees to French visitors of rank whom he suspected of spying upon him, as in truth they were, the Chevalier soon found himself reduced to the rank of Secretary, the King, indeed, ordering his man to return to France, but not to present himself at Court. In what followed the intelligent observer begins to discern glimpses of that so-called "artistic temperament" with which we have become so familiar in these later days. D'Eon declared that Louis, far from wishing for his removal in an official capacity, had instructed him to resume female attire and keep up the game of espionage in England. The late Mr Andrew Lang declares his belief in the probability that Louis, realising that the little Chevalier's possession of so many important secrets made him a dangerous enemy, actually wrote the letter in question, fully aware how far the "artistic temperament" was likely to carry the disappointed minister.D'Eon indeed threatened to reveal so much to English statesmen that Louis deemed it better to compound with a pension equal to several thousands yearly and permission to correspond with himself. Up till the death of the King in 1774 the Chevalier indulged his old taste for espionage in the intrigues which sought to restore the Stuarts to the English throne. The new Government, probably with the prescience of unrest to come which should require the financial aid of England, sought to buy the Chevalier off, offering him a large sum in return for the documents regarding the projected invasion of England, an alleged condition of the contract being the extraordinary clause that d'Eon should return to France and continue during the rest of his life to wear woman's clothes. It was hoped by this means to deceive the public with the story that d'Eon was a lunatic woman if he ever should give way to his well-known petulance. At all events the Chevalier returned to France where, to the disgust of the connoisseurs, the lady showed signs too evident of the use of the razor, was as muscular as an athlete, wore high heels, but spoke like a musketeer, had her hair cut to the scalp and used to do the hall-room staircase at the unladylike rate of four steps to the jump. D'Eon soon lost his popularity in Paris and even his public offer "to become a nun" failed to tickle the quidnuncs. He returned to London, where he died, a faded old dowager-looking scarecrow with a very red nose, in 1810.
And, of course, there was another very clever diplomatic spy who flourished in the same age, a member of the famous de Launay family, who was known all over Europe as the Comte d'Antraigues. He was a singular example of the man who was determined at all costs to play a part in the tortuous diplomacies of his time and, paradoxically speaking, it must be said that although his life proved a failure he achieved an historical success which has endured. We confess to a liking for a phrase which his biographer Pingaud has written in his regard: "His life is interesting like that of all men who have kept up the fight, have always been beaten, but have never admitted their defeat." A man whom Napoleon condescended to notice must have been not only interesting but important. The Emperor characterised him as a "blackguard" and "a walking impertinence"—the French wordinsolentmeaning here perhaps our term an officious busybody, which the Count undoubtedly was. LouisXVIII.called him "the fine flower of sharpers"; for Spain he was a "charlatan"; Austria christened him "a downright rascal," and Russia characterised him as one of the vilest men in the universe. Nevertheless, Napoleon tried once to buy his services, the Bourbonemigréspaid him to keep their cause before the eyes of reactionary Europe, while Austria, Russia and the Court of Naples always listened to his advice and suggestions. We have shown in another chapter that Antraigues was mentioned as the person who hadprocured first-hand information of the secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit, and it is certain that French and Russian writers for the greater part declare the Count to have been the betrayer of both France and Russia. There can be no question that he became known to Canning, the Foreign Minister of the day, as a man whose "inside information," to use the American phrase, made him a magnificent ally; but it is also certain that by the year 1807 Antraigues had become discredited both in Russian and French diplomatic circles and, in any case, was hardly in a position to exercise much personal or practical influence in so momentous a conference as that which took place upon the historic Raft. The accepted English view is that the secret clauses came to the knowledge of Canning through an oversight on the part of Alexander who had allowed the Russian Minister in London to learn more than was expedient.
There is no better exemplar among all the exponents of espionage in its higher phases than the Comte d'Antraigues in so far as he provides us with positive proof that there comes a point at which a spy, already too dangerous by reason of his private knowledge, must be placed beyond all possibility of indiscretions. The Count was murdered in 1812 by an Italian valet who was afterwards declared by enemies of d'Antraigues to have been in the employ of the foreign secret service, a somewhat easyex-post-factoexplanation on the part of individuals who had long wishedthe Count on the safer side of Styx. The fact that his wife was murdered at the same time lends, however, some colour to the statement that the murder had been "fixed" as they say in the vernacular of the Black Hand. She had been in her time a famous opera singer who had tried to found a politicalsalonon the basis of the private information which her husband possessed, and altogether seems to have been one of those terrible but inept females who wander through the world for the unrest of souls, not only knowing, but knowing that they know. We make no apology for insisting that the fact that d'Antraigues was of Gascon birth is a point in favour of our idea that megalomania is in a large measure the motive-power which turns men and women to the business of espionage. The native of Gascony is by every tradition, both home and foreign, said to represent Pretence made flesh.
It is very certain that the number of secrets which pass out of the cabinets of diplomacy into the possession of non-diplomatic persons must be infinitesimal, and it is also certain that the Machiavellian waiters on whose long ears depend the fate of thrones; or the inspired courtesans who wheedle men like Bismarck out of information the divulging of which is sufficient to shake the hemispheres; or the journalistic sleuth who divines a cabinet débâcle from the way the Foreign Secretary gives an expression of opinion to the War Minister about the fineness of the night as both leave Downing Street; or the mysteriousAmbassador to Everywhere who visits Constantinople and "draws up a treaty" which he submits to an uncle of the Sultan's head doorkeeper as amodus vivendifor the Balkans—all of them are the fictitious creations of very "yellow" writers. These beings really count for less in the processes of diplomacy than the proverbial row of pins, and only the most credulous of souls can accept such a story as that which professes to show how so important a personage as a Russian Ambassador was once taken off his guard to the extent of giving away a secret the publication of which to the world led to an estrangement between France and his own country, the medium of his lapse being a Polish Countess with a form like Juno Victrix, eyes as big as billiard-balls, the soul of one of those awful Ouida heroines who felt it in her to "dominate the world with the man I love," and the manners and attitudes of a vaudeville high-kicker. Important information which has ever "transpired" from an embassy or a ministry for foreign affairs has done so in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred by sheer accident; in the unique case has it been given by agents from within and then most certainly not to a courtesan, but to a practical man of business by an equally practical man of business, money being in each case the first consideration. The diplomatic espionage of reality is quite a different matter from that of fiction and in all probability Napoleon was its best exponent, with hiscabinet noirfor the supervision of suspect letters; his couriers who werealways on the road, ostensibly carrying dispatches, but in reality in quest of special information; his sisters who through their ladies of honour spied upon each other's movements; and his secretaries who controlled the organisation of private spies who spied upon the spies set by Talleyrand and his department.
Prussia, as everywhere else, leads the way in internal diplomatic espionage and there is not a court of kingly or princely rank in the German Confederation which can boast that its most intimate actions, scandals, expressions of opinion and intentions are safe from the scrutiny of the authorities at Potsdam. Indeed, it is safe to say that Potsdam has long had its especial agents watching and reporting in every Court of Europe, and the comparatively recent "Posen" case shows to what length the vile system of Prussian espionage is prepared to go in order that Potsdam shall be kept informed. Some years ago the Berlin authorities were anxious to know what was the real state of feeling towards Germany in Prussian Poland, and accordingly a well-known Prussian Guardsman was sent to Posen with instructions to seduce the somewhat flighty and "modern" daughter of a Polish notable who was said to stand high in the Polish liberation movement. It was not quite certain, however; but as Berlin saw the approach of the war of 1914, it was necessary to know soon how the exact situation lay. The young Guardsman effected all that was required of him, also discovered how matters stoodin regard to the Polish movement and then returned to Berlin. This fact was one of the many which came to light in the course of the Harden trial of 1907, when it was clearly proved that the Emperor William had his own privatecorps d'espionnage, even as Napoleon and LouisXV.had had theirs. This body attended to diplomatic as well as social matters, and in her Memoirs the Princess Louise of Saxony shows that no society is too exalted nor any too low for the operations of its sleuths who, as in Stieber's hey-day, have driven men from public life to satisfy the private hates of persons only too willing to purchase their services.
Social espionage is too well known the world over, to call for very much attention. It is one big trade in information of one kind or another, in return for which the giver expects to receive special consideration, or achieve some end. The anonymous letter fiend who transmits real or pretended information about another person to a third party, the lady's maid who is in the service of other women besides her mistress, the private secretary to a politician, or banker, or commercial man, who accepts "presents" from his master's rival, the tattling flunkey, the money-lender's tout, the race-course and training-stable "lumberer," the copper's "nark," the parish gossip who "tells things" to the Vicar, the little 'tweeny maid "wot's got eyes in her 'ead" and all these—there is no nation on earth, nor any little hamlet that does not know them, and itwould be idle to speculate as to whether they are less known in England or America than in any other country. It is sufficient to know that they exist and that they carry on a trade in special information either for money or its equivalent. In Paris they are more numerous than in London, while in Berlin, at the great houses in the official quarter, it is a certainty that nearly all the men and women employees are paid to spy upon their employers by outside influences of various kinds—official, military, social, commercial and clerical, and when the people of Berlin are not spying on those above or below their own classes, they fall back upon spying among themselves, as a writer named von der Goltz remarked more than fifty years ago.
The famous Tausch bureau of private espionage, of which we heard so much during the Harden trial in 1907, and which was founded by Baron Tausch for the purposes of spying, just as a private individual in Britain, or America, or France, might found a news agency—this bureau had its analogy once in London on a minor scale, and was conducted, very privately to be sure, by a deceased peer bearing a title of ancient degree which is now owned by a youth whose relationship to "Old Inquisition" (as he was once called by a society paper) must necessarily have been very remote. Nevertheless, and for fear of hurting anyone's susceptibilities, we propose to speak of the defunct noble as Lord Pinkerton. It was not necessary to be in Society to recognise this peer whose business was as well known to Londonresidents as his face—aquiline as to the nose and eye, somewhat furtive in his movements, generally silent, but always observant and mysterious. He flourished in the late mid-Victorian days when nearly every man and woman in important Society was able to show as many quarterings of nobility as are required for membership among the Knights of Malta, or as formerly were essential to every candidate for inclusion in White's Club. Accordingly, he was an elderly man in the eighties and early nineties when golden keys began to open the doors of the most sacrosanct circles. One does not require to be very old to remember the great social transition that took place between, say, 1887 and 1902, when the first-fruits of the Education Act of 1870, together with the results of Colonial enterprise had combined to create a new class of social climber, which altogether upset previously existing conditions and, indeed, finally ended by flooding them out. In former generations wealth had, of course, always found a way in; but it was wealth with some added virtue and by no means that which expressed itself in mere display and extravagance such as arrived in the mid-eighties with adventurers of all types and kinds in the hunt for social distinctions and honours. By the nature of things, the exclusive peer found he was fighting elemental forces, and as a consequence he was far from proving the regenerator of Society that he hoped to be. It is certain, however, that his private correspondents kept him well informed, for it was well known thatby 1890 he had been successful in hunting down many individuals, mostly foreigners, whose claim to social recognition had not only not even the merit of being backed by great wealth or good birth, but whose early careers had been stained by crimes of the darkest kind and who had made their appearance in London society under assumed titles and names which were either fictitious, or to the ownership of which they had no claim whatever. Some of these men had made their early debut by successful operations on that dead-leveller the Turf, had been elected to fashionable racing-clubs and had passed by an easy transition into important social cliques which were patronised by the first leaders of English society. Nor was there any doubt about it that the detective-peer had the courage of his chosen mission, for once in possession of facts sufficient to provide him with a sure case, it was his practice to call immediately upon the social masquerader offering him the choice of either retiring from Society quietly and unobtrusively, or else of running the gauntlet of a campaign of ostracism which should effectually force his disappearance both from the Turf and English Society. The victim invariably made a brave show of indignation and outraged innocence, only, however, to submit when unequivocal evidence of his past was presented to him in full.
Pinkerton was instrumental in removing from both Turf and Society a foreigner of Teutonic origin who was known in his meteoric career as"the Prince." He had, it was found out after his demise, begun life as a waiter in Vienna, and possessing a famous gift of tongues as well as an unusual talent for self-education, passed successively to Berlin, Paris and London; here as a private secretary he entered the employment of a wealthy Englishman of profuse and eccentric habits. It was related of our "Prince," as middle-aged racing-men can tell to-day, that he obtained his first start in life by backing the Derby winner Sainfoin in 1890. To effect thiscouphe had extracted from his employer's private desk eight bank-notes each of the value of £1000. Arriving somewhat late at Epsom, he handed the whole amount over to the bookmaker so well known in those days as "Chippie" Norton, who laid the market odds—at least 5 to 1 against. Sainfoin won the race, beating both Le Nord and Surefoot and "the Prince" requested Norton, as a favour, to let him have his bank-notes back, the balance, some £32,000, to be paid in the ordinary way. On the same evening the lucky winner replaced the notes, and on the following Monday received his bookmaker's cheque, told his employer the story of his good fortune, receiving from his patron introductions which gave him at once a social footing among racing men. The man's personality was admittedly a fascinating one and he quickly made his way among some of the best-known coteries in London. It may be remembered of him that, being Austrian, not long from Vienna, he professed as an eye-witnessto have the true story of the tragedy of Meyerling which closed the lives of the Archduke Rudolf and Marie Vetsera. In a day when all London had the "correct version," with its attendant mysteries and political intrigues, the story of our "Prince" differed from others by reason of its simplicity. The Archduke (he used to tell), when deeply flown with wine, insulted the Baroness in presence of other guests. The lady left the room, returned with a revolver and shot her lover dead, turning the weapon on herself in a frenzy of remorse.
The adventurer's season of prosperity was not long and by the end of 1890 he had lost the bigger portion of what the late Mr Dick Dunn used to call his "Sanfoinery." He recovered, however, over the Lincoln which was won by a horse called Lord George and also followed Colonel North's famous luck with much advantage to himself. At the close of 1891 it was rumoured that "the Prince" was about to marry into a family whose standing was high in Scotland. It was about this time, however, that Pinkerton began to make inquiries and the result was in every way detrimental to the "Prince's" plans for domestication. He was soon on the run and in 1893 was found trying to beat the Pari Mutuel at Longchamps, when the exclusion of bookmakers from the enclosures put a term to his turf activities. This man was by no means the most important of Lord Pinkerton's victims, for the vigilant peer's system of espionage was influential enoughto close the doors of society to men whose wealth and influence in Africa was second only to that of Rhodes himself, but who failed to come up to our peer's ideas of what was morally fitting for the great London world of those days. Pinkerton's self-appointed rôle was not looked upon at all times with favour by the more liberal-minded members of what Thackeray calls the Best English People and, indeed, when one considers the origin of some of the so-called noble families of England, Ireland and Scotland, we think the social purist carried his apostolate just a little too far. Suicide was, in at least one case, the end of a victim whose social ostracism Pinkerton had brought about, and when several of his victims conspired to bring about a situation that publicly showed up the noble regenerator in a character which was at the very least embarrassing, and as a result of which much mud continued to adhere after the disposal of the case in a magistrate's court, very few people were found to sympathise with the only social spy whom our peerage has probably ever produced.
We have elsewhere touched upon ecclesiastical espionage which, we may presume, is not confined to any particular Church. Its operations in certain bodies may be said from earliest times to have assumed the importance of an institutional principle. In view of our expression of opinion that espionage is a necessary condition of any essentially autocratic polity, we are only consistent in supposing that any Church which requiresfrom its adherents a total submission of the Will to its arbitrary authority can only maintain its semblance of doctrinal and disciplinary freedom by the most guileful arts and methods; and it is not necessary to enunciate the doctrine of Private Judgment to show that intellectual or political liberty can flourish only where its principles fully prevail. It is easy, but altogether supererogatory, for the once great religious congregations to disclaim—now that they are shorn of the secular and political influence which was undoubtedly theirs in the darker ages—all possession of secret systems by which they once so effectively kept men's minds under their sway. It is only necessary to read the story of the Inquisition in Venice, in Spain, in Portugal, to learn how these Church-ruled communities fared under the iron tutelage of their congregational overlords. There is to be found, indeed, a strong analogy between the demoralised soul of modern spy-ridden Prussia and that of Spain in the days of the Inquisition, when, under the pretence of winning men to salvation, crimes were committed in the name of the Cross beside which the short but horrific annals of modern Hunnism stand spectral and anæmic in their comparative bloodlessness. Napoleon was, as usual, correct in his view that men who sought the refuge of the cloister were of a kind who neither wanted the world, nor were wanted by the world; it was unfortunate, however, that the wish and will to segregate oneself from secular activities, far fromkilling those characteristics of intrigue which we associate with the business of worldly life, had the effect merely of emphasising them in the chosen narrower sphere and, by a natural reaction, of turning their currents to baser uses and abuses than would have been possible in the larger freedom of the world. We speak, of course, of the Dark Ages.
It is not our intention to go into the question of ecclesiastical espionage; but inasmuch as the Inquisition's operations in Europe were based mainly, in respect of its bloody triumphs, on the work of a vast network of espionage which assured to the Inquisitors their periodical supply of victims it is only fair, without taking sides, that the story should be told. Our authority for the following account of espionage as it was used by the Inquisition—the name itself suggests its spying character—is Joseph Lavallée, a French Catholic, who has dealt authoritatively with the whole subject of the Inquisition. Lavallée writes in effect:
The Inquisition was at Rome known as the Holy Office, all the members of which were nominated by the Pope. They were bound to do his bidding without question; they were removable at his pleasure and he could recall them without any formality, or even without letting them know the cause of their disgrace. We need no longer wonder, therefore, at the intrigues and crimes to which these men had recourse in order to preserve their places. The business ofthe Roman Inquisition was to examine the books, the opinions, the doctrines, the public and private conduct of those who were brought before its tribunals; in virtue of their office they were bound to make a report of all their proceedings, and it was almost always upon their statements that the cardinals formed their judgments and decrees. The number of subordinate officers was immense and these mainly constituted thecorps d'espionnageproper, forming theHermandad, or Brotherhood, and theCruciata, or Crusade. When any particular crime was necessary in order to "establish" a case, no matter how revolting or iniquitous or sacrilegious, the Office could always find among its spies men and women both competent and willing to execute its orders. Whatever crime they might commit, the secular power had no authority over them; they were amenable only to the Inquisition, and it is not to be wondered at if the very dross and scum of human kind eagerly sought out the work of espionage as being most congenial. In Spain and Portugal, the Holy Office was known as the Inquisition. Its bands of informers were mostly drawn from the most unmanageable pupils of the schools; they were sent into the world at maturity, ostensibly to earn a living, but in reality to carry out the work of the Inquisition in the capacity of spies, as the historian Infessura tells us. The supreme council of the Inquisition was composed of the Grand Inquisitor and five members, one of them a Dominican necessarily.The number of "familiars," or spies, surpasses belief and was in the proportion of one to every family in Madrid and Valladolid of that period. As in Italy, they were placed above the ordinary civil courts and were amenable only to the Inquisition.In order to qualify as an Inquisitor, or to hold any office in the Inquisition, it was necessary for the candidate to be descended, and to be able to prove his descent, from a line of "perfect Christians." Having given this proof, he was obliged to take an oath of secrecy and fidelity to the Inquisition, the violation of which was punishable with death. The body of informers were bound by the same oaths, and if it was necessary to procure the "removal" of any person or persons, these men were employed asagents provocateurs, death being the alternative if ever they disclosed the methods of their Christlike patrons and employers. As we have seen, both theHermandadand theCruciatawere the Inquisition's agents throughout the Peninsula, and were employed mostly for the purposes of watching and seizing victims. The smallest hamlets swarmed with these vermin and they were mainly drawn by the Inquisitors from the worst characters in the country. They themselves were often victims of the Inquisition, whose influence had destroyed all kinds of secular industry in order that the Church should profit by it, and members of both brotherhoods served for the lowest wage the system which had robbed them of all chanceof procuring an honourable livelihood. In order to possess the better claim upon their patrons, they had devoted all the faculties of mind and heart to perfecting the arts of espionage, and no system has ever produced more crafty, more ruthless, more persevering servants. When once their attention was fixed upon a victim, it was but of small importance that he was innocent, for his doom was settled from that moment. If his reputation, his rank, his riches did not allow of his immediate seizure, then recourse was had to stratagem. All means, however vile or base, were allowed; they employed all arts, they assumed all characters, they made use of every dress, they adopted every possible method of circumventing and capturing their prey. Caresses, flattery, entertainments, gold, were all employed in forwarding their designs; months and years often passed before a victim was entrapped, but theHermandadnever lost a victim once it had fixed its eyes upon his belongings. TheCruciatawas formed with the object of watching over members of the Catholic body and seeing that its members performed their religious duties. It is not difficult to conceive to what a degree of hypocrisy such an establishment must have brought a nation, and if "most Catholic Spain" were Catholic at all in those days, it was rather from fear of theCruciatathan from love of God. So then the Inquisition had two first-classcorps d'espionnagewhich formed two active armies, always on the alert and always moving amongthe masses, through which both their political and their spiritual ascendancy remained assured.That few could escape the attentions of these spies must be evident when we consider that the Inquisition characterised as Heretics all who taught, wrote, or spoke against the Church, its teachings, its hierarchy and priesthood, or even those who wrote in favour of methods or teachings belonging to non-Catholic bodies, or who simply criticised the Church. To be a suspect was practically to be a man who was already dead. To have spoken irreverently of holy things, or to have failed to inform of those who had so spoken, to have read forbidden books, or to have lodged or entertained an heretical friend—these were sufficient to condemn a man, and according to the principles of the Inquisition, a man was obliged to inform against his father, his brother, his wife, his children, under pain of himself being brought within the notice of the Inquisitors. As it happened, the larger percentage of men and women who became its victims were such as possessed large means which the ecclesiastical powers desired to possess. Jews, Moslems, non-Catholics of all sorts were, equally with Catholics, amenable to the Inquisition for specified "crimes," all of which were punishable by death if the accused were unable to justify themselves. Public report, secret information, discovery by means of spies and voluntary accusation were the four ways employed by the Inquisition, in order to bring matters under its jurisdiction. Flightwas impossible in view of the ubiquitousHermandad, and the summary seizure of an accused person and his immediate incarceration constituted the usual procedure, once the spies had reported to headquarters. These spies, or "familiars," as they were called, were invariably supported by the Inquisitors, even if evidence had to be fabricated in order to make up a plausible case. What was the quality of the Justice dispensed may be gathered from the following facts: first, the names of witnesses deposing against the accused were never given to these last; secondly, witnesses were not obliged to prove their depositions; thirdly, all and sundry who cared to volunteer testimony were accepted, so that men who were notorious for infamy, for perjury and for the most scandalous vices were welcomed to bear witness to the "truth"; fourthly, two hearsay witnesses were equivalent to one ear-witness; fifthly, the spies were always accounted the most reliable witnesses, notwithstanding that they were in the pay of the Inquisition. Finally, a son might be witness against his father, a father against his son, a wife against her husband, a husband against his wife, a domestic against his master, or a master against his servant—an inexhaustible source of treachery, revenge and the worst qualities of the human heart. The tortures to which the accused were subjected in order to make them confess to the commission of crimes of which they were guiltless were of three kinds. In the first place the victimwas taken to a vault which lay sometimes as many as one hundred feet below the surface of the highway. According to the nature of the charge, he was put through the torture of dislocation by being fastened as to his extremities, with cords, then raised by means of a pulley, kept some time in suspension and suddenly let fall to within a foot of the ground. If on repetition this means was found insufficient to make the "subject" confess, his Christian tormentors resorted to the water-trough, laying him on his back, binding him as to the legs, and having stopped his nostrils, poured water from a considerable height in such a way that its weight fell upon the throat. Occasionally the master of ceremonies turned off the flow, not, however, to give the victim relief, but to prevent his death by suffocation. Perhaps, even then, he refused to surrender, and in order to cure his obstinacy a couple of religious smeared his feet with lard or oil, stretched him on the ground with the soles exposed to a terrific fire, and after half-an-hour's subjection to this ordeal invited him to speak. If he refused, he was put through the torture once more and then removed to a dungeon where he invariably found some others in apparently as bad a plight as his own, who, as soon as he was brought in, began to curse the Inquisition and all connected with it. These were nearly always spies whose evidence constituted subsequently that on which the unfortunate man was eventually condemned to death. The executioners ofthe torture-room were as a rule monks clothed in cassocks of black buckram, with the head and face concealed under a cowl of the same colour, with holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. A Prior was accustomed to supervise the torture, assisted by a clerk who referred to his spy agents as occasion required, or summoned them from an adjoining hall, where most of them wiled the time away at dice, in order to fortify all accusations against the victim. Sometimes an innocent man, in the vain hope of saving his life, confessed his guilt. He was then accounted a happy repentant and, by a special favour, was permitted to be strangled before being cast into the flames. Those who persisted in their obstinacy were summarily burned to death.
The Inquisition was at Rome known as the Holy Office, all the members of which were nominated by the Pope. They were bound to do his bidding without question; they were removable at his pleasure and he could recall them without any formality, or even without letting them know the cause of their disgrace. We need no longer wonder, therefore, at the intrigues and crimes to which these men had recourse in order to preserve their places. The business ofthe Roman Inquisition was to examine the books, the opinions, the doctrines, the public and private conduct of those who were brought before its tribunals; in virtue of their office they were bound to make a report of all their proceedings, and it was almost always upon their statements that the cardinals formed their judgments and decrees. The number of subordinate officers was immense and these mainly constituted thecorps d'espionnageproper, forming theHermandad, or Brotherhood, and theCruciata, or Crusade. When any particular crime was necessary in order to "establish" a case, no matter how revolting or iniquitous or sacrilegious, the Office could always find among its spies men and women both competent and willing to execute its orders. Whatever crime they might commit, the secular power had no authority over them; they were amenable only to the Inquisition, and it is not to be wondered at if the very dross and scum of human kind eagerly sought out the work of espionage as being most congenial. In Spain and Portugal, the Holy Office was known as the Inquisition. Its bands of informers were mostly drawn from the most unmanageable pupils of the schools; they were sent into the world at maturity, ostensibly to earn a living, but in reality to carry out the work of the Inquisition in the capacity of spies, as the historian Infessura tells us. The supreme council of the Inquisition was composed of the Grand Inquisitor and five members, one of them a Dominican necessarily.The number of "familiars," or spies, surpasses belief and was in the proportion of one to every family in Madrid and Valladolid of that period. As in Italy, they were placed above the ordinary civil courts and were amenable only to the Inquisition.
In order to qualify as an Inquisitor, or to hold any office in the Inquisition, it was necessary for the candidate to be descended, and to be able to prove his descent, from a line of "perfect Christians." Having given this proof, he was obliged to take an oath of secrecy and fidelity to the Inquisition, the violation of which was punishable with death. The body of informers were bound by the same oaths, and if it was necessary to procure the "removal" of any person or persons, these men were employed asagents provocateurs, death being the alternative if ever they disclosed the methods of their Christlike patrons and employers. As we have seen, both theHermandadand theCruciatawere the Inquisition's agents throughout the Peninsula, and were employed mostly for the purposes of watching and seizing victims. The smallest hamlets swarmed with these vermin and they were mainly drawn by the Inquisitors from the worst characters in the country. They themselves were often victims of the Inquisition, whose influence had destroyed all kinds of secular industry in order that the Church should profit by it, and members of both brotherhoods served for the lowest wage the system which had robbed them of all chanceof procuring an honourable livelihood. In order to possess the better claim upon their patrons, they had devoted all the faculties of mind and heart to perfecting the arts of espionage, and no system has ever produced more crafty, more ruthless, more persevering servants. When once their attention was fixed upon a victim, it was but of small importance that he was innocent, for his doom was settled from that moment. If his reputation, his rank, his riches did not allow of his immediate seizure, then recourse was had to stratagem. All means, however vile or base, were allowed; they employed all arts, they assumed all characters, they made use of every dress, they adopted every possible method of circumventing and capturing their prey. Caresses, flattery, entertainments, gold, were all employed in forwarding their designs; months and years often passed before a victim was entrapped, but theHermandadnever lost a victim once it had fixed its eyes upon his belongings. TheCruciatawas formed with the object of watching over members of the Catholic body and seeing that its members performed their religious duties. It is not difficult to conceive to what a degree of hypocrisy such an establishment must have brought a nation, and if "most Catholic Spain" were Catholic at all in those days, it was rather from fear of theCruciatathan from love of God. So then the Inquisition had two first-classcorps d'espionnagewhich formed two active armies, always on the alert and always moving amongthe masses, through which both their political and their spiritual ascendancy remained assured.
That few could escape the attentions of these spies must be evident when we consider that the Inquisition characterised as Heretics all who taught, wrote, or spoke against the Church, its teachings, its hierarchy and priesthood, or even those who wrote in favour of methods or teachings belonging to non-Catholic bodies, or who simply criticised the Church. To be a suspect was practically to be a man who was already dead. To have spoken irreverently of holy things, or to have failed to inform of those who had so spoken, to have read forbidden books, or to have lodged or entertained an heretical friend—these were sufficient to condemn a man, and according to the principles of the Inquisition, a man was obliged to inform against his father, his brother, his wife, his children, under pain of himself being brought within the notice of the Inquisitors. As it happened, the larger percentage of men and women who became its victims were such as possessed large means which the ecclesiastical powers desired to possess. Jews, Moslems, non-Catholics of all sorts were, equally with Catholics, amenable to the Inquisition for specified "crimes," all of which were punishable by death if the accused were unable to justify themselves. Public report, secret information, discovery by means of spies and voluntary accusation were the four ways employed by the Inquisition, in order to bring matters under its jurisdiction. Flightwas impossible in view of the ubiquitousHermandad, and the summary seizure of an accused person and his immediate incarceration constituted the usual procedure, once the spies had reported to headquarters. These spies, or "familiars," as they were called, were invariably supported by the Inquisitors, even if evidence had to be fabricated in order to make up a plausible case. What was the quality of the Justice dispensed may be gathered from the following facts: first, the names of witnesses deposing against the accused were never given to these last; secondly, witnesses were not obliged to prove their depositions; thirdly, all and sundry who cared to volunteer testimony were accepted, so that men who were notorious for infamy, for perjury and for the most scandalous vices were welcomed to bear witness to the "truth"; fourthly, two hearsay witnesses were equivalent to one ear-witness; fifthly, the spies were always accounted the most reliable witnesses, notwithstanding that they were in the pay of the Inquisition. Finally, a son might be witness against his father, a father against his son, a wife against her husband, a husband against his wife, a domestic against his master, or a master against his servant—an inexhaustible source of treachery, revenge and the worst qualities of the human heart. The tortures to which the accused were subjected in order to make them confess to the commission of crimes of which they were guiltless were of three kinds. In the first place the victimwas taken to a vault which lay sometimes as many as one hundred feet below the surface of the highway. According to the nature of the charge, he was put through the torture of dislocation by being fastened as to his extremities, with cords, then raised by means of a pulley, kept some time in suspension and suddenly let fall to within a foot of the ground. If on repetition this means was found insufficient to make the "subject" confess, his Christian tormentors resorted to the water-trough, laying him on his back, binding him as to the legs, and having stopped his nostrils, poured water from a considerable height in such a way that its weight fell upon the throat. Occasionally the master of ceremonies turned off the flow, not, however, to give the victim relief, but to prevent his death by suffocation. Perhaps, even then, he refused to surrender, and in order to cure his obstinacy a couple of religious smeared his feet with lard or oil, stretched him on the ground with the soles exposed to a terrific fire, and after half-an-hour's subjection to this ordeal invited him to speak. If he refused, he was put through the torture once more and then removed to a dungeon where he invariably found some others in apparently as bad a plight as his own, who, as soon as he was brought in, began to curse the Inquisition and all connected with it. These were nearly always spies whose evidence constituted subsequently that on which the unfortunate man was eventually condemned to death. The executioners ofthe torture-room were as a rule monks clothed in cassocks of black buckram, with the head and face concealed under a cowl of the same colour, with holes for the eyes, nose and mouth. A Prior was accustomed to supervise the torture, assisted by a clerk who referred to his spy agents as occasion required, or summoned them from an adjoining hall, where most of them wiled the time away at dice, in order to fortify all accusations against the victim. Sometimes an innocent man, in the vain hope of saving his life, confessed his guilt. He was then accounted a happy repentant and, by a special favour, was permitted to be strangled before being cast into the flames. Those who persisted in their obstinacy were summarily burned to death.
In modern foreign congregational colleges the divisions of the school take the form of junior boys, middle grade and seniors, and as communication of the youths of one grade with those of any other grade are most strictly forbidden, mainly on the ground of morality, a considerable system of espionage is from the outset part of the institution's plans. In foreign schools the spies of any particular grade are officially known by the other boys, just as monitors are known in ordinary schools. The functions of the foreign school-spy go, however, very much farther than those of the monitor, and so busy is he in the performance of his duties, that espionage enters into the minds and habits of foreign youths from their earliest years. When the late CardinalVaughan—a typical Englishman if membership of a territorial family of half-a-score of generations counts for anything—was laying plans for the founding of a Catholic school in England, he visited many of the principal colleges in France with the object of obtaining ideas for his proposed foundation. Everywhere he was depressed at the absence of individual liberty and the ever-present prevalence of espionage. Nor was he consoled very much, on once asking the distinguished head of such an establishment what provision was made for training youths in the proper use of individual freedom, to hear that the school authorities saw to it that no freedom whatever was allowed except under the eyes of the official supervisors. Neither does the system fail in its application among the members of any governing confraternity itself in which the lay-brothers are spied upon by the functionaries in minor orders, and these in their turn by clerics in higher orders, the superior exercising espionage upon the entire community while the sport begins again in inverse order, and the chief finds out that his reports dealing with the subordinate end of the line are fully supplemented by spies who report with equal completeness on his own end of the game. Contemplative Orders, as they are called, are not, it may be said, confined to the Roman Catholic Church, and we presume monastic espionage is as prevalent among the non-Catholic monks as among the Catholic.
It is customary for Americans to declare that they possess no system of espionage in their country, and as a rule this is true of American life under normal conditions. Putting aside the questions of purely detective work and criminal investigation, and in these spheres of police activity America is probably served as well as any other country in the world, we may safely say that there is too much individual or social freedom in the United States to warrant the permanent existence of anything like organised espionage. Nevertheless, politics plays a rôle in every state of the Union, the complexity and strenuousness of which are not known in any other country in the world, and wherever the political game is pursued with resoluteness and vigour, we may depend upon it that all factions possess what Americans themselves very aptly describe as "inside information" regarding what is taking place in other opposing camps; all the more so, indeed, as success in political campaigns in America means possession and employment of a kind of patronage which is invariably expressed in terms of dollars and cents. Such information can only come by way of emissaries planted inthe midst of political enemies, and there is attached to every political organisation a selected body of men who make it their business, for due consideration, to work in other camps on behalf of particular factions. This kind of political espionage is, it may be said, quite as common in England, or Canada, or Australia, or France, or Germany as in the United States, for as it has been said: "So long as there are governments so long will there be political spies, and so long as there are attempts being made to overturn governments by force, so long will political espionage remain a necessity." As in England, or Scotland and Ireland, so in America there is little in the way of systematised espionage, even among the vast community of German-Americans who might be supposed to revert to type, as the Darwinians put it. Over there, as in these Islands, espionage is only organised for expediency's sake and according to the exigencies of any particular scandal, social or commercial, which may require the intervention of the agent of stealth and observation.
Yet, how many Americans are themselves aware that Charles the First sent his agent Randolph to America in order to report on the condition of the Colonies which were even then discussing the question of severing themselves from the British bond? Louis the Sixteenth also sent Baron de Kalb to inquire into the revolutionary spirit which, as a result of the importation of French encyclopædism, preceded the Declaration ofIndependence, and upon the Baron's favourable report, gave the Revolutionaries that aid which led in the end to their triumph. Of Hale we have spoken at fuller length, but have yet to tell how General Washington had his own secret agents within the British lines, from whom he received constant intelligence as to what was taking place in Howe's and Clinton's camp. Major Tallmadge, whom we have mentioned in the story of André, was the agent through whom the information was transmitted. At first it was written in sympathetic ink, then a new invention and imported by General Lafayette, which only disclosed its message when the paper on which it was written had been dipped in another fluid. Once the invisible ink was made visible by the application of the chemical reagent which developed it, the manuscript appeared as if it had been written in the ordinary way. Washington was, however, a particularly cautious man. He suspected that the British might very well possess this same sympathetic ink, and conveyed a message to Tallmadge that the latter's spy "should avoid making use of the stain (ink) upon a blank sheet of paper which is the usual way of its coming to me. This circumstance alone is sufficient to excite suspicion. A much better way is to write a letter in the Tory-style with some mixture of family matters, and between the lines in the remaining part of the sheet communicate with the stain the intended intelligence. Such a letter would pass through the hands of the enemyunsuspected, and even if the agents should be unfaithful or negligent, no discovery would be made to his prejudice, as these people are not to know what is concealed writing in the letter and the intelligent part of it would be an evidence in his favour."
James Rivington, editor and printer ofThe New York Gazette, was another agent in the secret service of Washington. By 1781 this man, realising that the British were unlikely to succeed in quelling the rebellion, undertook, in the interests of his own person and property—for earlier he had sided with the British—to furnish the American commander-in-chief with important information. This he conveyed to the general, written on tissue-paper and bound in the cover of school books. Although Rivington was thus aiding the revolutionary Whigs, he kept up his daily abuse of them in his newspaper, retaining the confidence and good will of the Tory leaders and residents. When in the autumn of 1783, the British evacuated New York, Rivington was, of course, suffered to remain, while other Tories were driven away and their estates confiscated. Major Tallmadge mentions Rivington as "a gentleman of business, of education and of honour," a somewhat stilted way of describing the journalist who, owing to his position, was able to mix with the loyalist families on a friendly and familiar footing, the revolutionary authorities paying him at the rate of £100 a month for services rendered. Soon after the Declaration of the War of Independencethe new government of the United States made the then considerable appropriation of £6000 annually for the purposes of secret service. This money continues to this day to be appropriated. It is drawn by the direction of the President in such sums as he may require for specific services, without any voucher being given beyond the certificate of the Secretary of the Treasury registering the fact.
In 1812, it is recorded, President Madison communicated to Congress the commission and correspondence of John Henry, a British agent, proving that while the two countries were still at peace "a secret agent of the British Government was being employed in certain States in fomenting disaffection to the constituted authorities of the nation, and in intrigues with the disaffected for the purpose of bringing about resistance to the laws, and eventually, in concert with a British force, of destroying the Union and forming the eastern part thereof into a political connexion with Great Britain." This work of anagent provocateurnaturally aroused great excitement throughout the whole of American Society. No one had really believed that there were persons in New England capable of any idea of secession, although British gold, it was well known, had been heavily subsidising the eastern Press in order to rouse up civil discord. To no avail, however; Henry passed, and the disquiet of the period gave way to a long period of rest and prosperity.
In the Mexican War large sums of money werespent on secret service, and in 1849 Congress made an appropriation of £10,000 for the purposes of enabling a body of spies to be formed who were under the personal direction of the President. After this war the "hire of interpreters, spies and guides for the army" was included among the incidental expenses of the Quartermaster's department, for which an appropriation has since annually been made by Congress. When the war for the suppression of the Southern Rebellion broke out in 1861, large sums were necessarily expended by the officers of the regular army and of the volunteers, on account of secret service. We note one account sent in by General Butler for the payment of fifty dollars for a hand-organ and a monkey. This item was disallowed by the Treasury officers, until it was explained that both organ and monkey had been bought at Annapolis to enable a young officer familiar with Italian to go through the enemy's country to Washington, disguised as an organ-grinder and notify the President of the great Northern uprising as well as of the approach of the Union troops for the rescue of the capital. There was undoubtedly a large number of what Frederick of Prussia termed "double-spies" in the Civil War, and many secret-service men who carried intelligence to Washington also carried Union information back to Richmond.
At this momentous period many of those in the secret service were convicts who had broken out of jail, and neither side derived much benefit from their employment. Blackmail, false charges andforgery were used by them solely with the purpose of obtaining money from their victims. Prominent merchants in New York and Boston were accused on false documentary evidence of defrauding their country. Their books and papers were accordingly seized and their owners paid exorbitant sums in order to avoid arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. One victim remonstrated with the President in the following words:—"It is hard that citizens enjoying a good name who had the misfortune to come into business relations with the Government, should be exposed to such a spirit [espionage]; that they should be dragged from their homes and hurried to a military prison; that they should be obliged to undergo a protracted trial by court-martial, damaging their good name, destroying their peace, breaking up their business and subjecting them to untold expense, when at the slightest touch, the whole case vanishes into thin air, leaving behind nothing but the incomprehensible spirit in which it had its origin." The informers continued, despite all remonstrance, to enrich themselves at the expense of wealthy business men in the North, and many spies then laid the foundations of fortunes which to-day may be counted in the tens of millions. The military spies were doing good work, at the same time, in the South, though it was afterwards admitted that the secret service of the Confederates was far more efficient than that of the Union, the reason being, it was said, that in the service of the South were scores of intelligent women of positionwho were successful in obtaining at Washington, New York and elsewhere in the North, correct information of the plans and intentions of the Union generals. This was the case in regard to the battle of Bull Run, when a Mrs Greenhow obtained from a Northern politician information as to the advance of the Federal troops. Indeed, the operations of wealthy women-spies in the secret service of the South, during the Civil War, is one of the most curious features of that event. Nor were they all Southern women; many of them were Northerners, and at all events every one of them owed her fortune and position to the principles for which the Union stood. These women watched and waited at official doors until chance or the unguardedness of an employee allowed them to learn the particular secret intelligence they were looking for; they stole maps and plans and most of them had taken lodgings close by the War Office, to which they were wont to invite young departmental secretaries to whom they offered the pleasures of the tea-table and an enlightened discussion of Federal iniquities. Mr Perley Poore, writing in the well-known magazine,The Chautauquan, in January 1887, says: "They smuggled the information which they obtained, in the linings of honest-looking coats and hid the army secrets in the mysteries of innocent-looking bustles; they burned signal lights from garret-windows and crossed the Potomac below Alexandria at dead of night and with muffled oars. At one time the Government had caught and hivedover a dozen of these busy Confederate bees in a house at Washington where, in a few days, they beguiled the young officers charged with guarding them and carried on their vocations as before." One of the best known of these creatures was Belle Boyd, the daughter of a Federal official; according to report she was sharp-featured, black-eyed, quick-tongued, of wonderful energy and spirits, twenty-five and—very free. She wore a revolver in her belt, rode a mettlesome horse and easily attracted the attentions and interest of the younger officers from whom she extracted valuable information, though what the officers extracted in return, we are not told. Boyd organised her own corps of women spies who were very much of the same type and character, and if not worse than herself, were apparently no better than they ought to have been.
Many stories are told of the ease with which Confederate secret-service men obtained first-class information from the departments. A young Englishman, member of a Washington firm of stationers who executed contract work for the Government, was once inveigled into giving away an important piece of military intelligence to a secret-service sleuth who had shadowed him from the capital to New York. Both took up lodgings at the Brevoort House, became acquainted and spent several evenings together. The Englishman casually allowed it to be known that he was on terms of particular intimacy with departmental officials and his friend suggested on leaving NewYork that they should correspond. A few weeks later, the Briton received a letter, addressed to him at Washington, asking if it were true that the blockaded port of Galveston was to be opened—could he find out the facts for a certainty from his official friends. Suspecting nothing, the stationer inquired at Washington and was duly informed as to governmental intentions by a secretary who really knew. He conveyed the news to his friend and was only reminded of the occurrence a few days afterwards when he was arrested and sent under guard to New York. Here he found that a noted blockade-runner had been arrested with the Washington letter in his pocket. The prisoner proved to be his friend of the Brevoort House who eventually received a long sentence, the Englishman escaping only through the intervention of the British Consul. The stationer received, however, no more favours from his official friends and lost a certain fortune through his lack of caution.
At the close of the war many spies who had worked for both the North and the South made their appearance at Washington, where most of them were taken into the services of the war department, at that time under the direction of Lafayette Baker in respect of itscorps d'espionnage. When, in the course of time, President Johnson was impeached by the Republican party, Baker, a man of great cunning and resource, set about impressing the public with the value of his services to the country. He sought to prove that a MrsCobb had given bribes to members of the Cabinet in order to procure the pardon of ex-Confederates. The funds employed in the impeachment of Johnson were contributed by the distillers, and the secret service of the Treasury Department conceived and organised the "whisky ring," formed of Government officials and distillery magnates. The whisky taxes were divided and about one-half was paid into the Treasury, while the "ring" divided what remained. When the distillers slackened in their production the officials urged them to greater activity, the result being that although the ring included almost every revenue official in the West, many politicians of note and well-known personages in Washington, the fraudulent gains amounted to millions of dollars and for years even minor participants in the combine were pocketing some $500 (£100) a week as their share in the transaction. General Babcock, one of General Grant's personal staff, who was considered to be a member of the ring, was subsequently tried at St Louis, but acquitted, although public opinion always regarded him as guilty and made no concealment of its view that it was only Grant's influence which had procured him his acquittal. During the presidency of the victorious Federal commander, the Secret Service flourished at Washington and was mainly connected with the wire-pulling activities of politicians who saw large profits in contracts for municipal improvements, a form of "political" enterprise which has also become common in Europe sinceBaron Haussmann, of Paris, showed how much money there is be made in the exploitation of "civic patriotism," as it is called. Mr Perley Poore must be quoted in full in order to demonstrate the method of the Washington ring and its agents. He writes: