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Title: Queer people
Author: Basil Thomson
Release date: January 16, 2026 [eBook #77709]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922
Credits: MWS, PrimeNumber and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEER PEOPLE ***
QUEER PEOPLE
[Illustration: A NOTE-FORGER’S DEN.]
QUEER PEOPLE
BY
BASIL THOMSON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD.
at the Edinburgh University Press
TO
MY COLLEAGUES
WHOSE TACT AND UNSELFISH DEVOTION
AVERTED MANY DANGERS
PREFACE
My readers will be divided between those who think that I have not told
enough, that I have told too much, and that I had better have told
nothing at all. I bow my head to them all.
The list of those to whom my thanks are due is too long to set out in a
preface. It would include the names of my admirable staff, of sailors,
soldiers, and civilians of many countries besides our own in almost
every walk of life and even of a few of our late enemies. No drama, no
film story yet written has been so enthralling as our daily repertory
on the dimly-lighted stage set in a corner of the granite building in
Westminster. In a century after we, with our war-weariness, are dead
and gone the Great War will be a quarry for tales of adventure, of high
endeavour, and of splendid achievement: when that time comes even some
of the humbler actors who play their part in these pages may be seen
through a haze of romance.
My thanks are due to Mr. Milward R. K. Burge for permission to use his
verses on the Hôtel Majestic during the Peace Conference.
B. T.
LONDON, 1922.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE DETECTIVE IN REAL LIFE 1
CHAPTER II
THE IMAGINATIVE LIAR 10
CHAPTER III
THE LURE OF SOMETHING FOR NOTHING 22
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST DAYS 33
CHAPTER V
THE SPECIAL BRANCH 47
CHAPTER VI
WAR CRIMES 62
CHAPTER VII
THE GERMANS AND THE IRISH 75
CHAPTER VIII
THE CASEMENT CASE 86
CHAPTER IX
STRANGE SIDE SHOWS 97
CHAPTER X
THE GERMAN SPY 117
CHAPTER XI
MÜLLER AND OTHERS 130
CHAPTER XII
THE HIRELING SPY 144
CHAPTER XIII
THE LAST EXECUTIONS 155
CHAPTER XIV
SOME AMERICANS 174
CHAPTER XV
WOMEN SPIES 181
CHAPTER XVI
CURIOUS VISITORS 192
CHAPTER XVII
THE END OF RASPUTIN 204
CHAPTER XVIII
RECRUITS FOR THE ENEMY 213
CHAPTER XIX
THE DECLINE OF MORALE 225
CHAPTER XX
THE BOGUS PRINCESS 236
CHAPTER XXI
FOOTNOTES TO THE PEACE CONFERENCE 246
CHAPTER XXII
THE ROYAL UNEMPLOYED 252
CHAPTER XXIII
UNREST AT HOME 262
CHAPTER XXIV
OUR COMMUNISTS 279
CHAPTER XXV
THE RETURN TO SANITY 303
CHAPTER I
THE DETECTIVE IN REAL LIFE
If I were asked what were the best qualifications for a detective I
should say to be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. That,
perhaps, is because I happen to be an indifferent jack-of-all-trades
myself, and I cannot remember any smattering that I acquired in distant
corners of the earth that did not come in useful at Scotland Yard.
Other countries try to make specialists of their detectives. They would
have them know chemistry, surgery, and mineralogy; they would have
them competent to appraise the value of jewels, to judge the time a
corpse has been dead, or how long a footprint has been impressed upon
damp earth. They forget that there is a specialist round every corner,
and that a detective who knows his work knows also where to find a
jeweller or a doctor or skilled mechanic who will give him a far better
opinion than his own. All that they succeed in doing is to furnish a
very alluring laboratory for the edification of visitors and saddle
themselves with a host of theorists who make a very poor show by the
test of the statistics of discovered crime.
Real life is quite unlike detective fiction; in fact, in detective work
fiction is stranger than truth. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, to whom I take
off my hat with a silent prayer that he may never appear in the flesh,
worked by induction, but not, so far as I am able to judge, by the
only method which gets home, namely, organisation and hard work. He
consumed vast quantities of drugs and tobacco. I do not know how much
his admirable achievements owed to these, but I do know that if we at
Scotland Yard had faithfully copied his processes we should have ended
by fastening upon a distinguished statesman or high dignitary of the
Church the guilt of some revolting crime.
The detection of crime consists in good organisation, hard work,
and luck, in about equal proportions: when the third ingredient
predominates the detective is very successful indeed. Among many
hundred examples the Voisin murder at the end of 1917 may be cited.
The murderer had cut off the head and hands of his victim in the hope
that identification would be impossible, and he chose the night of an
air-raid for his crime because the victim might be expected to have
left London in a panic; but he had forgotten a little unobtrusive
laundry mark on her clothing, and by this he was found, convicted,
and executed. That was both luck and organisation. Scotland Yard has
the enormous advantage over Mr. Sherlock Holmes in that it has an
organisation which can scour every pawnshop, every laundry, every
public-house, and even every lodging-house in the huge area of London
within a couple of hours.
I took charge of the Criminal Investigation Department in June 1913.
The late Sir Melville Macnaghten, my predecessor, who wrote his
reminiscences, held the view that the proper function of the head
of the C.I.D. was to help and encourage his men but not to hamper
them with interference. He had an astonishing memory both for faces
and for names: he could tell you every detail about a ten-year-old
crime, the names of the victim, the perpetrator, and every important
witness, and, what was more useful, the official career of every one
of his seven hundred men and his qualifications and ability. Unlike
my predecessors, I had already a wide acquaintance among criminals,
chiefly those of the professional class. To read their records was
to me like looking at crime through the big end of the telescope. At
Dartmoor I had 1200 of them, nearly all professionals with anything
from one to thirty previous convictions. There were Scotsmen, Irishmen,
Welshmen, and Englishmen, with a good sprinkling of foreigners, some of
whom had come to England when their own countries had become too hot
to hold them. When you read of crime in the magazines or the detective
novels it is nearly always murder. You have to be in charge of a prison
in order to realise that the murderer is rarely a criminal by nature
at all. But for the grace of God he is just you and I, only more
unlucky. For the real criminal you have to go to the crimes against
property. Most murders are committed without any deep-laid plot,
whereas the professional thief or forger or fraud has carefully planned
his depredations before he sets out to commit them: the murderer is
repentant, and is planning only how he can earn an honest living
after he is discharged; the others are thinking out schemes for fresh
adventures.
Criminal investigation was not quite what I expected to find it. The
Department was well organised, though perhaps a little rusty in the
hinges. The danger of centralisation had been realised long before.
London had been divided into twenty-one divisions, each with a Criminal
Investigation staff whose business it was to know everything about its
portion of the huge city. These divisional staffs dealt with all the
ordinary crime that occurred in the division: it was only the graver
crimes or those that were spread over several divisions that were taken
up by the staff of the Central Office. In such cases it was usual to
detach a Chief Inspector to take charge of the inquiry. Every day we
received a thick bundle of forms in which every crime, however small,
committed in London during the previous twenty-four hours was reported.
The graver of these formed the subject of a separate report, and there
was the excellent practice of making a detailed report upon every
suspected crime as soon as it occurred, because one could never tell
into what it might develop.
The Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard is not
responsible for the crimes committed out of London, but by an
arrangement with the Home Office a Chief Constable may ask the
Department for help to unravel any serious crime committed in his area
without any cost to the local authority. That this permission is not
always acted on is due less to the very natural _amour propre_ of the
local force than to the difficulty in determining what difficulties
lie ahead. The larger cities have, moreover, efficient detective
organisations of their own: most of them have sent men to be trained
in the Detective Classes at New Scotland Yard; these have greatly
distinguished themselves in the examinations.
The training of detectives was almost entirely legal and, as far as it
went, it was admirably done. It was essential that they should know
the rudiments of the Criminal Law as well as the procedure of the
Criminal Courts, otherwise they were bound, sooner or later, to commit
some solecism that would incur the comments of the Judge. But on its
practical side their education was neglected. Very few were craftsmen,
and if it came to making an exhaustive search of a house they might
be expected to look conscientiously in all the obvious places and make
no search for such hiding-places as a short board in the floor or the
space behind the wainscot; probably none of them had ever watched
a house in the course of erection. It is only by experience and by
failure that real proficiency in the matter of searching is acquired.
Nor were they taught any uniform method of description. The average
police description was a very colourless document, for in any crowd one
might find a dozen men with a ‘fresh complexion, blue eyes, brown hair,
oval face, and medium height.’ Such matters as peculiarities of gait
and speech were very often omitted. They did not always know the trade
names of articles of clothing or plate or jewellery, nor could they
distinguish between real stones and pearls and their counterfeits. The
more intelligent picked up these things by experience, but the others
did not. Many of them seemed to me to be unimaginative in the matter of
observation; at any rate, they seemed seldom to follow a man without
his becoming aware of it. On the other hand, they were admirable when
it came to dealing with the public. Their courtesy never failed, and
naturally it brought them much help from the people living in their
locality.
I soon found that the London detectives were naturally divided into two
classes, the detective and the ‘thief-catcher.’ The latter belonged to
the class of honest, painstaking policeman without sufficient education
to pass examinations for promotion, but who made up for this deficiency
by his intimate knowledge of the rougher class of criminals, his habits
and his haunts, and by personal acquaintance with the pickpockets
themselves, who had the same regard for him as a naughty little boy
has for a strict and just schoolmaster. The ‘thief-catcher’ has no
animus against the people he has to watch. He keeps his eye upon them
warily, as the keeper at the Zoo keeps his eye upon the Polar bears,
and when it comes to business he arrests them impartially without
rancour and without indulgence. This explained what I had never been
able to understand in prison--how the convicted criminal seldom bears
malice against the detective who brought him to justice provided he
thinks that he was treated fairly. ‘The man was only doing his dooty,’
he says. The danger of over-educating your detective is that little
by little you will eliminate the ‘thief-catcher,’ for whom there is
a very definite place in the scheme. I remember one whose zeal had
communicated itself to his wife. At that time we were overwhelmed
with complaints about pickpockets at the stopping-places of the
’buses in the crowded hours. They would take part in the rush to get
in, crowding on with the other passengers and relieving them of the
contents of their pockets; if they were disappointed of a place, they
fell back and waited for the next ’bus to continue their business. If
they saw any one eyeing them they would mount the ’bus until they came
to a stopping-place where they thought they would be more free from
observation. My ‘thief-catcher’ was a rather conspicuous person, and
when he appeared on the scene the pickpockets would melt away. He could
not be everywhere at once, but he used to make a sort of ‘’busman’s
holiday’ of his days off duty and go out with his wife. She mounted
the ’bus with a gaping handbag, which was as effective a bait for a
pickpocket as roast pork is for a shark; the pickpocket followed, and
just behind him went the husband to take him into custody in the very
act. It must have been a quite exciting sport for both.
Every now and then the ‘thief-catcher’ would show a rare gleam of
imagination. I remember the case of a man who was expected to pledge
a stolen watch. It was impossible to search him until he did, because
if he had not got the watch in his possession he would ‘have the law
on you.’ The suspect vapoured about the railings of St. Mary Abbot’s
church, watched from the kerbstone by John Barker’s, where people are
always waiting for the motor-’bus. There was a pawnshop at the corner.
Suddenly he formed a resolution and walked quickly across the street to
the pawnshop, but the ‘thief-catcher’ was too quick for him. Flinging
off his coat as he went, he plunged into the shop, dashed behind the
counter, and received the suspect in his shirt-sleeves, resting on
his knuckles in the conventional style, and asked him what he could
do for him. ‘What will you give me on this?’ said the man, producing
the watch. ‘Come along to the police station and I’ll tell you, and I
caution you that anything you say may be used in evidence against you
at your trial.’ I have no doubt that the suspect said something which
was not fit to use in evidence when he realised what a trap he had
fallen into.
In one respect the Central Office was very much alive. Besides its
admirable system of identification by finger prints, elaborated by
Sir Edward Henry, the Commissioner, a system since adopted by the
whole civilised world, it had a very complete and practical method of
record-keeping.
The late Dr. Mercier was responsible for the fallacy that there was
an almost invariable tendency on the part of criminals to repeat the
method in which they had been successful on a former enterprise. But a
glance at criminal histories shows that Dr. Mercier’s theory was only
partly true. Most of the practitioners vary their methods according to
local conditions. You will find the blackmailer taking an occasional
hand in a burglary; a pickpocket indulging in shop-lifting; an area
thief boldly breaking in through the front door. All that can be said
is that a man who has successfully poisoned a dog in one case is more
likely than another man to do the same again. The only successful
organisation in detecting crime must have method, industry, and local
knowledge, and I found all these strongly cultivated at New Scotland
Yard.
The London thief is preternaturally quick in detecting that he is being
followed. Even if he is not quite sure, he will adopt the expedient of
turning sharp on his heel and walking for fifty yards in the opposite
direction before resuming his journey, and during that fifty yards
his sharp eyes have taken a mental photograph of every person he has
passed. In really big affairs he will pay a confederate to follow him
at a distance, taking note of any other follower remotely resembling
a policeman. The tubes are very useful to him. He books for a long
journey, sits near the door, and slips out at the next station just
before the gates of the car are slammed and there is no time for the
policeman to alight, and having thus shaken him off, he sets off for
his real destination. Four well-known thieves tried this device once
with a pair of detectives in attendance. All went well up to the point
of slamming the gate, and then things began to go wrong. The detectives
had the gate reopened. The lift was one of those that are operated by
a liftman standing at the bottom, and as it went aloft the detective
explained the position to the liftman. Something went wrong with that
lift: it stuck half-way for quite five minutes--time enough for the
detectives to climb the stairs and summon uniformed policemen to man
the gates on the level of the street. The feelings of the trapped rat
who sees a group of terriers waiting for the wirework door of his cage
to be opened must have descended upon the spirits of those four thieves
when their cage rose at length to the surface.
Every now and then a detective would display real initiative in keeping
observation. In quiet suburban roads a loitering man would at once
bring a face to every window in the street. To keep watch upon a house
there must be some excuse. In one case the detective became a jobbing
gardener and undertook to clip the hedges and weed the paths of the
house opposite, and if he took a long time over the job, that is quite
in accordance with the habits of jobbing gardeners; in another, attired
in suitable clothing and armed with pick-axes, two detectives proceeded
to dig up the roadway. Their leisurely method of work must have
convinced the bystanders that they were genuine employés of the Borough
Surveyor.
CHAPTER II
THE IMAGINATIVE LIAR
During the War there was an outbreak of what the Americans call
‘congenital lying,’ but which might better be termed ‘adolescent lying’
on the part of young persons. We all know the young girl who tells
fibs, and in normal times she would probably be spanked and sent to
bed without her supper, but in war-time any story, however wild, was
accepted.
One afternoon during the first year of the War I received an urgent
request from a Chief Constable in the Midlands for help in a case of
great difficulty. The family of a doctor in good practice had been
upset by receiving a series of outrageous letters and postcards signed
by a lady’s maid who had lately gone to another situation. While she
had been with them she was a quiet and respectable person, and yet her
letters could have been written only by a woman of vicious and depraved
character. They came in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they were pushed
under the front door; sometimes they were thrown in through an open
window and, though the front door was put under police observation and
no one was seen to come to it, they were dropped into the letter-box at
intervals of three hours.
And then the house itself became bewitched. The mistress would put down
her bunch of keys on the kitchen dresser for a moment, and a wicked
fairy whisked them away. The cook would put a pound of butter into
the larder: it vanished. The house-maid lost her pen and ink, the
doctor his comb, and the whole house was ransacked from top to bottom
without recovering any of these things. It is a most harassing thing
for a doctor in a busy practice to come home to a house which has been
bewitched by wicked fairies.
There was nothing to go upon except the bundle of letters, which
certainly bore out the description which the Chief Constable had given
of them. I suppose that Mr. Sherlock Holmes would have taken another
injection of cocaine and smoked three or four pipes over them before
he sat himself down to analyse the ink and examine the paper under a
powerful lens. The Detective Inspector to whom I entrusted the case did
none of these things. He asked for the bundle of letters and took the
next train. I thought that the case might take him a week, but it took
him exactly two hours. When he returned next day he gave the following
account of his proceedings.
On the way down in the train he read through the letters and made a
note of every word that had been misspelt. There were seventeen. He
then composed a piece of dictation which took in the seventeen words.
It must have been like composing an acrostic. On his arrival at the
house he summoned the entire household--the doctor, his wife, the
children, and the five servants--into the dining-room and, adopting
the business-like procedure of the village schoolmaster, he served
out paper and pens. When all were seated comfortably at the table he
cleared his throat and gave them a piece of dictation. All entered into
the spirit of the thing--all except one, and she made no sign. At the
end of twenty minutes the pens ceased to scratch, and the copies were
handed in. They did not take him long to run through. After a brief
inspection he detained the mistress and the ‘tweeny’ and dismissed
the others. He then said that he would like the mistress to take him
up to the ‘tweeny’s’ sleeping quarters with the girl herself. In her
room was a locked box. The ‘tweeny’ had lost the key, but when he
talked of breaking it open the key was suddenly discovered. In the
box were writing materials identical with those of the incriminatory
letters, and then after a little pressing the girl burst into tears
and made a clean breast of it. She did not like the ex-lady’s maid;
she did like to see the whole household in a flutter. She began with
the letters, and when she saw these beginning to lose their effect she
became the wicked fairy with the keys and the butter-pats. Some people
are surprised that children of sixteen can write horrible letters, but
experience has shown that this is quite a common aspect of adolescent
lying.
The spy mania was a godsend to the adolescent liar. A lady in a large
house in Kensington came one day in great distress to say that her
little maid had been kidnapped by masked men in a black motor-car and
carried off to some unknown destination in the suburbs, apparently with
the intention of extorting information from her; but fortunately, with
a resource of which her mistress had found no evidence in her domestic
duties, she had escaped from them and returned the next morning. The
mistress thought that we ought to lose no time in catching these masked
miscreants and their black motor-car. The girl’s story was certainly
arresting. It had been her evening out, and while coming away from
listening to the band in Hyde Park a tall, dark man (these men are
always tall and dark) had stopped her and had said, ‘You have got to
come with me. You are wanted for the Cause.’ She refused. He had then
given a peculiar whistle (these men always give a peculiar whistle)
and two other tall, dark men had emerged from the darkness and laid
hold upon her.
‘What were the policemen doing all this time? Didn’t you cry out?’
‘All the men wore masks and that frightened me so that I did not dare
to cry out. Two of them took me, one on each side, and led me out to
the cab-stand. There I saw a dark motor-car with the blinds down. They
pushed me into it and shut the door, and then the car started and drove
at terrible speed with no lights.’
‘No lights? But the police would have stopped it.’
‘Well, I didn’t see any lights. It all looked black.’
‘Which way did you go?’
‘Oh, we passed down Kensington High Street and away into the country,
but I was too frightened to notice the direction.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we got to a large house standing in a garden. It was all black.
We stopped at the front door, and I heard one of them say, “Where shall
we put her?” and the other said, “Into the black room.” They took me
out of the car and down a passage, and pushed me into a black room with
no light and locked the door. I heard them whispering and consulting,
and I thought they were going to kill me.’
‘Well, and then what happened?’
‘Nothing, sir. I stayed on in the room for quite a long time, and then
I went to the window and found I could get out.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, then I got out and came home.’
‘How did you find your way?’
‘Oh, I met a lady not far from the house, and she told me how to get
home.’
‘But it must have taken you hours.’
‘It did, sir. I didn’t get home till the morning.’
The Inspector asked her whether the men had talked about spying. They
had not. Why did she think they were spies? Because they wore masks
and had a black motor-car. Also, I suppose, because they were tall and
dark. He then took the mistress aside and said that he would like an
opportunity of searching her box, because something she had said led
him to think that there was only one man and he was not tall or dark.
The key was produced, the box opened, and there on the top lay--a pair
of soldier’s gloves. And then the whole story was dragged out of her.
He was in khaki, he had no confederates and no motor-car, but he was
soft-spoken and the poor fellow was just going off to the Front. That
cleared up the mystery.
In 1915, when the spy mania was at its height, a little general
servant, aged sixteen and fresh from the country, threw her master and
mistress into an almost hysterical state by her revelations. One day
the mistress found her in the kitchen writing cabalistic signs on a
sheet of paper. The girl explained that this was part of a dreadful
secret, and when pressed a little, confided to her that she had become
a sort of bond-slave of a German master-spy named ‘E. M.’, who had
employed her to make a plan of the Bristol Channel, and had taught her
to operate an extraordinary signalling engine called the ‘Maxione.’
She said that she was in terror of her life, that the spy would come
and tap at the kitchen window, that he had a powerful green motor-car
waiting round the corner in which he would whisk her off to operate the
‘Maxione’ and the red lights, without which the submarines lying in
wait in the Bristol Channel would not be able to do their fell work.
When she saw that her master and mistress swallowed her story she began
to enlarge upon it. She introduced into it a mythical girl friend, a
sort of Mrs. Harris, in whose name she wrote to herself in a disguised
handwriting, and this girl friend gave her a great deal of good advice,
such as:
‘Trust in E. M. no longer. Really I believe he _is_ a spy.’
This girl went on to say that in the course of a motor-ride she had
taken documents out of his pocket which she recognised as containing a
plan for blowing up Tilbury Docks. She also produced letters from the
spy himself--impassioned love-letters which contained gems like the
following:
‘Herr von Scheuaquasha will pay you £50 for one tapping of the red
light, the X signal of the seventh line, the universal plug and the
signalling. The staff of the Kaiser Wilhelm will pay you greatly, and
you will be rewarded for the rest of your life. You will be mentioned
in all the German head papers as the heroine of a brave act and
heroic deed. I have a home in Germany and two servants awaiting your
arrival. A valet shall wait on you, darling. You shall be driven in
a smart car, you shall enjoy all the luxury possible for soul of man
on the face of the Globe to bestow on a maid in the hand of marriage.
I have an income of £500 a month. We shall live by Berlin honoured
and welcomed through Germany and Germany’s people. For the sake of
those who love, which I am sure, you would sacrifice your country for
my sake. Your excommunication of the language known in England will
be brought before the Kaiser, and for saving his people you shall be
forgiven for your English blood. If I was certain that I had English
blood in my veins I would go to the West Indies to be gnawed by a
lion.’
From this it may be inferred that the German master-spy was not a
Fellow of the Zoological Society. In another letter E. M. reproached
her for not keeping an appointment:
‘You have ruined me and yourself by not coming out. There is yet
plenty of time. Our men cannot get the messages through, and even if
it was switched half-way it would be well. Germany must have their
report, and I shall again try for you sooner or later.’
The letters from the spy were in code, but those from the girl friend
were _en clair_. Gradually the volume of correspondence grew until
it became a formidable bundle. The master and mistress confided in a
sensible friend, who passed the whole matter over to the authorities.
Some of the master-spy’s letters were amatory, but the love-making was
indissolubly intertwined with strict business, only every now and then
his admiration for her transcendent beauty would break loose. ‘But your
beauty may enchant us.’
The extraordinary part of this fraud was that the girl was quite
uneducated, and had never been out of her native village, and yet she
could fabricate different handwritings and make signs that distantly
resembled Pitman’s shorthand. She had dotted all over her map sham
chemical and mathematical symbols, and whenever she was cornered for an
explanation she invented a new romance.
[Illustration: THE PEARL NECKLACE STOLEN IN THE POST BETWEEN PARIS AND
LONDON, JUNE, 1913. VALUED AT ABOUT £110.000.]
She had reduced her mistress to such distress that she did not dare
to leave the house, and therefore the police superintendent who was
detailed to see her had to make a visit to the suburbs. There he found
a simple, pleasant-faced country girl, the daughter of a labourer, who
would have been supposed to have no knowledge of the world outside her
native village. Her employers were in such a state of mind that it was
decided to send her home to her mother. One of the curious points
about her imagination was her power of inventing names upon the spot,
which is a very rare quality even among practised liars. When pressed
as to the name of the master-spy, without a moment’s thought she gave
it as Eric Herfranz Mullard. When she was pressed to explain why the
Germans were not able to operate their own machine, the ‘Maxione,’
which she described as being a sort of collapsible framework of iron
rods, quite portable, but 5 or 6 feet in height when extended, she said
that the keys of the base, which flashed rays from the little lamps
attached to the arms at the top, had to be worked with great speed with
the fingers and the elbows as well, and she gave a demonstration on
the dining-room table, which was so energetic that it must have left
bruises on her elbows. The flashes were green and red, and could be
seen for a distance of 150 miles. That was why one had to strike the
keys so hard and, naturally, a German’s fingers were not likely to be
so nimble as those of an English girl.
The ages of from fourteen to eighteen have been so productive of
trouble to the police that I have sometimes regretted that all girls
between those ages are not safely put to sleep by the State and allowed
to grow quietly and harmlessly into womanhood unseen by the world.
Perhaps the legend of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ may have been suggested
by the pranks of adolescent liars in the dawn of the Christian era.
How many hay-stacks have been set on fire by little farm servants? How
many ghosts have been conjured up? How much paraffin has been thrown
on ceilings to attract photographers for the daily Press, merely from
an infantile desire to see the grown-ups buzzing about like a nest of
disturbed wasps?
But to return to pre-war memories. At the moment when I took charge of
the Criminal Investigation Department the Central Office was busy over
the robbery of the pearl necklace. A necklace valued at about £110,000
had been dispatched from Paris to a London jeweller by registered post.
The box was safely delivered with all the seals apparently intact,
but the pearls were missing, and lumps of coal had been substituted
for them. At first suspicion fell upon the French postal servants.
Elaborate inquiries were made on both sides of the Channel, and it was
established beyond a doubt that the wrapper and the seals were exactly
in the condition in which the parcel was delivered for registration.
There was no doubt whatever that they had been properly packed, and
therefore somewhere there existed a counterfeit seal of the firm,
which consisted of the initials ‘M. M.’ within an oval border. My
first contribution to the case was to establish by experiment that a
counterfeit seal could be made and used on melted sealing-wax within
four minutes, and that therefore at some point in the parcel’s journey
it would have been possible to break the seals, undo the wrappings,
remove the pearls, and seal the parcel up again without the loss of a
post. Gradually the police began to see daylight. Rumours fly in Hatton
Garden, and it was not long before the names of X and Y and one or two
others were whispered in connection with the robbery.
Then began one of the most difficult cases of observation that I
remember. No fox was ever more cunning in covering his tracks. The men
had no reason to suspect that they were being followed, and yet they
never relaxed their precautions for a moment. If they took a taxi to
any rendezvous they gave a false destination, paid off the taxi and
took another, sometimes repeating this process of mystification two
or three times. If they met in Oxford Street to lunch together at an
A.B.C. shop they would suddenly change their minds on the doorstep
and go off to another, and all the while they had an aged discharged
convict in their pay to shadow them and call their attention to any
suspicious follower. I shall not tell here what devices the police
adopted, but I will say that at the last, when every other kind of
observation failed, we did adopt a new device which was successful.
The object throughout had been to find a moment when one or other of
the parties had the stolen pearls about his person, and when the day
came for making the arrest, just as the four thieves were entering a
tube station the police failed, because on that particular day they had
left the necklace at home. They were detained, nevertheless, in order
that a thorough search might be made of all their hiding-places. As
it then turned out, the necklace was in the possession of the wife of
one of them, and when the search became too hot and she feared a visit
from the police she put the necklace into a Bryant & May matchbox and
dropped it in the street. There it was found, without, however, its
diamond clasp, which had been disposed of separately.
It did not take the police long to unravel the details of the crime.
They found the engraver who had innocently cut the false seal, and the
office where the parcel had been opened. The thieves had arranged with
the postman to bring the parcel to the office for three or four minutes
before taking it on to deliver it. Whether the postman knew beforehand
what they intended to do is uncertain. They expected to find diamonds,
which were far more easily disposed of: when they found pearls, so
large that in the trade each pearl had almost a history, they knew that
they could not dispose of them and were at first for throwing them
into the Thames. It may be judged that I was not an expert in precious
stones when I say that I had the matchbox and its contents laid out on
my table for quite half an hour before I was sure that the pearls were
genuine. They looked, to my untutored eye, so yellow. We telephoned to
the owner and the insurance agent. The owner fell upon the pearls as a
man might fall upon some beloved and long-lost child whom he had never
expected to see again in this world. I then told him jocularly of my
doubts. ‘Yellow?’ he said, with genuine amazement, ‘Yellow? they are
rose-colour.’
Every now and then there was a sensational seizure at the house of a
receiver of stolen property. In October 1913 a certain jeweller’s shop
in Shaftesbury Avenue was raided and the contents were carried off to
Bow Street, which resembled for some days an exhibition of wedding
presents. It contained the proceeds of quite twenty known burglaries,
and even then only one-third of the plate had been identified because
it has been found by experience that in these days, when people insure
their jewellery against burglary and draw the insurance money, they
take little interest in bringing the thieves to justice. There is also
the fact that things are stolen from a house sometimes for many months
before they are missed. Some of the objects in this exhibition belonged
to a Lady H----, and while she was going round she caught sight of a
clock given to her by Lord Charles Beresford which she thought was
still at home. Unclaimed stolen property is held by the police for a
certain period and then disposed of by public auction.
[Illustration: THE CONTENTS OF A RECEIVER’S SHOP WHICH CONTAINED THE
PROCEEDS OF MORE THAN SIXTY BURGLARIES.]
In 1913 there was an epidemic of safe-breaking. The capacity of the
oxy-acetylene flame for cutting through steel plates appealed to the
safe-breaker, who had long deplored the weight and inefficiency of the
tools on which he had to rely for his livelihood. For years there has
been a competition between the burglar and the safe-maker, and so far I
believe the safe-maker has won.
Two enterprising persons spent a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1913
in a certain office in Regent Street cutting a great hole in the safe
with an oxy-acetylene apparatus, which they had transported to the
house in a taxi-cab on the previous afternoon. Having secured their
booty they left this very incriminating apparatus behind them.
Not many weeks later the police were forewarned that an attempt would
be made on a safe in a certain much frequented cinema hall, but here
the burglars received a nervous shock. All went according to plan that
Sunday afternoon. The street and the hall had the deserted Sunday look
when, on a sudden, just as operations were beginning, from every corner
sprang truncheoned men, and the burglars were caught in a trap.
CHAPTER III
THE LURE OF SOMETHING FOR NOTHING
The great business of transferring the contents of your neighbour’s
pocket to your own is what more than nine-tenths of the world live
upon. Society draws the line between what is legitimate and what
is dishonest rather low down in the scale. A grocer may rob you by
high prices but not by giving you short weight; a money-lender may
fleece you by usury but not by picking your pocket; but I confess
to a sneaking preference for the rogue who, without any pretence of
respectability, preys upon your vanity or your cupidity and cheats you
quite openly.
The Spanish prisoner fraud has flourished for nearly half a century. It
has the advantage over all other frauds in costing practically nothing
for stock-in-trade, and incurring no risk whatever to the practitioner.
All he needs is a little stationery, a few postage stamps, and the
names and addresses of farmers in Scotland and England. The farmer
receives a letter with the Valencia postmark from a Spanish colonel
now languishing in prison on account of the part he played in a
revolutionary conspiracy.
‘MY DEAR SIR AND RELATIVE’ (it begins),--‘Having not the honour to
know you personally but only for the good references my deceased
mother Mary Harris, your relative, did me about your family, I apply
myself to you for the first and perhaps last time to implore your
protection for my only daughter Amelia, child 12 years age.’
Here the writer is banking on the fact that very few of us are in a
position positively to say that no one of the sisters or cousins of
our parents was called Mary, and that no one of that name married a
Spaniard. The letter, which is beautifully written in halting English,
goes on to say that the writer, a colonel named Alvaro de Espinosa,
at the direction of the revolutionary committee, went to Berlin to
buy arms, was betrayed and went to England, but that while in London
he heard of the death of his wife. In the first shock of grief he
converted all his property into English and French bank-notes, and with
the proceeds cunningly concealed in the lining of his trunk he set out
for Valencia.
‘Well disguised, I went out to Spain, arrived in this city. Arranged
secretly some private business, took my leave from the martyr as was
my noble wife, and when I was very near coming in England again with
my daughter but with my heart contrite by grief I was arrested. A
wretch enemy had recognised and accused me. They proceeded me and
after in a War-Court I was condemned by desertion and rebellion
delinquency at one indemnification at 12 gaol years and at the
payment of the process outlays, a sentence I am undergoing now in
these military gaols, deprived of any intercourse.
‘When I was arrested my equipage which is a trunk and two
portmanteaux, was seized and sealed and folded before me and
delivering me its keys without might be discovered the so well artful
secret in which I hidden the said sum, and it remained laid down in
the same Court as a warranty for the outlays of process payment in
the event of being condemned, and as I am already unhappily sentenced
it is indispensable to pay the Court the amount of the expenses to
be able to recover the luggage. Thereby necessary sum to pay the
tribunal by the process outlays since I would not see me in the
debasing and shameful case to have to resort to my fellow-countrymen;
then I would be wretchedly betrayed again.’
That is why he writes to Harris. But what is Harris to get out of all
this? You shall hear. When the trunk reaches him--
‘you will see in its interior part and in its left side of Spain
shield in its centre you will set upon your forefinger so that when
an electric bell is pushed and quickly the secret will appear in full
view in which you will find my fortune.... I will name you as tutor
of my daughter and her fortune trustee until her full age and as a
right reward for your noble aid I leave you the fourth part of all my
fortune.’
So there you have it--something for nothing--the bait which so few can
resist; least of all when the something is £6250 and a beautiful young
Spanish ward.
The poor old revolutionary colonel is in a dying state, as you learn
from a letter from the chaplain, the Reverend Adrian Rosado, which is
enclosed. This devoted priest has letter paper headed with a cross,
and has a markedly feminine handwriting. He is not in the secret, as
the cautious old colonel has been careful to warn you. He ‘befriends
me by his vocation and good feelings: he is a venerable priest and
honest man, and I do not think it necessary he knows the secret very
extensively.’ The honest man regrets very much--
‘that on the first time I write to you I may be herald of bad news,
but the case so requires it and the truth must be said though it may
be painful. Your relative’s health state is very bad.’
indeed, so bad that--
‘we must have patience to suffer with resignation what God dispose
and beg his help to accomplish the last will of the unfortunate Sr.
Alvaro de Espinosa.’
The honest priest goes on to say that in a little while he will deposit
Miss Amelia and the trunk at your door, always provided that the
necessary expenses are defrayed.
‘By your relative charge I think convenient to beg your aid for
getting out the seized equipage to which end I am making steps in
order that the Tribunal tell me the exactly amount to pay the cost
and process expenses.
‘Awaiting anxiously your reply to accomplish the sacred mission your
relative has commissioned me.--I am, dear sir, your most affected
servant and Chaplain,
ADRIAN ROGADO.’
Strange that this holy and disinterested man should have a delicacy
about receiving letters at his presbytery. He, no less than the poor
prisoner, adds in a postscript:
‘By greater security please answer to my brother-in-law name and here
as following:
Mr. Arturo Rivier,
Maldonado 19,
Entremets,
Valencia, Spain.’
Is it because a letter addressed to the presbytery would be returned
through the Dead Letter Office marked that no such person as Rogado
exists?
[Illustration: THE PROCEEDS OF A RAID ON A RECEIVER, THE RESULTS OF
OVER SIXTY BURGLARIES.]
The world may be divided into two classes--those who would reply to
such letters and those who would consign them to the fire. In spite of
the picture drawn of Englishmen by envious foreigners, the Britisher
is by nature an imaginative and romantic person. That is why you find
him in every part of the globe: he goes abroad for adventure, to escape
from the humdrum routine of his home surroundings. And the farther
you go north the more romantic he becomes. That is why there are so
few Scots left in Scotland. To judge from the correspondence filed by
the police, nine out of every ten reply, and because the Britisher is
practical as well as romantic, the reply invariably asks how much money
is required to pay the ‘process outlays.’ On this the dying Espinosa,
whose handwriting is unusually firm for a stricken man so near his end,
rises to fresh flights of eloquence:
‘I will die peaceful,’ he says, ‘thinking of the good future welfare
of my dear daughter near you.’
His ‘health state is becoming grievous,’ and so he makes his will:
‘Here is my last will.
‘I name heiress of the ¾ parts of my fortune my alone daughter
Amelia de Espinosa.
‘I name you heir of the fourth part of my fortune and Tutor of my
daughter and Manager of it until this one may reach her full age.
‘As soon as the equipage may be in the Chaplain’s hands he shall go
out to your home with my daughter and equipage in order that you
may take away the money of my trunk secret to come immediately in
possession of the sum.
‘From the part belonging to my daughter you will deliver to the
Chaplain £200, for I will make a present to him. I beseech you to
grant all your assistance to the Chaplain since he is poor and he
does not reckon upon any resource to pay these outlays.
‘The equipage must be recovered immediately, for in the trunk is all
my fortune.
‘You will place my daughter in a college until her full age.... I
shall die peaceful thinking of her being happy near you, and she will
find on you some warm-hearted parents and brothers.--Your unfortunate
relative,
ALVARO DE ESPINOSA.’
And still no mention of money: that was because the recipient was
more than usually cautious and was, in fact, a wary fish that must
be played. So wary was he that he took the letter to the police for
advice. But I remember a case where a farmer in Norfolk was so much
touched by the misfortunes of his Spanish cousin, and so conscious of
the sensation that would be caused among his neighbours when it became
known that he was guardian to a beautiful young Spanish heiress, to
say nothing of the things that might be bought with £6250, that he sent
£200 to the address indicated by Espinosa and sat down to wait. He
waited so long that he became anxious about the safety of the chaplain
and his ward, and it was on their account, and not from any doubt
about the story, that he came to the police. He indignantly refused
to believe that he had been a victim to the familiar Spanish prisoner
fraud.
The War was unkind to Espinosa, who had been lingering upon his
death-bed for over forty years, and I hoped that it had killed him, but
the ink was scarcely dry upon the Treaty of Versailles before he broke
out again. From time to time the Spanish Government has been furnished
with the address to which victims are invited to reply, but hitherto to
no purpose: the game is too profitable to be easily killed.
I can understand succumbing to the wiles of Espinosa better than I
can understand the perennial success of the Confidence Trick, which
is practised generally by Australians on American visitors to London.
There are several variants because the tricksters are artists, and are
not above improving with practice. Here again the bait is ‘Something
for Nothing.’ Though the commonest form has been described in the
Police Court it may be well to repeat it here. An American walking in
Hyde Park sees an elderly man drop a pocket-book. He overtakes him
and restores it. The old man, whom we will call Ryan, is effusively
grateful. He would not have lost that pocket-book for the world: it
contained the evidence of his fortune: his benefactor must come and
have a drink. He holds him with his glittering eye, and while they
imbibe whisky he tells his story--how an uncle of fabulous wealth but
eccentric habits has left him a couple of million dollars on condition
that he can find a really trustworthy person to distribute one-eighth
of the sum among the poor of London. The dupe mentions the fact that he
has a return ticket to New York, and hails from Denver. So, as it now
appears, does Ryan, who takes from his pocket-book a newspaper cutting
setting forth the virtues and the enormous fortune of the uncle, and
at that very moment a third man, Ryan’s confederate, drops in. Hearing
the word ‘Denver,’ he joins in the conversation, for he, too, is from
Denver--George T. Davis, at their service. So there they are--three
exiles from Denver--a little oasis in the vast waste of London. To
George T. Davis Ryan relates his good fortune and the strange condition
in the will.
‘I know no one in this city. How am I to find a man in whom I have
confidence to distribute all this money? Now I like your face, Mr.
Davis, but I don’t know you--never saw you till this afternoon--how can
I say I’ve confidence in you?’
‘Confidence for confidence,’ replies Davis. ‘I’ve confidence in you
anyway. I’d trust you with all I’ve got, and I’ve got more than what
I stand up in. Why, see here! Here’s what I drew from the bank this
morning’--he thrusts a roll of bank (of engraving) notes into Ryan’s
unwilling hand--‘and here’s my watch and chain! Take them all and just
walk through that door. I know you’ll bring them back because I’ve
confidence in you.’ But Ryan still looks doubtful. ‘No good,’ whispers
Davis, ‘he don’t take to me. Why don’t you have a shot at the money? He
takes to you.’
[Illustration: THE CONTENTS OF A RECEIVER’S SHOP, SHOWING THE TOOLS FOR
MELTING DOWN THE PROCEEDS OF ROBBERIES.]
And so by appeals to the vanity of the man from Denver, by playing on
his cupidity, under the softening influences of liquid refreshment, by
the force of example, Davis succeeds at last. Into the still apparently
unwilling hand of Ryan the victim presses all the money and
valuables he possesses, and out goes Ryan into the street. The two men
continue drinking: George T. Davis is the first to betray anxiety.
‘The old man ought to be back by now. Can’t understand it--man I’d have
trusted anywhere. Couldn’t have been run over by a taxi? You stop here:
I’ll just step out and see where he’s got to.’ And that is the last
that the victim sees of either of the rogues.
Before the War most of the confidence men lived in Ealing. Each pair
have their own pitch, and there was a tacit understanding that neither
should poach on the ground of the other. Northumberland Avenue belonged
to one; the Mall to another; a third worked Hyde Park. The essence of
the trick is that the victim should be a bird of passage, for as soon
as the trick is played the actors leave for Rome. Why Rome was chosen I
never understood. There they stayed until a confederate reported that
the victim had sailed for home and the coast was clear. During the
War the poor confidence man fell on evil days: there were no American
tourists to prey upon, and if there had been any, one could not fly to
Rome. The passport people saw to that. The absence of a prosecutor is a
bar to police action, but occasionally one or other of the fraternity
is run to ground.
I have sometimes doubted whether the police should be called upon to
protect people so simple that they ought not to be allowed abroad
without a nurse. I remember a prisoner making the same complaint to
me. ‘It’s cruel hard on us chaps,’ he said, ‘when mugs like them are
at large. It’s a temptation: that’s what it is.’ But he was not doing
his profession justice. Like all artistic callings--like the stage
for instance--the reward lies not in the emoluments, but in the
satisfaction of playing on the feelings of your audience until you hold
them.
Given impudence and the artistic sense and a man may remove
mountains--at any rate he may remove houses. At Dartmoor there was
a man who boasted that he was ‘the lad that stole a row of houses,’
and it was no idle boast. In the City there was a row of derelict
eighteenth-century cottages which in these days would have been
condemned as unfit for human habitation. Tenants must have come
to a similar conclusion about them, for an agent’s board, already
weather-worn, announced that they were to let. One morning a young man
called at the house-agent’s and got into conversation with the clerk.
‘So those houses in Paradise Row are to let. I’d like to have a look
at them, and see whether it would suit my governor to make an offer.’
‘Right,’ said the clerk, ‘come to-morrow and I’ll take you round. I
can’t come now, I’m alone in the office.’
‘Don’t you worry, old man. Lend me the key and I’ll be back with it in
half an hour.’ The clerk was glad to be rid of him on such easy terms.
A week later an old client happened to look in. ‘I see you’re pulling
down those old death traps in Paradise Row. It was about time you did.’
‘Pulling them down? What do you mean?’
‘I mean what I say. I passed there just now, and there’s not much left.’
The clerk glanced hastily at the nail where the key was wont to hang.
The key was gone, and then he remembered how he came to part with it.
He tore out of the office without his hat, risked a hundred deaths
from motor-’buses, and reached his goal breathless. He would have been
breathless in any case at what he saw. The housebreakers had done
their work thoroughly, and at the moment were dealing with the ground
floor. The lead, the guttering, tiles, cisterns, woodwork, and bricks
had all been carted away and sold to the order of the man ‘who stole a
row of houses.’ He considered the months he had to spend in prison a
cheap price to pay for the prestige he won in the only circles whose
opinion he respected.
But his impudence paled beside that of the bogus doctor whose only
claim to medical knowledge was the possession of a stethoscope. His
method was to select a little artisan’s house in a quiet street in
South London on a Sunday morning, ring the bell, and when the tenant
opened the door ask for Mr. Smith.
‘I’m not Mr. Smith. My name’s Brown.’
‘Then I must have got the number wrong. So sorry. You don’t happen to
know which is Mr. Smith’s house? Never heard of him? Well, well!’ and
then, with great concern in his manner, ‘Stop, don’t shut the door. Do
you know you are very ill.’
‘Never felt better in my life,’ growled Mr. Brown.
‘Excuse me, I’m a doctor, and I know better. Phantasmagoria is a
dreadful illness, and you’ve got it badly. I can tell it from your
eyes. Now, look here (pulling out a stethoscope and looking at his
watch), I can just spare ten minutes. I’ll examine you and it won’t
cost you a penny, and if I’m wrong no one will be more pleased than I
shall.’
Still talking, he would edge the now frightened Brown into the parlour,
saying, ‘Don’t make any sudden movement, my dear fellow. Just slip off
your coat and trousers as gently as you can. Let me help you. That’s
right! Now lie down on that sofa. Gently now. That’s right. Th--a--t’s
right. Now say “A--a.” Now say “O--o--o.” It’s just what I thought.
It’s the worst case of phantasmagoria that I ever came across. Not a
word now. Move once, and you may never move again. Now lie quite still
while I run round to the chemist. I’ll bring you round something that
will put you right in two ticks. Not a word now: there’s nothing to
thank me for.’
In this he was quite right. He clapped on his hat and ran out into the
street, and it was not by inadvertence that he carried over his arm all
Mr. Brown’s Sunday clothes and whatever the pockets contained. And when
it dawned upon Brown that he had been victimised, how was he to take up
the pursuit on a Sunday morning in nothing but his shirt?
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST DAYS
Like most Englishmen, I read of the murder at Sarajevo without a
thought that it was to react upon the destiny of this country. It
seemed to be an ordinary case of Balkan manners, out of which would
proceed diplomatic correspondence, an arrest or two, and a trial
imperfectly reported in our newspapers. It did have the immediate
effect of postponing a ball at Buckingham Palace on account of the
Court mourning, but that was all. During the postponed ball on July 16,
so petty were our preoccupations at this moment that when a message
came in that Mrs. Pankhurst had just been recaptured under the ‘Cat
and Mouse Act,’ I thought it worth while to find the Home Secretary
and repeat it to him. A few days after the murder I met von Kühlmann
at luncheon. He can scarcely at that time have expected a rupture
of relations, for in talking over Dr. Solf, with whom I had been
associated in the Pacific, he said, ‘He has climbed high since you knew
him, and some think that he will go higher still (meaning that he would
become Chancellor). He is coming to London in August, and I shall write
to him to arrange a meeting with you.’
A few days later England began to feel uneasy. I overheard a certain
Under-Secretary remark at luncheon of his constituency, ‘Well, all
I can say is that if this country enters the War there will be a
rebellion in the North of England.’ He left the Ministry when the
moment came, and has now disappeared even from the House of Commons.
I think that we all had at the back of our minds a feeling that a
European War on the great scale was so unthinkable that a way would be
found at the eleventh hour for avoiding it. A staff officer in whose
judgment I believed remarked that if this were so he would emigrate,
because he knew that the day was only postponed until Germany felt
herself better prepared for the inevitable war. There were, in fact, no
illusions at the War Office. Some day the story that will do justice
to the services of Lord Haldane in those very critical weeks will be
written. The plans that had been made during peace time were all ready;
the names and addresses of the known German spies were recorded. We
could only wait for midnight on 4th August. I was actually in the Tube
lift at Gloucester Road on the stroke of midnight, and I remarked to
the liftman that we were now at war. ‘Is that so?’ he replied, with a
yawn.
The credit of the discovery of the German spy organisation before the
War was entirely due to a sub-department of the War Office, directed
by officers of great skill. They had known for some time that one Karl
Gustav Ernst, a barber in the Caledonian Road, who was technically a
British subject because he was born in England, was the collecting
centre for German espionage. All he had to do for his pittance of
£1 a month was to drop the letters he received from Germany ready
stamped with English postage stamps into the nearest pillar-box, and
to transmit to Germany any replies which he received. Altogether, his
correspondents numbered twenty-two. They were scattered all over the
country at naval and military centres, and all of them were German. The
law in peace time was inadequate for dealing with them, and there was
the danger that if our action was precipitate the Germans would hear
of it and send fresh agents about whom we might know nothing: it was
decided to wait until a state of war existed before arresting them. On
5th August the orders went out. Twenty-one out of the twenty-two were
arrested and interned simultaneously; one eluded arrest by embarking
for Germany. Their acts of espionage had been committed in peace time,
and therefore they could not be dealt with on the capital charge.
The result of this sudden action was to drop a curtain over England
at the vital moment of mobilisation. The German Intelligence Service
was paralysed. It could only guess at what was happening behind the
curtain, and it guessed wrong. Ernst was sentenced to seven years’
penal servitude for his share in the business, and, seeing that he was
a British subject, the sentence cannot be called excessive.
The curtain had dropped not only for the enemy but even for ourselves.
How many of us knew during those first few days that trains were
discharging men, horses, and material at the quays of certain southern
ports without any confusion at intervals of ten minutes by day and
night; that an Expeditionary Force of 150,000 men was actually in
the field against the Germans before they knew anything about its
existence? Von Kluck has recorded somewhere his surprise when he
first found British troops in front of him. After the Armistice he is
reported to have told a British officer that in his opinion the finest
military force in history was the first British Army, and that the
greatest military feat in history was the raising of the second British
Army.
Our great dread during that week was that a bridge or a railway arch
might be blown up by the enemy and the smooth running of mobilisation
be dislocated. Most of the railway arches were let to private persons,
of whom some were aliens. On 5th August I went myself to the War Office
to find a General who could be vested with power to turn these people
out. There was a good deal of confusion. Every Head of a branch had
left for the field that morning, and their successors were quite new to
their jobs. At last I found my General, and while I was talking to him
it grew dark and there was a sudden peal of thunder like an explosion.
He said, quite gravely, ‘A Zepp!’ That was the state of mind we were
all in. That same night my telephone became agitated; it reported the
blowing up of a culvert near Aldershot and of a railway bridge in Kent.
I had scarcely repeated the information to the proper authority when
the bell rang again to tell me that both reports were the figments of
some jumpy Reservist patrol.
Who now remembers those first feverish days of the War: the crowds
about the recruiting stations, the recruits marching through the
streets in mufti, the drafts going to the station without bands--the
flower of our manhood, of whom so many were never to return--soldiers
almost camping in Victoria Street, the flaring posters, the foolish
cry ‘Business as Usual’; the unseemly rush to the Stores for food
until, under the lash of the newspapers, people grew ashamed of their
selfishness; the silence in the ’buses, until any loud noise, like
a motor back-fire, started a Zeppelin scare? Who now remembers the
foolish prognostications of experts--how the War would result in
unemployment and a revolution would follow; the assurance of certain
bankers that the War would be over in six months because none of the
belligerents could stand the financial strain for longer? We have even
forgotten the food-hoarding scare that followed the spy scare during
the height of the submarine activity, when elderly gentlemen, who had
taken thought for the morrow, might have been seen burying biscuit tins
in their gardens at midnight for fear that their neighbours should get
wind of their hoard and hale them before the magistrate.
I began to think in those days that war hysteria was a pathological
condition to which persons of mature age and generally normal
intelligence were peculiarly susceptible. War work was evidently not a
predisposing cause, for the readiest victims were those who were doing
nothing in particular. In ante-bellum days there were a few mild cases.
The sufferers would tell you gravely that at a public dinner they had
turned suddenly to their German waiter and asked him what post he had
orders to join when the German invaders arrived, and that he, taken off
his guard, had clicked his heels and replied, ‘Portsmouth’; or they
would whisper of secret visits of German aircraft to South Wales by
night and mysterious rides undertaken by stiff guttural persons with
square heads who would hire horses in the Eastern Counties and display
an unhealthy curiosity about the stable accommodation in every farm
that they passed. But in August 1914 the malady assumed a virulent
epidemic form accompanied by delusions which defied treatment. It
attacked all classes indiscriminately, and seemed even to find its
most fruitful soil in sober, stolid, and otherwise truthful people. I
remember Mr. Asquith saying that, from a legal and evidential point
of view, nothing was ever so completely proved as the arrival of
the Russians. Their landing was described by eyewitnesses at Leith,
Aberdeen, and Glasgow; they stamped the snow out of their boots and
called hoarsely for vodka at Carlisle and Berwick-on-Tweed; they
jammed the penny-in-the-slot machines with a rouble at Durham; four
of them were billeted on a lady at Crewe who herself described the
difficulty of cooking for Slavonic appetites. There was nothing to be
done but to let the delusion burn itself out. I have often wondered
since whether some self-effacing patriot did not circulate this story
in order to put heart into his fellow-countrymen at a time when
depression would have been most disastrous, or whether, as has since
been said, it was merely the rather outlandish-looking equipment and
Gaelic speech of the Lovat Scouts that set the story afloat.
The second phase of the malady attached itself to pigeons. London
is full of pigeons--wood pigeons in the parks, blue rocks about the
churches and public buildings--and a number of amiable people take
pleasure in feeding them. In September 1914, when this phase was at its
height, it was positively dangerous to be seen in conversation with a
pigeon; it was not always safe to be seen in its vicinity. A foreigner
walking in one of the parks was actually arrested and sentenced to
imprisonment because a pigeon was seen to fly from the place where he
was standing and it was supposed that he had liberated it.
During this phase a pigeon was caught in Essex which was actually
carrying a message in the usual little aluminium box clipped to its
leg. Moreover, the message was from Rotterdam, but it was merely to
report the arrival of an innocuous cargo vessel, whose voyage we
afterwards traced.
The delusion about illicit wireless ran the pigeons very hard. The
pronouncement of a thoughtless expert that an aerial might be hidden
in a chimney, and that messages could be received through an open
window even on an iron bedstead, gave a great impetus to this form
of delusion. The high scientific authority of the popular play, _The
Man who Stayed at Home_, where a complete installation was concealed
behind a fireplace, spread the delusion far and wide. It was idle to
assure the sufferers that a Marconi transmitter needed a 4-horse-power
engine to generate the wave, that skilled operators were listening
day and night for the pulsations of unauthorised messages, that the
intermittent tickings they heard from the flat above them were probably
the efforts of an amateur typist: the sufferers knew better. At this
period the disease attacked even naval and military officers and
special constables. If a telegraphist was sent on a motor-cycle to
examine and test the telegraph poles, another cyclist was certain to
be sent by some authority in pursuit. On one occasion the authorities
dispatched to the Eastern Counties a car equipped with a Marconi
apparatus and two skilled operators to intercept any illicit messages
that might be passing over the North Sea. They left London at noon;
at 3 they were under lock and key in Essex. After an exchange of
telegrams they were set free, but at 7 P.M. they telegraphed from the
police cells in another part of the county, imploring help. When again
liberated they refused to move without the escort of a Territorial
officer in uniform, but on the following morning the police of another
county had got hold of them and telegraphed, ‘Three German spies
arrested with car and complete wireless installation, one in uniform of
British officer.’
Next in order was the German governess, also perhaps the product of
_The Man who Stayed at Home_. There were several variants of this
story, but a classic version was that the governess was missing from
the midday meal, and that when the family came to open her trunks they
discovered under a false bottom a store of high explosive bombs. Every
one who told this story knew the woman’s employer; some had even seen
the governess herself in happier days--‘Such a nice quiet person, so
fond of the children; but now one comes to think of it, there was a
something in her face, impossible to describe, but a something.’
During the German advance through Belgium an ingenious war
correspondent gave a new turn to the hysteria. He alleged that the
enamelled iron advertisements for ‘Maggi Soup,’ which were to be seen
attached to every hoarding and telegraph post, were unscrewed by the
German officers in order to read the information about the local
resources, which was painted in German on the back. Screw-driver
parties were formed in the London suburbs, and in destroying this
delusion they removed also many unsightly advertisements. The
hallucination about gun platforms was not dispatched so easily. As soon
as a correspondent had described the gun emplacements laid down by
Germans in the guise of tennis courts at Mauberge there was scarcely
a paved back-garden nor a flat concrete roof in London that did not
come under the suspicion of some spy-maniac. The denunciations were
not confined to Germans. Given a British householder with a concrete
tennis-court and pigeons about the house, and it was certain to be
discovered that he had quite suddenly increased the scale of his
expenditure, that heavy cases had been delivered at the house by night,
that tapping had been overheard, mysterious lights seen in the windows,
and that on the night of the sinking of the _Lusitania_ he had given a
dinner-party to naturalised Germans. When artillery experts assured the
patients that gun emplacements in the heart of London were in the wrong
place, and that even on the high lands of Sydenham or of Hampstead any
tram road would better serve the purpose they wagged their heads. They
were hot upon the scent, and for many weeks denunciations poured in at
the rate of many hundreds a day.
The next delusion was that of the grateful German and the Tubes. The
commonest form of the story was that an English nurse had brought a
German officer back from the door of death, and that in a burst of
gratitude he said at parting, ‘I must not tell you more, but beware
of the Tubes in April (1915).’ As time wore on the date was shifted
forward month by month, to September, when it died of expectation
deferred. We took the trouble to trace this story from mouth to mouth
until we reached the second mistress in a London Board School. She
declared that she had had it from the charwoman who cleaned the school,
but that lady stoutly denied that she had ever told so ridiculous a
story.
A near kin to this was the tale that a German officer of rank had
been seen in the Haymarket by an English friend; that he returned the
salute involuntarily but then changed colour and jumped into a passing
taxi, leaving his friend gaping on the pavement. A good many notable
Prussians, from von Bissing, the Governor of Belgium downwards, figured
in this story; a good many places, from Piccadilly to the Army and
Navy Stores, have been the scene. The best attested version is that of
the English girl who came suddenly upon her fiancé, an officer in the
Prussian Guards, who shook hands with her, but as soon as he recovered
from his surprise the callous ruffian froze her with a look and jumped
into a passing omnibus. Another version was that on recognising her
German fiancé the girl looked appealingly into his countenance and
said, ‘Oh, Fritz!’ whereupon he gave one startled look and jumped into
the nearest vehicle. This, it may be remarked, might have happened
to any Englishman, for who would not, when accosted by a charming
stranger under the name of ‘Fritz,’ have jumped into anything that
happened to be passing? In some of these cases inquiry showed that
at the moment when they were said to have been seen in London these
Germans were serving on the Continent, and it is certain that all were
hallucinations.
With the War, the Tower of London came into its own again. During
the early months it began to be whispered at London tea-tables that
the Crown Prince himself was languishing there (if languishing is
the appropriate term for a person of his temperament). Later, when
it became evident that he could not be in two places at once, the
prisoners of distinction included several British peers and privy
councillors. All these prisoners, who were at the moment adorning their
several offices in free life, had been shot at dawn. These delusions
may be traced to the fact that a few foreign spies were imprisoned in
the Tower before execution.
A new phase of the malady was provoked by the suggestion that
advertisements in the Agony Column of newspapers were being used by
spies to communicate information to Germany. It is uncertain who first
called public attention to this danger, but since refugees did make
use of the Agony Columns for communicating with their friends abroad,
there was nothing inherently improbable in the idea. In order to allay
public alarm it was necessary to check the insertion of apparently
cryptic advertisements. Later in the War a gentleman who had acquired
a considerable reputation as a code expert, and was himself the author
of commercial codes, began to read into these advertisements messages
from German submarines to their base, and _vice versa_. This he did
with the aid of a Dutch-English dictionary on a principle of his own.
As we had satisfied ourselves about the authors of the advertisements
we treated his communications rather lightly. In most cases the
movements he foretold failed to take place, but unfortunately once, by
an accident, there did happen to be an air-raid on the night foretold
by him. We then inserted an advertisement of our own. It was something
like this:
‘Will the lady with the fur boa who entered No. 14 ’bus at Hyde Park
Corner yesterday communicate with box 29,’
and upon this down came our expert hot-foot with the information
that six submarines were under orders to attack the defences at
Dover that very night. When we explained that we were the authors
of the advertisement, all he said was that, by some extraordinary
coincidence, we had hit upon the German code, and that by inserting
the advertisement we had betrayed a military secret. It required a
committee to dispose of this delusion.
The longest-lived of the delusions was that of the night-signalling,
for whenever the scare showed signs of dying down a Zeppelin raid
was sure to give it a fresh start. As far as fixed lights were
concerned, it was the best-founded of all the delusions, because the
Germans might well have inaugurated a system of fixed lights to guide
Zeppelins to their objective, but the sufferers went a great deal
farther than a belief in fixed lights. Morse-signalling from a window
in Bayswater, which could be seen only from a window on the opposite
side of the street, was believed in some way to be conveyed to the
commanders of German submarines in the North Sea, to whom one had to
suppose news from Bayswater was of paramount importance. Sometimes
the watcher--generally a lady--would call in a friend, a noted Morse
expert, who in one case made out the letters ‘P. K.’ among a number
of others that he could not distinguish. This phase of the malady was
the most obstinate of all. It was useless to point out that a more
sure and private method of conveying information across a street would
be to go personally or send a note. It was not safe to ignore any of
these complaints, and all were investigated. In a few cases there were
certainly intermittent flashes, but they proved to be caused by the
flapping of a blind, the waving of branches across a window, persons
passing across a room, and, in two instances, the quick movements of
a girl’s hair-brush in front of the light. The beacons were passage
lights left unshrouded. The Lighting Order did much to allay this phase
of the disease. Out of many thousand denunciations I have been unable
to hear of a single case in which signals to the enemy were made by
lights during the War.
The self-appointed watcher was very apt to develop the delusion of
persecution. She would notice a man in the opposite house whose habits
seemed to be secretive, and decide in her own mind that he was an enemy
spy. A few days later he would chance to leave his house immediately
after she had left hers. Looking round, she would recognise him and
jump to the conclusion that he was following her. Then she would come
down to New Scotland Yard, generally with some officer friend who
would assure me that she was a most unemotional person. One had to
listen quite patiently to all she said, and she could only be cured by
a promise that the police would follow her themselves and detain any
other follower if they encountered one.
Even serving officers were not immune. Near Woolwich a large house
belonging to a naturalised foreigner attracted the attention of a
non-commissioned officer, who began to fill the ears of his superiors
with wonderful stories of lights, of signalling apparatus discovered
in the grounds, and of chasing spies along railway tracks in the best
American film manner, until even his General believed in him. Acting
on my advice the owner wisely offered his house as a hospital, and the
ghost was laid.
Sometimes the disease would attack public officials, who had to be
handled sympathetically. One very worthy gentleman used to embarrass
his colleagues by bringing in stories almost daily of suspicious
persons who had been seen in every part of the country. All of them
were German spies, and the local authorities would do nothing. In order
to calm him they invented a mythical personage named ‘von Burstorph,’
and whenever he brought them a fresh case they would say, ‘So von
Burstorph has got to Arran,’ or to Carlisle, or wherever the locality
might be. He was assured that the whole forces of the Realm were on the
heels of ‘von Burstorph,’ and that when he was caught he would suffer
the extreme penalty in the Tower. That sent him away quite happy since
he knew that the authorities were doing something. The incarnation of
‘von Burstorph’ reminded me of a similar incarnation in the Criminal
Investigation Department many years ago. When one of my predecessors
appeared to be blaming his subordinates for a lack of enterprise in the
case of some undiscovered crime they would shake their heads and say,
‘Yes, I recognise the hand. That is some of Bill the Boatman’s work,’
but ‘Bill the Boatman’ was a most elusive person, and he has not been
arrested to this day.
On one occasion a very staid couple came down to denounce a waiter in
one of the large hotels, and brought documentary evidence with them.
It was a menu with a rough sketch plan in pencil made upon the back.
They believed it to be a plan of Kensington Gardens with the Palace
buildings roughly delineated by an oblong figure. They had seen the
waiter in the act of drawing the plan at an unoccupied table. I sent
for him and found before me a spruce little Swiss with his hair cut
_en brosse_, and a general air of extreme surprise. He gave me a frank
account of all his movements, and then I produced the plan. He gazed
at it a moment, and then burst out laughing. ‘So that is where my plan
went!’ ‘Yes, monsieur, I made it, and then I lost it. You see, I am
new to the hotel and, in order to satisfy the head waiter, I made for
myself privately a plan of the tables, and marked a cross against those
I had to look after.’
The Germans, as we now know, had the spy mania even more acutely. It
became dangerous for Americans in Berlin to speak their own language:
gamekeepers roamed the country armed to deal with spy motor-cars, and
Princess Ratibor and several other innocent persons were shot at and
wounded. Our own anti-German riots in which the shops of bakers with
German names were damaged had their counterpart in the mob attacks upon
the British Embassy in Berlin.
CHAPTER V
THE SPECIAL BRANCH
Throughout the War the Special Branch was combined with the Criminal
Investigation Department. There is a dividing line between ordinary
and political crime. In normal times the function of the Criminal
Investigation Department is to unravel crimes that have been committed,
and of the Special Branch to foresee and to prevent political agitators
from committing crime in order to terrorise the community into granting
them what they want. At that time there were about seven hundred
Criminal Investigation officers, of whom rather over a hundred belonged
to the Special Branch.
The Special Branch was instituted in the early ’eighties to cope with
the Irish dynamite outrages in London and elsewhere. Scarcely had
these been put down when foreign anarchists began to follow the Irish
example. The lives of Ministers were threatened, public buildings
were attacked, and legislation in the shape of the Explosives Act was
passed through both Houses at panic speed. The arrest and sentence of
the Italian anarchists, Farnara and Polti, both caught red-handed with
bombs in their possession, the fate of the anarchist who blew himself
to pieces when attacking Greenwich Observatory, and, even more, the
hostility of the crowd when the anarchists under the protection of a
strong escort of police attempted to give the man a public funeral,
were so depressing to criminal aliens that this form of outrage ceased.
Shortly afterwards one of the popular weekly newspapers offered a
reward to the man who would suggest the most effective form of
advertisement, and some bright spirit conceived the plan of sending the
Home Secretary a bomb containing a copy of the newspaper in question.
From the point of view of advertisement it achieved more than he had
counted upon. The parcel containing the bomb was opened by the Private
Secretary, who immediately summoned the Inspector of Explosives. When
he entered the room he found the bomb lying on the hearth-rug before a
bright fire with an office chair standing over it, and a group of Home
Office officials in a respectful semicircle round it. He asked what the
chair was for. They explained that if the bomb went off they thought
it would be some protection. It reminded the Inspector of an episode
at Shoeburyness, when a live shell fell in the mud in the middle of a
class of young gunners. ‘Lie down, gentlemen,’ shouted the instructor,
and no one moved. When the shell had been rendered harmless he asked
why they had not obeyed orders: they might all have been blown to
pieces. One of them faltered, ‘Well, sir, it was so muddy.’
To return to the advertisement competition. When the bomb was opened
and the newspaper was disclosed it was found that it was not an offence
to scare the wits out of a Cabinet Minister. But the young gentleman
had neglected one precaution: he had not removed from the bomb a
percussion cap, and this was his undoing, for under the Postal Act it
was unlawful to send explosives by post. When he appeared at the Police
Court upon this heinous charge he had all the advertisement that he
wanted.
If there was any disposition to reduce or disband the Special Branch at
that time, the criminal activities of Indian students, which culminated
later in the assassination of Sir Curzon Wyllie, showed that the
Branch could not be dispensed with, and while the Indian students
were still active the suffragettes took to crime. I am not sure that
these ladies were not a more troublesome problem than all the rest put
together. They steered clear of assassination, but they burned down
churches, blew up the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, damaged
priceless pictures, set valuable property on fire, smashed half the
plate-glass windows in Regent Street, and attempted to throw the King’s
horse at the Derby. Most of them had quite forgotten the vote and
were intent only upon the excitement. Many of them lived in studios
where they could plot and contrive street pageants uninterrupted by
their elders to their hearts’ content. When they were caught they used
to scream down the witnesses or the magistrate, and when they were
committed to prison they went on hunger-strike. The so-called ‘Cat
and Mouse’ Act was devised to meet this contingency, but many of them
eluded re-arrest by a large expenditure of money on motor-cars, and
by an ingenuity that might have been employed upon a better cause. In
official circles I was stigmatised as an incurable optimist when I said
that the violent tactics of the suffragettes would end as suddenly
as they had begun, and perhaps they were right, because neither I
nor any one else had foreseen the War. On 5th August 1914 there were
actually three women in custody for an assault upon Downing Street. On
that morning a deputation of suffragettes called at the Home Office
to demand their release. It was felt that these women quite probably
would throw all their misdirected energies into the national cause.
The three culprits were released, and from that moment the Militants
undertook war work, and in not a few cases gave conspicuous service to
the country. Sometimes their enthusiasm was embarrassing, as when they
began to denounce the wrong people as being traitors to their country,
but on the whole they did more good than harm.
With the outbreak of the War the work of the Special Branch became
more exacting than that of the Criminal Investigation Department.
It was maid-of-all-work to every public office, for, being the only
department with a trained outdoor staff, it was called upon for every
kind of duty, from the regulation of carrier pigeons to investigating
the strange behaviour of a Swiss waiter. Ordinary crime decreased
progressively with every month of the War. The very qualities of
enterprise and adventure that swept so many youngsters into crime
during peace time took the same men to the recruiting office, and when
conscription came in our prisons were more than half empty.
Looking back over the eight years in which the Branch was responsible
under my control for the safety of Ministers and distinguished foreign
visitors, it is natural to take satisfaction in the fact that there has
never been a mishap. Apart from the obvious danger run by the Viceroy
and the Chief Secretary of Ireland, there have been anxious moments,
especially during the Prime Minister’s travels abroad; and if it had
not been for the network of information of the plans of international
assassins, against which precautions could be taken beforehand, there
might have been incidents that would have left their mark upon history.
In 1915 eleven hundred habitual criminals were known to be fighting;
more than seventy had been killed. One of these had stood his trial for
murder, and had been condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted
to penal servitude for life, and in due course he had been set at
liberty on licence. He was one of the first to answer the call. In
one case an ex-warder serving as a private recognised in his sergeant
a former prisoner who had been in his ward, but, like a wise man, he
held his tongue. One ‘old lag’ did give a comrade away. The colonel of
a certain battalion had chosen as his sergeant-major an old soldier
who had rejoined, who feared nobody and was a strict disciplinarian.
All went well until one day a corporal asked for a private interview
with the colonel, and imparted to him the news that the sergeant-major
was an ex-convict. It turned out that he had attempted to trade upon
this knowledge with the sergeant-major himself but had failed, and now
he was having his revenge. Having made his revelation the corporal
deserted, knowing that his sergeant-major was no less redoubtable with
his fists than he was with his tongue.
The police who had the duty of supervision over ex-convicts drew the
line only at the Royal Army Medical Corps. It was their duty to prevent
crime wherever possible, and it was not considered fair to men of these
antecedents to place them in the way of temptation in the shape of the
kit and valuables of the dead and wounded. There were, of course, a few
backsliders. Many of the men gravitated to the lines of communication
rather than to the trenches, and there were cases of the purloining
of stores and rations and comrades’ property. Generally, however, the
punishment awarded by Court-Martial was suspended, and the men were
given another chance in the trenches.
In one case a man who had been convicted for burglary won the Victoria
Cross. He volunteered on a night of heavy rain to crawl to the enemy’s
trenches alone and silence a machine-gun post. He told the officer
before he left that if he did not return in half an hour the company
was free to open fire, ‘and never mind me.’ Just before the interval
expired he dropped back into his own trench, plastered with mud from
head to foot. Returning again to the Front after the award of the V.C.,
he was killed in action. I knew the man--a rough, silent, Lancashire
lad, who had come to grief, I believe, through a love of adventure, and
who was as free from egotism, pose, and self-consciousness as any of
the men I knew. When the Great Book is opened his crimes, such as they
were, will, I think, be found erased on the debit side of his account,
and the Recording Angel will have set down virtues which had but a
tardy recognition while he walked this earth.
The Criminal Investigation Department was called upon to provide
trained men for the personnel of the Intelligence Corps in France.
They were the nucleus of what afterwards became an important body--the
Intelligence Police, who took control of the passenger traffic at the
ports and of _contre espionage_ on the lines of communication. Several
of them who obtained commissions reverted quite cheerfully to the rank
of sergeant of police after the Armistice. One of them whose work in
London had been the detection of White Slave traffickers was detailed
to protect the Commander-in-Chief, Lord French. In the street of G.H.Q.
he recognised a man whose deportation from England had been due to
his investigations. He followed the man, who went straight to Lord
French’s quarters. He stopped him on the doorstep and taxed him with
his identity. There, at least, one would have said that the capture
was important, but no! It turned out that the man had been engaged by
some one who knew nothing of his unsavoury character, to assist in the
kitchen.
It may be imagined that the enormous rush of correspondence in those
first days of the War dislocated the smooth-running machinery of the
Special Branch. There was likely to be a shortage of trained police
officers, and we took on a number of pensioners to cope with the
correspondence. I remember the hopeless expression on their faces when
I visited them about a week after they had started. Piles of unopened
letters lay on the floor, great stacks of docketed letters stood on
every table. They were working I do not know how many hours overtime,
and still the flood of correspondence was threatening to submerge them.
In those first few months I do not think that any of us left the office
before midnight. If all the angry people who poured in their complaints
had realised that every one had to suffer some inconvenience in the War
we might have done better work.
I really think that at this time the American tourist was the most
difficult. Not content with besieging his own Embassy, he would
sometimes come to demand satisfaction from me for the outrage of having
had questions put to him at the port of arrival. These ladies and
gentlemen had never seen a war before, and they could not understand
why it should be allowed to interfere with the elementary comfort of a
neutral who was ready to pay liberally for everything. Sometimes I am
afraid that my subordinates paltered with the sacred truth, for they
had discovered that the quickest way to smooth the ruffled feelings of
these tourists was to say, ‘Do you know that you are the first American
who has ever complained of such inconveniences? We have always found
Americans so quick to realise our difficulties and to make allowances
for them.’ That never seems to have failed to put the angriest of
them on their good behaviour. It made them, in a sense, custodians
of their country’s reputation. But when the first tourist rush had
been seen safely off to the other side of the Atlantic I began to
find the Americans, both official and unofficial, a very great help,
and I made many permanent friends among them. The temptation to win
affection in this country by displaying unneutral feelings must in
some cases have been very great, and yet, though I knew many official
Americans intimately, I never heard one of them go outside the reserve
which every official neutral was expected to entail. The announcement
that America had entered the War must have been to some of them like
removing the top from a boiling saucepan.
I knew that not a few Englishmen thought that when America began to
send over staff officers to Europe they would not want to learn from
our experience but would be more inclined to put us under instruction.
They were quite wrong. The whole attitude of the American officer
was exactly what good sense would prescribe. We had been buying our
experience at great cost for nearly four years, and we were prepared to
give it all freely to our new allies. They, on their part, came over to
learn, and when they had learned all that we were able to teach them
they began to make discoveries for themselves. Never during the whole
course of the War or afterwards was there any difference between my
American friends and myself. We worked as one organisation, and when
they had had time to extend theirs until it reached all over Europe
I thought sometimes that it was the better of the two. Nor must I
forget the American journalist. It had been a tradition in some British
official circles to be afraid of the journalist, probably lest his
trained persuasiveness might have induced them to open their mouths
when they meant to keep them shut. I have always found it best to be
perfectly open with them; to tell them as much as they ought to know
for the proper understanding of the question, and then to settle with
them what they shall publish. I have never known an American journalist
exceed the limits within which he has promised to keep. Sometimes when
it was essential that a matter should be made public they have gone out
of their way to publish it. No doubt the European representatives of
the great American newspapers are very carefully chosen: I have been
surprised at their wide knowledge of international affairs and the
excellent forecasts they have made.
In those early days weird people would swim into my horizon. One
morning information came to me that a gigantic American had arrived
at the Carlton Hotel and had declared his intention of buying a yacht
in order to pay a visit to the Kaiser. He thought that a few minutes’
straight talk between them would finish the War. I invited him to call,
and there walked into my room a very menacing figure. He was well over
six feet, and must have weighed quite eighteen stone. He stood there
glaring at me with his hat on, chewing the stump of a cigar.
‘Won’t you take off your hat and sit down?’ I began.
‘I’d rather stand.’
‘We don’t usually smoke in this office.’
‘I am not smoking.’ (The cigar was unlighted.)
‘I hear that you are going to buy a yacht.’
‘That’s my business.’
At this, my assistant, who was almost equally powerful, rose to his
full height. I think he expected that my visitor intended mischief.
After this unpromising beginning it was useless to question him
further, and we parted. Throughout the interview he had not relaxed his
scowl. Later in the afternoon the American Embassy received a cable to
the effect that a gentleman of large means, who was mentally unstable
and was being looked after by his friends privately, had eluded them
and embarked for Liverpool. The name corresponded with that of my
friend of the hat and the cigar. I was asked whether I saw any way of
restoring the gentleman to his relations. They were ready to wait on
the other side with their arms open to receive him if only he could be
persuaded to go. It was a desperate venture, but I tried it. I sent a
courtly Inspector to the hotel with instructions to be mysterious but
urgent in an invitation to come down at once to another interview. He
came, and this time I did not trouble him with preliminaries. I looked
round to see that all the doors were closed, and then addressed him. ‘I
want to give you a word of advice,’ I said. ‘Ask me no questions, but
if you are wise you will do exactly as I say. There is a boat leaving
for New York to-morrow morning. Don’t stop to think; just go by it. If
the matter had not been so urgent in your own interests I would not
have sent for you. Now waste no time.’ He looked at me blankly for a
moment and left the room without a word. Two hours later inquiries
were made at the hotel. He had looked in for a moment to pay his bill,
and had left without his luggage. A telegram to Liverpool produced the
reply that he had gone on board the steamer, booked his passage, and
had locked himself in his cabin. We heard later that he was met by his
friends, and that the luggage had been sent on after him.
On one other occasion my companion felt called upon to intervene.
A middle-aged man had been asked to call on some quite unimportant
matter. He was of fierce and truculent mien. When I asked him a
question he glared at me and was silent. I put the question again,
whereupon he clapped his hand to some mysterious pocket about his
person, and began to draw out what my companion thought must be a
revolver. He was about to fall upon the visitor when the object was
disclosed. He was pulling out a curious little telephonic apparatus
which he planted on my table in front of me and connected with his ear.
The man was stone deaf. The faintest ghost of a smile flickered across
his rugged countenance when he realised our mistake.
Very soon after the declaration of war every public man whose speech
was reported in the newspapers received a letter in a foreign
handwriting, filled with abuse of the English and extravagant praise of
the Germans, who, according to the writer, were chosen by God to sweep
us into the sea. The brutality and vainglory of these compositions were
tempered with scholarship: the man was an omnivorous reader, and had
a quotation in support of every boast. The letters were posted from
every district in London, and bore an address in Loughton which did
not exist. Apart from the work entailed in the laboriously ornamental
handwriting, the man must have expended time and money in travelling
from one part of London to another. Abusive letters injure nobody, but
that a truculent Hun should be at large in London in war-time, in the
opinion of those who received his letters, reflected little credit
on the efficiency of the police. In order to cut this troublesome
inquiry short I induced the _Globe_ to publish a facsimile of one of
the letters, and immediately several people wrote to say that they
identified the handwriting as that of their former German tutor living
in Dalston. I was curious to see this fire-eating Hun: I pictured him
as a heavy, florid, square-headed Prussian. Square-headed he was, but
he proved to be a rather diminutive abject person with the wide-staring
eyes of a wild animal brought to bay. He was mentally deranged, but in
the choice of his pseudonym, in the precautions he had taken in posting
his letters, he had shown the cunning of a monomaniac. He had a son
serving in the British Army, and a very loyal wife who undertook to
keep him out of mischief for the future.
As the German tide poured over Belgium we received our daily flood of
refugees. The arrangements improvised by the Belgian Relief Committee
were a high tribute to the power of organisation which is latent in
our people. Naturally there was a little confusion at first because
the rush of refugees far exceeded the room for accommodation during
the first few days. Considering that the refugees included all
the unemployable and most of the disreputable part of the Belgian
population, as well as the industrious and the intellectual, it is
remarkable, on the whole, how well they behaved. There were one or two
amusing incidents. I remember hearing that at one of the Receiving
Stations in London a couple who spoke Flemish but no other language
were received late in the evening. The woman was shown into her room,
and shortly afterwards the supposed husband was conducted to the same
apartment. Immediately a fearful uproar arose, and the interpreter had
to be telephoned for. It then appeared that neither of the couple had
ever seen the other before.
Antwerp was being threatened, the Naval Division was pouring in for its
defence, and I was asked to send a police officer to the city because
my officer at Ostend could not possibly leave his post. No officer was
available at the time except a middle-aged man with a large family who
had done excellent service in advising upon doubtful literature. In
fact, he was the greatest living authority upon the kind of literature
on which a successful prosecution could be founded. At the call of duty
he said ‘Good-bye’ to his family and departed. A few days later, when
the German siege guns were in position, there came a telegram from
him, suggesting that he should be recalled. Events were moving fast,
and before I could reply to the telegram his arrival at Scotland Yard
was announced. I sent for him and said gravely, ‘I had your telegram,
Inspector, but you left your post without waiting for a reply.’ He
bowed in his usual courtly manner and replied, ‘Yes, sir, but a
fifteen-inch shell took the corner off my bedroom, sir, and I don’t
know how it is, but I think I am getting too old for sieges.’ ‘Too old
for sieges’ became a byword in my office throughout the War when any
one was asked to undertake a job that he did not relish.
There were two sides to the question of interning enemy aliens who
were kept in the country. When war broke out there were no internment
camps, but there were many Germans who were known to be dangerous. Some
place of internment had to be improvised forthwith, and for London the
obvious place was Olympia. Bedding and blankets were hastily gathered
in, and a guard was provided from Wellington Barracks. I used to go
there daily for a time because some useful information might be gleaned
from the civilian prisoners. They were a most unprepossessing lot.
During the first fortnight two Austrian ships put into the Thames
before they knew that war had been declared. The crews were all marched
to Olympia and interned with the Germans. When I arrived the next
morning the Austrians had been relegated to the annexe, and were roped
off from the others. It appeared that they had not been more than
an hour with the Germans before a violent quarrel broke out and the
Austrian officers formed a deputation to the commandant to request that
they might be separated from ‘those German riff-raff.’ Among them were
four young Austrian students who had apparently taken a voyage for
the enlargement of their minds. These young men had very definite and
uncomplimentary views regarding their brothers-in-arms, the Prussians.
On the whole, the prisoners in Olympia gave very little trouble. On one
occasion a German waiter became insolent to a guardsman, but the Irish
corporal, who had a sense of humour, approached the two while they were
in mid-dispute and said to the private in pretended seriousness, ‘Why
stop to argue with him? Shoot him,’ whereupon the German waiter dived
under a table and was quite polite for the remainder of his stay.
The cry, ‘Intern them all,’ which was taken up by certain newspapers,
was very embarrassing. Though, no doubt, it did interpret the public
feeling and allayed public alarm, it was the cause of thousands of
complaints and investigations. My own view at the time was that we had
so full a knowledge of the dangerous Germans that we should confine
internment to that class and leave the innocent ones at liberty. Many
of them were doing good work for us in munitions and manufactures,
some were definitely ranged in their sympathies with the Allies, such
as the Poles and Czechs. To ‘intern them all’ would be to invite the
enemy countries to intern all our nationals, which, of course, they
did, but the real argument against indiscriminate internment was that
we had no place ready to receive such vast numbers. This meant that
until camps were ready it would be impossible to give the prisoners
the accommodation prescribed by the Hague Convention. Complaints
would reach the enemy, who would then feel themselves justified in
maltreating our prisoners. Nevertheless, it had to be done, and every
day one might see furniture vans packed with Germans proceeding through
the streets to Olympia before being drafted off to such camps as could
be improvised.
Some of the Germans brought this fate upon themselves. There was a
well-known café in Oxford Street in which the staff--even the manager
and the book-keeper--were all registered enemy aliens. On the afternoon
when the news of de Wet’s rebellion in South Africa reached London the
waiters and some of the guests began to cheer. I had news of this by
telephone, and in half an hour the entire staff was rounded up, put
into a furniture van, and driven off to Olympia. There was an indignant
protest from the British directors of the company that evening, but my
case was quite unanswerable.
CHAPTER VI
WAR CRIMES
During the early months of 1915 the war spirit seized upon all classes.
New Scotland Yard was often mistaken for the recruiting office in
Scotland Yard, and the policeman at the door was kept busy directing
callers to their proper destination. All day long the flower of the
nation might be seen marching down Whitehall in mufti on their way
to the station. The saddest part of the business was that in those
early days we were sacrificing in the trenches what would have been
magnificent material for officers of the conscripted army later on, but
the sacrifice was not in vain if example counts for anything.
My old friend, Sir Schomberg M’Donnell, was working at this time as
Intelligence Officer to the Home Forces. He was past fifty. I found
out quite by chance that he was spending his spare time at Wellington
Barracks learning his drill, and one morning he came to say ‘Good-bye.’
He had taken a commission and was going to the Front. Not many weeks
afterwards came the news that he had been killed in action.
They tell a story of a certain artistic dilettante well known in
London who, when he was offered a commission, said, ‘Look at me.
Could I lead men? I have never done anything yet but sit and sew.’
(He excelled at embroidery.) He insisted upon going out as a private,
and when the commissariat broke down in bad weather and the nerves of
his comrades were all on edge, he kept them cheerful and contented
by a never-failing flow of good spirits. He said he had enlisted
because, being ‘the greatest rotter in London,’ he thought that if he
went others less rotten would have to go too. They relate that when an
ill-conditioned N.C.O., addressing him with ill-disguised contempt,
said, ‘And what was your line?’ he replied, ‘Well, they say that I was
best at embroidery.’ He returned badly wounded in the hand, and when a
sympathetic old lady saw him at his own door fumbling with his latchkey
and fluttered up to help, saying, ‘Oh, you are wounded!’ he replied,
‘Oh no, madam, I fell off a ’bus when I was drunk.’
It is strange now to think that in March 1915 Russia was thought in
England to be breathing a new inspiration to the West. It was said
that the Crusader spirit was alive again; that the whole Russian
nation was inspired with a determination to rescue Constantinople for
Christianity, and to win again the Holy Sepulchre; that when she came
into the War Russia was busy with her own evolution, not revolution,
and that vodka was prohibited with the unanimous approval of the
nation, who had tried prohibition for a month, and then approved it as
a permanency; that crime had almost disappeared among the peasants, who
were now investing in the savings bank the money which they used to
spend upon liquor. If they were successful in the War they were told
that there would come a struggle between their religious idealism and
their high ethical instincts and the monster of Western materialism
from which, so far, they had kept themselves clean. All this was
honestly believed by persons who thought they knew Russia: now, after a
short six years, their voices are heard no more.
In the early days of May 1915 the Germans torpedoed an American
oil-tanker called the _Gulflight_ and killed the captain. The body
was landed in the Scilly Islands. It occurred to a person gifted with
imagination that if the body were embalmed and sent over to the United
States for burial the effect might be far-reaching, because as long as
the submarine attacks upon harmless merchant vessels resulted in the
death of Englishmen the real horrors of submarine warfare would never
come home to the great mass of Americans. I was asked to find out a
man who would consent to go down to the Scilly Islands to embalm the
body, but on the very day when the arrangements were completed--7th
May 1915--at about 3 o’clock I received a telephone message announcing
that the _Lusitania_ had been sunk. After that, of course, the sinking
of the _Gulflight_ became insignificant. Of all the many mistakes made
by the Germans, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ was the greatest. It
split the German-American sympathies from top to bottom, and ranged
the native American very strongly upon the side of the Allies. I could
scarcely believe that the Germans had struck a medal in commemoration
of this outrage until I received an actual specimen of it. From that
moment every person in England with a German name who entertained his
friends was accused of drinking to the sinking of the _Lusitania_. I
can never ascertain that any such accusation was well founded; on the
contrary, I believe that many persons of German origin definitely cast
off all sympathy with their country from that date. After that they
were ready to believe any infamy of which the Germans were accused.
[Illustration: HAMBONE WITH PARACHUTE DROPPED FROM AIRCRAFT IN WROTHAM
PARK, BARNET, 8TH SEPTEMBER, 1915.]
I remember very well the Zeppelin raid on London on 31st May 1915.
I was dining with a certain Cabinet Minister to meet the new Home
Secretary and the new Lord Chancellor, together with Sir Edward Henry,
the Commissioner of Police, and several Heads of Departments.
I was discussing with Sir John Simon a question that was exercising us
very much at the time, namely, the denaturalisation of former aliens
who were believed to be hostile to this country, but against whom there
was no definite evidence of acts of espionage.
Our conversation was interrupted dramatically. Our host came in from
the telephone room, crying, ‘Zeppelins!’ He had been rung up from
the Admiralty and told that Zeppelins were coming up the Thames. Our
hostess’s first thought was for her small children. Were they to be
taken to the cellar? The whole party trooped into the telephone room
and grouped itself round the instrument in a wide circle. As one of the
guests remarked, it was exactly like the second act of a melodrama.
A secretary sat impassive at the instrument and, having got through
to Scotland Yard, handed the receiver to Sir Edward Henry, who said
very quietly, ‘Dropped bombs at Whitechapel, four or five killed, many
injured; then turned north, now dropping bombs on Stoke Newington.
Any fires? Oh, a good many fires. Thank you,’ and he rang off. We
stood no longer on ceremony. Our hostess and one of the guests ran
upstairs to bring the children down, and the rest of us trooped off
to Scotland Yard, where the telephone room would give us information
at first hand. I walked home across the Park. It was a lovely, clear
night, but there was not a sign or sound of Zeppelins, and the police
in Kensington had not even heard of the raid at 11.30. So huge a city
is London! I learned afterwards that no one in London saw the airships.
Altogether, ninety-two bombs were found, of which thirty were high
explosive, generally of small size, with a little propeller attached
which turned during the descent and unscrewed the fuse. Attached to
each of these was a piece of stuff like a stocking-leg. A good many
had failed to explode, but two of them had killed children. Three very
large high-explosive bombs had been dropped. One had made a huge crater
in Kingsland Road, one was found in a garden unexploded at a depth of
8 feet, and another had gone through the roof and floor of a stable,
and was found embedded at a depth of 7 feet. This one weighed 150
pounds, it was 36 inches in circumference, and would have done great
damage had it exploded. It appeared that the Zeppelin had followed the
Great Eastern line as far as Bishopsgate Station, where it dropped a
bomb, and had then followed the branch line towards Waltham Abbey. From
Waltham Abbey it turned east towards the coast, and was not heard of
again, until we learned long afterwards that she was the LZ 38, and
that a few days after her return to her hangar near Brussels she was
destroyed in her shed by an English airman. She could climb 10,000 feet
with a cargo of one and a half tons of bombs.
The business of the police was now to organise bomb shelters, a very
difficult business in a city such as London. It was unfortunate that
the East End, where the houses are small and unprovided with cellars,
should always be the first to suffer from Zeppelin attacks, and the
danger of improvising shelters was that unless the roof was absolutely
proof against penetration the shelter might well become a death-trap.
This actually happened in Dunkirk, where a house was demolished by a
high-explosive shell fired from a distance of twenty-five miles, when
the cellar was packed with people. The cellars in Dunkirk were covered
with a skin-thick brick arch, which would scarcely resist the impact
even of a small bomb. Though people worked heroically far into the
night to dig out those entombed in the cellar, when they reached them,
all, to the number of more than forty, were found dead of suffocation.
The object of the Germans in making Zeppelin raids on London was to
produce panic and a cry for peace. It did neither. Even in the East
End, though there was great alarm, there was no panic. A few months
ago, when discussing the War with a highly-placed German, he said, ‘No
one but a person who knew nothing about national psychology would have
thought that one could terrorise a Northern nation like the British by
Zeppelin raids. If you had retaliated by air-raids on Berlin you would
only have succeeded in stiffening our war spirit. It may be different
with the Latin races. There we might have produced panic, but with a
Northern race the idea was so futile that no one but a Prussian General
would have conceived it.’
But while there was no panic there were great hardships, as a visit
to any of the Tube stations in the East of London on the night of an
air-raid would have shown--the stairs crowded with half-awakened and
hungry children, the platforms so packed with humanity that there was
not a vacant square foot. I used to wonder how many of these children
would feel the permanent effects. On the whole, however, young children
between five and thirteen really seemed to enjoy air-raid nights. They
were full of excitement, and you would take them out of bed wrapped
in blankets and give them unexpected meals. It was a little grim when
one knew the reality to hear from infant lips, ‘Oh, Daddy, I do hope
there’ll be an air-raid to-night.’
One incident in connection with the Zeppelin that was brought down
at Cuffley was never quite cleared up. As the airship approached the
ground the crew began to tear up their papers and throw them out of
the car, and two fields were so littered with the fragments that they
looked as if there had been a local snow-storm. As soon as the news
spread spectators in every kind of vehicle overran the place, and
among the fragments of paper collected by the Air Service with a view
to piecing them together was found the name of a Belgian woman with
an address in London. The woman was sent for, and it was found that
she had moved to that address only ten days before. It transpired,
however, that she was in the habit of giving her name and address to
strangers in the street. On the face of it, an address obtained during
the last ten days and found among the papers of a German Zeppelin was
disturbing, for it implied that a German officer had been in London a
few days before the attack. I think the explanation was that one of the
spectators had brought the address with him and had dropped it in the
field with the other fragments.
It was a humorist who commanded the aircraft that came over on 8th
September 1915. When over Wrotham Park, Barnet, he dropped a hambone
attached to a small parachute inscribed with a fancy portrait of Sir
Edward Grey, on whose devoted head a bomb is in the act of falling. It
was inscribed in German, ‘Edwert Grey, poor devil, what am I to do?’
and on the reverse, ‘In remembrance of starved-out Germany.’
There were many jokes about the anti-aircraft defences in the early
days. It was alleged, for example, that one of the guns posted near
the Admiralty was in charge of a librarian, and that one of the first
executive orders of the new First Lord had been, ‘Stop the librarian
from firing off that gun.’
Early in 1916 there were curious stories about the German foreknowledge
of the weather conditions in this country which they could have
acquired only from spies. It was said that after the raid in October
a conversation was overheard in a café in Rotterdam, in which a full
description of the damage done by bombs in London the night before
was given, and that of three places named as having been hit by bombs
two were correct. This conversation took place about noon, and the
news could have reached Rotterdam only by cable or wireless. It was
suggested that the wireless operators on some of the neutral boats
began sending messages as soon as they cleared from England, but though
most careful investigations were made we were never able to discover
that there was any leakage of this kind.
General von Hoeppner has told us the German side of the air-raids. At
first the enemy hoped to cause panic; then to keep our airmen away from
the Western Front, which they think was accomplished. But by the end
of 1916 they recognised that the Zeppelin attacks were a failure. The
Allied airmen were so successful in bombing the hangars in Belgium that
the Zeppelins were withdrawn to the Rhine stations, and the distance
they had to cover was then too great even for the newest airships. They
were then turned over to the navy for scouting purposes. The daylight
air-raid on London on 13th June 1917, under Captain Brandenburg, filled
them with joy because all the machines returned safely owing to our
shells bursting too high and our machines never really having got into
touch. The attacks on favourable nights in the winter of 1917-1918 were
maintained, he says, with the object of keeping our airmen away from
the Western Front.
In January 1915 the Germans produced a propaganda film for the
edification of neutral countries. An American who was carrying it to
the United States consented to show it to diplomatists and officials
at the Ambassadors’ Theatre. The film displayed the usual German
ignorance of the psychology of other peoples. Part of it was not
‘faked.’ We had the Kaiser standing beside a road with his staff,
while picked troops marched past. His hair was quite grey, and there
was a hollow shadow in his cheek. His movements were nervous and
jerky. At one point he had been told to look at the camera, which he
did stiffly and gravely before getting into a car and driving off.
There were pictures of engineers carrying out sapper operations at
high speed; reviews before the Kings of Saxony and Bavaria; the huge
monument erected to Hindenburg in Berlin; a mass meeting; diplomatic
presentations to the Sultan, with Enver Pasha in the foreground; the
Sultan sitting under an awning receiving Balkan diplomatists; several
spools of the Danish army and navy manœuvres intended to give the
impression that Denmark was on the German side and was mobilising.
Then came the ‘fake’ spools. You saw German soldiers feeding hordes of
Belgian and French children under the title, ‘Barbarians feeding the
Hungry,’ and there were rows of colossal grinning German soldiers, with
the title, ‘Sehen Barbaren _so_ aus?’ (Do Barbarians look like this?),
which provoked the comment that no barbarian had ever looked quite
so unattractive. Then there were English prisoners grinning all over
with delight while they worked for the Germans under the stern eye of
Prussian soldiers. It was propaganda laid on with a trowel.
One of the great dangers at the beginning of the War was the form of
the first Treasury Notes. It was recognised that if these were forged
in any quantities public confidence in the currency would be shaken,
and people might refuse to accept our paper money as legal tender. In
1915 the expected forgeries began to appear. It was reported that a
considerable quantity of the ‘G’ series of £1 and 10s. Treasury Notes
was being circulated in London. The method was that a man would go down
a street calling at small shops, buying some inexpensive trifle, and
tendering a note, for which he took the change in silver. Specimens
of the notes showed the forgery to be remarkably good. No one but an
expert could have detected the imposition, especially at dusk, which
was the time of day usually chosen for passing the notes. We felt that
we were on our mettle. After a week or two information reached us, no
matter how, that an ex-convict E---- was the distributor, though not
the printer, of the notes, for which his price was half the face value.
At this price he was prepared to sell any number to persons whom he
could trust. It was his practice to make the sales on Saturdays, for on
Fridays he disappeared to some mysterious rendezvous whence he obtained
the notes. Now E---- could have been arrested at any moment, but it was
no good arresting him while the printer remained undiscovered, for a
man who could reproduce a watermark that would almost pass muster by
daylight would most certainly not discontinue his operations because
a minor confederate had been arrested. All our efforts, therefore,
were turned towards the discovery of the printer. One of our own
men bought some of the counterfeits and, in order to convince the
forgers of his good faith, it was necessary that he should pass them.
It was impossible, of course, that he should pass counterfeits, and
therefore the counterfeits had to be exchanged for genuine notes,
a very expensive proceeding when it extended over several weeks.
But the matter was growing serious. It was computed that at least
£60,000 worth of false treasury notes had been put into circulation,
and it was necessary to spend a considerable sum in unearthing the
conspiracy. A free hand was given to me, and then events began to go
a little quicker. It was found that E---- used to meet a few other
choice spirits for card-playing at a little office in Jermyn Street.
He had been traced one Friday to a paper merchant, where he bought
the very best kind of typewriting paper, and the samples we obtained
showed that such paper had been used in the forgeries after the false
watermark had been impressed upon it. We knew also when he had left his
flat in a taxi with the paper, but further inquiries showed that this
taxi did not carry him to any particular destination: it was stopped
in mid-street and paid off, and from that moment all trace of E----
was lost. But that evening there he was at the card-party, and there,
too, was our man. As the evening wore on, a few friends dropped in, and
among them a young man who lost his stakes and always paid in little
sums that suggested change for a 10s. note; it was also noticed when he
was staking his money that his fingers were stained with printer’s ink.
When he had left the place in disgust our man drew a bow at a venture.
‘I used to know that young fellow,’ he said; ‘he used to be a clerk
in your old registry office in Leicester Square.’ ‘No, he was not,’
replied E---- shortly, ‘you are mistaken.’ But our man persisted. ‘I
remember him quite well now; his name was Brown.’ ‘You are mistaken. He
was never a clerk. He is a printer, and his name is W----.’
With this slender clue the police proceeded to scour London for a
printer named W----, and at last, on a wooden gate in an unpretentious
street in North London, they discovered the almost obliterated
inscription, ‘W----, Printer.’ The gateway led into a yard, and from
it ran a little carriage road through a tunnel under the house to a
stable and coach-house in the rear. But this gate seemed permanently
to be locked. The police now rented a window on the other side of the
street and sat down to wait. Three days passed; Friday approached,
and as the dusk fell the watchers saw E---- come down the street and
kick on the door. A few seconds later it was opened from inside and
he disappeared. Then Chief Inspector Fowler, who was in charge of the
case, marshalled his men about the door and waited until it should open
again. The delay seemed interminable, but at last, long after dark, the
door did open and E---- was in their midst.
[Illustration: ANOTHER MACHINE.]
Never in its history had that quiet street been startled by such an
uproar. E---- was wheeling round, spouting streams of £1 notes from
his pockets like some sort of centrifugal machine, and emitting wild
beast howls, which were intended to alarm his partner in the stable.
The whole neighbourhood was raised. The street was carpeted with
notes like autumn leaves, and E----’s resistance had resulted only in
a modification of his features that would have puzzled his nearest
friends. The police, too, had not gone unscathed. When E---- had been
secured they vaulted the gate, went through the tunnel, and knocked on
the stable door. It was opened by a young man in his shirt-sleeves who,
on seeing the police, fell flat on the floor in a faint. The place was
crammed with machinery; notes still damp were lying on the press, and
it was observed that the forger had gone one better than the legitimate
printer by introducing into his die a numbering device. You had only to
turn the handle of the press to forge £1 notes until your arms tired.
There was, besides, a very ingenious device for watermarking which must
not be divulged. Nor was this all. When this forger’s den came to be
searched there were found the lithographic stones on which had been
printed certain forged postage stamps that had formed the subject of
a criminal action some years before. In fact, this expert printer had
been making a fine art of forgery for some years. The next morning I
visited the place with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sir John
Bradbury, whose signature was on every treasury note, and then and
there, while Sir John fed in the paper, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
turned the handle. It was the first instance in history in which the
Chancellor has been guilty of forging the currency. The notes were
so good that when they took specimens from the press they thought it
well to write ‘Forged’ in large letters across each note for fear they
should get mixed up with genuine notes. Steps were at once taken to
issue a new note which would be proof against fabrication.
CHAPTER VII
THE GERMANS AND THE IRISH
As soon as war broke out, the veteran John Devoy, together with Judge
Cohalan and other sympathisers, put themselves into communication with
Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, von Papen, the Military Attaché,
and Boy-ed, the naval attaché in Washington. The war with Germany was
to be made the supreme opportunity for establishing a Republic in
Ireland. Naturally, the Germans were ready to make use of any means
that might embarrass their enemy, and they were as ready to help the
Irish revolutionaries as they were the Indian. Devoy was in no lack
of funds, for besides the money which he could always collect from
Irish-Americans, he could draw upon the German Secret Service funds.
The Germans described him as one of their ‘agents.’
During the early months of the War James Larkin, of the Irish Transport
Workers, appeared in America on platforms decorated with the German and
Irish flags intertwined, and no pains were spared to make it clear to
Americans that German and Irish interests were identical.
During the autumn of 1914 Sir Roger Casement was in New York. At that
time all that was known in England was that he was in clandestine
communication with Bernstorff. It was not until many months afterwards
that his real scheme was disclosed. His proposals to the Germans were
that he should go over to Berlin and form an Irish Brigade out of the
Irish prisoners of war, and that his brigade, with the assistance of a
German military force, should effect a landing in Ireland when the time
was ripe, but that in the meantime the German Government should furnish
the Irish volunteers with great supplies of arms and munitions in order
that, when the time came, they should be able to take the field and
welcome the invaders. A document (Casement called it a ‘Treaty’) was
negotiated and signed between 23rd and 28th December 1914.
I do not believe that any disloyal thought had entered into Casement’s
head before the War. He had been for many years in the service of
the Foreign Office as a consular officer in West and East Africa and
Brazil; he had published accounts of atrocities by the Belgians on the
Congo and by certain Peruvians in Putumayo; he had been knighted for
his services in 1911. In view of his subsequent conduct, it may be well
to bear in mind that he wrote to the Foreign Secretary on 19th June
1911, in terms somewhat extravagant for the moderate honour of a Knight
Bachelor which had been conferred upon him. This letter was read at his
trial.
[Illustration: THE STABLE IN WHICH TREASURY NOTES WERE FORGED.]
Casement sailed for Norway in October with a Norwegian servant who
afterwards gave some information about the voyage. The vessel was
stopped by one of our auxiliary cruisers, but Casement was not
recognised. While he was in Norway he circulated a fabricated story
which, however, he himself may have believed, that the British Minister
was concerned in a plot against his life; but when Bernstorff was urged
to make public capital of this he replied that it would be better to
wait for confirmation. In fact, in adopting this cautious attitude he
was doing no more than Casement’s former official colleagues had always
done.
Casement arrived in Berlin on 2nd November. Soon after his arrival he
had an interview with Zimmermann, of the Foreign Office.
He asked Devoy to send over an Irish-speaking priest, and in due course
the Rev. John T. Nicholson was dispatched from America via Italy and
Switzerland to become Roman Catholic chaplain at the internment camp
in which the Irish prisoners were being collected. The expenses of
Casement’s journey are believed to have been furnished by John Devoy.
Throughout 1915 the real direction of Irish affairs was in the hands of
John Devoy and Bernstorff, who was acting through him. The process of
arming the Irish rebels was not proceeding quite smoothly. Von Papen
had purchased for use in India or in Ireland 11,000 rifles, 4,000,000
cartridges, and a number of revolvers, but the Germans were quite
firm in their view that these could not safely be landed in Ireland.
Instructions and information were carried to and fro by Devoy’s
messengers who, as American citizens, could travel about Ireland very
much as they liked. But early in February 1916 Devoy began to change
his waiting policy. The Irish volunteers had become increasingly
active. There was the threat of conscription, for though Ireland had
been exempt from compulsory service Devoy expected that the leaders
in Ireland would be arrested and that then, when everything was in
confusion, conscription would be enforced. He decided, therefore,
that there must be a rising on Easter Saturday, 1916, on the occasion
of a review of the Irish Volunteers, and that the Germans must land
munitions in or near Limerick at some time between Good Friday and
Saturday. He was also counting upon German military help as soon as a
rising had begun.
It may be wondered why the arrest of the leaders, so much dreaded
by Devoy, was not carried out. According to rumour, Mr. Birrell, the
Chief Secretary, was much swayed by the opinions of the Nationalist
leaders, who counselled tolerance under every provocation for fear of
precipitating a disastrous conflict.
On 4th March the Germans promised to send two or three trawlers
containing 20,000 rifles and 10 machine guns to Tralee Bay between 20th
and 23rd April, and a messenger was dispatched to Ireland from America
with full instructions. The Irish leaders were very anxious that a
submarine should enter the Liffey and go right up to the Pigeon House
at the same time.
These preparations on the part of the Germans were not a military or
naval enterprise, they were directed by the German Foreign Office. On
26th March Devoy was informed that three trawlers and a cargo steamer
would arrive with 1400 tons of cargo, and that lighters must be ready
to unload them. These instructions were transmitted to Ireland. On the
19th the Germans had agreed to arrange a demonstration by airship and
naval attack to divert attention from the landing of the munitions, and
these took place; but the Germans would not consent to the landing of
troops, which had been urged so strongly by both Casement and Devoy,
nor would they send a submarine up the Liffey, because the naval
authorities foresaw technical difficulties.
We must now return to Casement in Germany. Evidence was given at his
trial about the manner in which he carried out the first part of his
scheme--the formation of an Irish Brigade. His reception by the Irish
prisoners of war was not all that he had expected. Many of the men
were inclined to give him a hostile reception, but he did succeed in
seducing fifty-six men from their oath of allegiance. How far they
were impressed by his appeal to patriotism for Ireland or how far by
their desire to obtain more liberty and better treatment from the
Germans there are no means of knowing. These men were put under the
command of Monteith, who obtained a commission as lieutenant, and
were removed to a camp at Lossen. Rumour says that their behaviour,
especially when not entirely under the influence of sobriety, was
embarrassing to the Germans, who were compelled to limit their bounds,
and to impose certain other restrictions. They provided them with a
handsome green uniform but not with arms.
A highly-placed personage in Germany has since told me that towards the
end of 1915 the attitude of the German authorities towards Casement had
cooled; so much so that a very strong hint was conveyed to him to leave
the capital. However this may be, in January 1916 he went to Munich,
and from there to Kuranstalt for a health cure. While he was undergoing
this cure and was still in bed he received on 3rd March a letter from
Monteith, asking him to come to Berlin at once. He replied that he
could not move, and that Monteith should come to him. On 7th March
Monteith arrived and told him that on 1st March Lieutenant Frey, of the
General Staff, Political Section, had sent for him and told him that
they had received a message from Devoy to the effect that something
was about to happen, and asking for the dispatch of munitions, which
the Germans were now ready to supply. Upon this, Casement drew up a
memorandum setting out the best means of landing arms in Ireland,
and Monteith returned with it to Berlin. In the memorandum Casement
suggested that he and two picked men should be conveyed to Ireland in a
submarine to concert measures with the Irish leaders for landing the
arms. On 16th March he went himself to Berlin and had an interview with
Captain Nadolny and two other officers of the Political Section of the
General Staff, who told him that the Admiralty had declined to furnish
a submarine; that Devoy had asked for trained gunners; that instead
of 100,000 rifles only 20,000 could be sent, together with 10 machine
guns and 5,000,000 cartridges. Captain Nadolny asked whether Casement
would be prepared to take over with him the fifty-six members of the
Irish Brigade from Lossen. To this Casement objected that it was highly
improbable that the whole body could equally be trusted.
This news was most disturbing to Casement, who had never dreamed
of an armed rebellion taking place so soon. All he wanted was that
the Germans should pour arms into Ireland and follow later with a
military expedition. After thinking things over, he called at the
German Admiralty on 17th March to ask why it was impossible to send
a submarine, and on learning that the objections were technical he
suggested sending a messenger over to Ireland to bring back accurate
particulars of the local plans and the scheme for landing the arms. It
happened that in the previous November one John M’Govey had come over
from the United States as a volunteer. The German Admiralty approved
of the suggestion, and on Sunday, 19th March, M’Govey was sent into
Denmark with instructions to reach Dublin without delay. Monteith,
meanwhile, was to obtain from the German military authorities an
experimental gun with which to train the Irish Brigade at Lossen.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE MACHINES USED IN FORGING TREASURY NOTES.]
Having made these arrangements Casement returned to Bavaria. As he
said afterwards, he felt himself under no obligation to the German
Government. He thought that the munitions should have been offered
much earlier, ‘since the political services of Irishmen in America to
the German cause far transcended the value of any possible gift of arms
Germany might make to Ireland.’ He had always been opposed to any armed
revolt in Ireland unless it was backed up by strong German military
help. He said that in the ‘Treaty’ of 23rd to 28th December 1914 it
was stipulated that ‘should the Irish Brigade be sent to Ireland, the
German Government would support its dispatch with adequate military
support of men, arms, and supplies.’ On 29th March he returned to
Berlin very much concerned about his responsibility towards the Irish
soldiers whom he had seduced from their loyalty. As he expressed it,
‘They had committed treason under a distinct and formal promise, sealed
and delivered, by the German Imperial Government, that, in the event
of their being dispatched to Ireland, they should be supported by an
ample German force, a part of an Army of Deliverance.’ He had also an
uneasy feeling that if any of them should chance to be captured on the
high seas they might, with perfect justice, turn King’s Evidence and
establish a very damaging case against himself, who would be regarded
as a paid tool of the German Government.
With his mind filled with these disturbing thoughts, he called again
upon Captain Nadolny, who, to his surprise, addressed him in terms of
great discourtesy and accused him of a breach of faith in having sent
M’Govey to Ireland without consulting him. Probably the traditional
jealousy between the naval and military departments was at the bottom
of this outburst. Nadolny further threatened that unless Casement
submitted to the conditions a telegram would be sent to Devoy that
though Germany was quite ready to send the help she had promised,
the whole plan had been frustrated by Casement himself, and he would
then appear as a traitor to the Irish cause. The next day he was asked
to call again, and on this occasion he was treated with conventional
politeness. Captain Nadolny pointed out that it was the Irish who had
decided upon a revolt; the Germans were in no way responsible: they
were merely fulfilling their promise to furnish arms to the fullest
possible extent at the request of the Irish. He made the aims of the
German Government quite clear: they were not idealistic but severely
practical. They would supply the arms, but they expected them to be
used without delay, and if Casement opposed the plan he would stop the
arms and throw the entire responsibility upon him.
Casement replied that the German Government was entirely ignoring the
agreement it had made with him in December 1914; that he felt sure
that at the most the Irish would be able to put 12,000 men into the
field, and that the rebellion must fail. He said that a firing-party of
twelve machine gunners ought to be furnished by the Germans to cover
the disembarkation of the arms. In view of all that Captain Nadolny had
said, he thought that the arms must be sent on the date fixed, but he
still pressed for a submarine in which he would go by himself without
the Irish soldiers, and, to impress Nadolny still further, he declared
that he would take poison with him for use if the steamer conveying him
were stopped by a British warship, in order to escape the indignities
reserved for him ‘should I fall into the hands of the Government I have
dared so unwisely to defy.’
Casement had written a letter to von Wedell. A man of this name was
captured by a patrol boat off the north of Scotland in 1915. On the
way to the coast the patrol boat struck a mine and foundered, and
von Wedell, with most of the crew, was drowned. A few weeks later the
German Government began to inquire about him through the American
Embassy. Where was he? Was he interned? Did the British Government
know where he was, and was he in a position where he could communicate
with his friends? We could say with perfect truth that the British
Government did know where he was, and believed he could communicate
with his friends. Great importance must have been attached to this
man, for as late as 1917 among the instructions given to a spy was a
direction that he should ascertain the fate of von Wedell.
On 1st April Casement was ill in bed, and on that date he read in the
_Irish World_ Devoy’s speech at the Irish Convention on 4th and 5th
March. On this he modified his views about the rebellion, and thought
that Devoy’s contention that the British Government was determined
to destroy the Irish Volunteers and arrest the leaders, and that
conscription would be applied to Ireland, altered the whole situation.
A rising did seem to be necessary, and he decided to go. The Germans
met him half-way and furnished the submarine, in which he, Monteith,
and Corporal Bailey arrived in Tralee Bay on Good Friday, 21st April.
Has there ever been a time in history when Irish rebels appealing for
foreign aid have not wrecked all by their hopeless incapacity for
organisation and administration? For mark what happened. The Germans
were true to their promise. They had loaded a small steamer, the _Aud_,
with 1400 tons of munitions concealed under a deck-load of timber. She
had Norwegian papers, and professed to be bound for the west coast of
Africa, and her naval crew were cleverly disguised in the ordinary kit
of a Norwegian tramp. There was ample time for the rebels to prepare
for unloading the cargo. They had done nothing. The ship proceeded
round the north of Scotland unobserved, and anchored in Tralee Bay
on Good Friday. Almost immediately a small patrol boat ranged up
alongside, went through her papers, and made a cursory inspection
of the deck, though the Germans alleged that one of the hatches was
actually open at the time of the visit and the arms were thus exposed
to view. The Germans thought that their presence in Tralee Bay had
excited no suspicion, but the captain thought it prudent, as there was
no sign from the shore, to put to sea and come in again with his cargo
when the coast was clear. But fortune was against him. His ship was
sighted by the _Blue Bell_, who signalled her to stop and then ordered
her to follow to Queenstown. For a short time she obeyed the order,
and then the signalman on the _Blue Bell_ reported that her engines
had stopped, and that they had run up a flag to the fore. At the same
moment there was a dull explosion. The German war-flag broke at the
top-mast and the ship’s crew were seen leaving in the boats. The _Aud_
was sinking by the head. When the crew were received on board the _Blue
Bell_ they were in German naval uniform, but they refused to give any
account of themselves, and they were sent over to Scotland Yard for
examination.
This incident was tinged with romance. There was nothing actually to
show what the _Aud_ had on board and why she had put into Tralee. The
first step was for the Admiralty to dispatch a diver to the scene of
the sinking. Fortunately the sea was calm. I saw the diver on his
return. He was a very spruce, intelligent, and observant young man.
He described to me the sandy bottom of the bay on which the _Aud_ was
lying with a great rent in her side, and the floor of the Atlantic
littered with broken rifles, six of which he had brought back with
him. There were Russian marks on the rifles. We sent for the Russian
military attaché, and then it was found that even this grudging service
to the cause of Ireland had been done on the cheap, for the rifles were
all Russian, captured at Tannenberg, and very much the worse for wear.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CASEMENT CASE
There was a sensation at New Scotland Yard when the entire crew of
the _Aud_, including the officers, were marched over one evening
for interrogation. They blocked the passages, and a crowd assembled
outside. I always found that when German naval prisoners are examined
it is better to take the juniors first, for they frequently make
admissions which are useful when the time comes for examining the
officers, but in this case we reversed the order.
All had agreed to tell the same story--that they were carrying
pit-props with a few arms for the Cameroons and that, having delivered
their cargo, they were to become an auxiliary cruiser. The limited coal
capacity and the slow speed of the boat (11 knots) showed this version
to be absurd. They said that they had anchored off the Irish coast
to re-stow their cargo, but on this their stories differed. No doubt
they were actually engaged in preparing the cargo for landing when the
patrol boat came up and signalled by wireless for a cruiser. On this
the captain of the _Aud_ had taken alarm and steamed away.
The captain was one of the most unpleasant Germans I have ever met,
besides being entirely lacking in a sense of humour. He has since
written a book about his experiences which, for that reason, is dull
reading. During the course of his examination I observed to him that a
naval crew who sunk their ship after capture was guilty of piracy. He
looked uncomfortable, and said that the orders of his Emperor had to be
obeyed. ‘We were not a naval crew, we were a civilian crew.’
I said, ‘You cannot be both.’
‘But we were both,’ he persisted. ‘When we wore uniform we were a
warship; when we wore civilian clothes we were a merchant ship. I kept
the uniforms hanging on a line, and when we broke the war-flag the men
jumped into them and we became a warship.’ He was seriously annoyed
when we laughed.
And now to return to Casement. The submarine on which he was originally
to cross had broken down and had had to signal for another, commanded,
as it turned out, by a less agreeable captain, to take over the
passengers. This captain declined to approach the shore, but put his
passengers into a flat-bottomed canvas boat without a rudder and, as
Casement described it, ‘left them to their fate.’ At the last moment
the captain asked Casement what clothes he wanted, and Casement,
describing the conversation, waved his hand with a theatrical gesture
and said, ‘Only my shroud.’ The boat upset in landing, and they were
all wet through. They buried their belongings in the sand, and Casement
sent his two companions into the country to obtain help. Monteith
did find friends, was driven off in a motor-car, and eventually made
his way to the United States. Bailey, less fortunate, was arrested.
Meanwhile, Casement was sheltering in an old ruin called M’Kenna’s
Fort, where, on being arrested, he gave the name of a friend with whom
he used to stay in England.
On Saturday, the 22nd, I was taking my turn of night ‘Zeppelin duty’
at New Scotland Yard. At 10.30 P.M. my telephone rang and a voice
said, ‘You know that stranger who arrived in the collapsible boat at
Currahane--do you know who he is?’ I said, ‘You’re joking?’ ‘I am not,’
said the voice, ‘and he will be over early to-morrow morning for you
to take him in hand.’ It was not necessary for either of us to give a
name. We had been expecting Casement’s arrival for many weeks.
At 10 o’clock on Easter Sunday I had my first interview with Sir Roger
Casement. He walked into the room rather theatrically--a tall, thin,
cadaverous man with thick black hair turning grey, a pointed beard, and
thin, nervous hands, mahogany-coloured from long tropical service. His
forehead was a network of wrinkles, his complexion deeply sunburnt. I
told him to sit down and asked him his name.
‘Surely you know it.’
‘I have to guard against the possibility of personation.’
‘Well, I am Sir Roger Casement.’
I administered the usual caution that anything he said might be used
against him. At first he was reticent, his great fear being that he
might say something that would betray other people, or make him appear
a traitor to the Germans, whose guest he had been. As long as the
shorthand-writer remained he said little beyond admitting acts of high
treason, but when we were alone he became far more communicative. He
rose from the armchair, and sat easily on the corner of my table. The
rising in Ireland, he said, was to have been on Easter Sunday; he was
to have landed a week earlier. He professed to know nothing of the
intrigues in America which had fixed the date for the rising. He said
that he was lying ill in Munich when ‘a trusted friend’ asked him to
go to Berlin, for the time had now come to act. When he found that
the Germans intended to send only one ship with munitions and not
a single German officer, he said that he charged them with criminal
folly, and that the officer blushed and said, ‘Well, this is all that
the Government intends to do. You must go with them, because if you
refuse your countrymen shall know that you betrayed them.’ They wanted
him to go in the _Aud_ herself, but he stipulated for a submarine,
in order, so he said, to warn the rebels that they had no chance of
success. The breaking down of the submarine prevented this. He was very
insistent that the news of his capture should be published, as it would
prevent bloodshed. We felt pretty sure that the Irish rebels knew all
about his capture from his companion who escaped, quite apart from the
fact that the arrest had appeared in the newspapers on the Saturday.
When commenting some weeks afterwards upon the Rebellion, the Germans
remarked that Casement had credited himself with possessing superhuman
powers; that he imagined that his personality among the Irish would
carry all before it, but that, in fact, they could not discover that
his personal influence was great. They seem to have read him pretty
well. The negotiations had really been carried on over his head, and
there is nothing to show that any of the leaders thought it necessary
to consult him before they came to a decision.
I told him that we were aware of his efforts to recruit Irish soldiers
from internment camps to fight for the Germans, and he said that he
had not recruited them for the German but for the Irish army; that the
Kaiser’s proclamation to the Irish was conditional on an Irish army
being enrolled and, as to the oath of allegiance, many great Englishmen
had had to break their oath for the sake of their country. He himself
had never taken an oath of allegiance, but if he had it would not have
weighed with him.
He returned again to his object in coming to Ireland. It was to stop,
not to lead, a rising which could only fail with the paltry aid that
the Germans had sent. He wanted to prevent ‘the boys’ from throwing
away their lives. He went on to say that in the early part of the
War the Germans really believed that a rising in Ireland might be
successful, but as they grew weaker this belief had begun to fade,
and now they had only the desire for bloodshed in Ireland as an
embarrassment to the British Government. He said that Germans would
do things to serve the State which they would never do as private
individuals, and that in all the General Staff he had only met one
gentleman. He seemed to regard the German cause as already lost. At the
end of the interview he was sent to Brixton Prison to be placed under
special observation for fear of an attempt at suicide. There was no
staff at the Tower to guard suicidal cases.
Some months earlier, when we first had evidence of Casement’s
treachery, his London lodgings had been visited and his locked trunks
removed to New Scotland Yard. Towards the end of the interview a
policeman entered the room and whispered to me that Casement might have
the key of the trunks. I asked him, and with a magnificent gesture he
said, ‘Break them open; there is nothing in them but clothing, and I
shall not want them again.’ But something besides clothing was found
in one of the trunks--a diary and a cashbook from the year 1903 with
considerable gaps. A few days later Casement must have remembered these
volumes, for his solicitor demanded the surrender of his personal
effects. Everything except these books was sent to him, and there came
a second letter, pointing out that the police must still be retaining
some property. It is enough to say of the diaries that they could not
be printed in any age or in any language.
During a subsequent conversation Casement said, ‘You failed to win
the hearts of the people when you had your chance.’ I replied, ‘You
are speaking for a minority of the Irish people. You must have had a
rude awakening when you went to the internment camp to recruit men
for the Irish Brigade.’ He said, ‘I never expected to get many. I
could have had them all if I had given them money, but though the
Germans offered me as much money as I wanted I refused it. Besides,
you were competing.’ ‘How?’ I asked. ‘By sending the Irish prisoners
more money and larger parcels than the English prisoners had.’ Nothing
would persuade him that this was not intentionally arranged by the
British Government: as a matter of fact, the parcels were supplied by a
Committee of Irish ladies.
Casement struck me as one of those men who are born with a strong
strain of the feminine in their character. He was greedy for
approbation, and he had the quick intuition of a woman as to the effect
he was making on the people around him. He had a strong histrionic
instinct. I have read many of his early letters. They are full of high
ideals that ring quite true, and his sympathy with the down-trodden and
his indignation against injustice were instinctive; but, like a woman,
he was guided by instinct and not by reason, and where his sympathies
were strongly moved it is very doubtful whether any reliance could
be placed upon his accuracy. I have often wondered since how much
exaggeration there was in his revelations about the Congo and Putumayo.
Colleagues who served with him in his official days have told me that
they never took his statements quite literally. They always allowed for
an imaginative colouring.
A few days before his execution he received a telegram from the person
who had been most injured by his statement about Putumayo, imploring
him at that solemn moment to retract his unjust charges. As far as I
know, he did not reply to this telegram. I have made special inquiry
with a view to ascertaining how long Casement had been under the
obsessions disclosed in the pages of his diary, and I feel certain that
they were of comparatively recent growth, probably not much before the
year 1910. This would seem to show that some mental disintegration had
begun to set in, though it was not sufficient to impair his judgment or
his knowledge of right and wrong.
His success with the Germans was due to his curious power of investing
others with his overweening belief in his own powers. During the Boer
War, according to one of his colleagues, he persuaded the Foreign
Office that he could counteract the Boer influence in Delagoa Bay and
obtain full information about their activities. Accordingly, he was
sent to Delagoa Bay from West Africa, but though he worked there for
many months he accomplished nothing. His colleagues could never decide
whether the curious swagger in his walk was due to self-satisfaction or
to a physical peculiarity. When he visited their offices he preferred
to walk about the room, but when he could be induced to sit down he
had a way of laying his palms together with the fingers pointing
upward that reminded them of the attitude of the praying mantis. In
Delagoa Bay he showed no sympathy with the Boers or with the Germans,
nor did he discourse upon the wrongs of Ireland, though the Foreign
Office had to intervene once when he began to use stationery headed,
‘Consulate of Great Britain and Ireland.’ He was excellent company, and
his colleagues were always glad to see him, though inwardly they were
amused by the airs he assumed and the importance he attached to his
sayings and doings. He was a good pioneer, a great walker, indifferent
of his appearance and his dress, and to the hardships he underwent
when travelling on duty. He had a way of wearing his coat without
putting his arms into the sleeves, and he had his overcoat made without
sleeves, possibly with an eye to the picturesque. He was a clear and
forcible writer and was quite indifferent to money, though he kept his
private accounts meticulously.
Casement’s trial for High Treason at the High Court will take its place
among the most notable of State trials. Certain legal questions arising
out of the fact that the acts of high treason had been committed
abroad were argued at length. The Lord Chief Justice (Lord Reading),
Sir F. E. Smith, the Attorney-General (now Lord Birkenhead), and Mr.
Serjeant Sullivan played their parts with great distinction. I was
sitting just below the witness-box throughout the proceedings. At the
luncheon adjournment, when the Judge had left the Bench, one of the
Irish soldier witnesses who had been in the German camp on the occasion
of Casement’s visit was left in the witness-box. Casement had just left
the dock above his head. He was thirsting for a confidant, and I was
the only person within earshot. He jerked his thumb at the retreating
figure, and in a thick brogue made a very opprobrious remark about him.
It is a curious fact that one of the revolvers brought over by Casement
practically saved Dublin Castle. An officer of the Royal Irish
Constabulary happened to be showing it to the Under-Secretary in the
Castle on Easter Monday when he heard a shot fired and, looking out,
he saw the sentry writhing on the ground and a ragged crowd rushing
in at the gate. He had some cartridges in his pocket, with which he
opened fire, keeping the rebels at bay for an hour and twenty minutes.
Casement also brought with him a banner, which he intended to hoist
over Dublin Castle. It was of green bunting made in Germany. It was
last, I believe, in the possession of the headquarters of the Royal
Irish Constabulary.
It has never been quite clear to me why the Irish Rebellion was
postponed from Easter Saturday to Easter Monday. There was a conflict
of authority, as there usually is, in the Irish ranks. The failure to
land the arms can scarcely have been responsible for the postponement
because, as it proved, there was no lack of arms in Dublin. Since
there was no rising on Easter Saturday, we thought it possible that
the sinking of the _Aud_ and the arrest of Casement might have had the
effect of postponing it altogether. After midday on Monday the question
of the arrest of the leaders was still under discussion, though at
noon all telegraphic communication with Ireland had been interrupted.
It was not until 3 o’clock that we learned that the Dublin Post Office
had been in possession of the rebels since noon, that another party had
entrenched themselves in St. Stephen’s Green, and that there was heavy
firing in the city. The rebels had hoped for simultaneous risings all
over Ireland, but these failed to take place. It is significant that
a police officer who went over to Tralee Bay to bring over witnesses
for Casement’s trial had an ovation from the local farmers, who were
delighted that the Rebellion had been put down.
It is curious that among the things picked up in Tralee Bay was a
document in German giving an account of the enemy losses at Verdun, a
strange thing to find on a lonely Irish beach so long after the event.
To Devoy in America came the Irish version of the Rebellion. The rebels
put a bold face upon their failure. They said that Casement had sent a
message to Dublin, begging them to defer the rising until he arrived.
They admitted their bad staff work. They had counted upon 5000 men in
Dublin and secured only 1500, and they were mostly men belonging to
the Transport Workers rather than Sinn Feiners. In fact, there was a
strong revolutionary element in the business. The reason why M’Neill
had put off the rising from Saturday to Monday was the non-arrival of
the munitions. Their main complaint was against the rebels in the south
and west, who, though sufficiently armed to have done a good deal,
did nothing. They did not even obey orders as regards the landing of
munitions. They professed, however, to be pleased with the result of
the Rebellion, because they said that for every man in favour of a
rebellion before the rising there were now ten.
Two months had scarcely elapsed when they were again planning
rebellion. They felt sure of success if only they had sufficient
arms, and they demanded from the Germans an adequate supply under a
strong military escort. On their side they undertook to supply 250,000
men after an initial success. They held out as an inducement to the
Germans a Zeppelin base for operations upon England. On 17th June the
Germans said they were ready ‘in principle’ to give further aid, but
they wanted full particulars. Like other foreign invaders of Ireland,
they had learned to distrust the organising ability of the Irish. On
31st December 1916 they promised a new supply of 30,000 rifles and 10
machine guns, but this offer was declined by the Irish rebels unless
the Germans would undertake to land a military force. The entry of
America into the War prevented any further negotiations.
CHAPTER IX
STRANGE SIDE SHOWS
All this time we were living in the atmosphere of a ‘Shilling Shocker’
or, as the Americans call it, the ‘Dime Novel.’ When one started
work in the morning one could never tell what the day was to bring
forth, what curious personage would be ushered into the room, what
high adventure or what squalid little tragedy would be unfolded by
some occupant of the low armchair. Vivid impressions trod close upon
the heels of one another. It was like fragments of melodramatic films
pieced together at random: all had to be carried in the mind until the
case might be considered closed. Most of the actors in these dramas
disappeared into the outer space, and then months later they would
drift in again in some new drama, only to disappear finally after the
Armistice.
What has become of them all? What are all those spies and pseudo-spies
now doing for a living? Where are all the temporary officers who were
living riotously at the Savoy like butterflies that emerge untimely
into the winter sunshine? Where are the girls that shared their revels
during those purple weeks? Are they serving behind some counter? Have
they pawned their jewellery and their furs? Or are they safely married
in some suburban lodging and finding life a little flat? What has
become of the young men who tore about the country in high-powered
cars, who loved to use their cut-out while racing up the Mall? Do
they now drive motor-’buses, or are they chicken-farming in Canada?
The whole drama and all the actors have vanished, as they do in the
real theatre ten minutes after the curtain has fallen. And where are
the young women who used to take us elderly gentlemen by the elbow
and help us into ’buses? Do they miss the toes of the passengers on
which they used to tread; the uniform, the excitement of doing men’s
work; or are they glad to be quit of it all and settle down to some
less exciting occupation? These young people thought that there was
to be a new heaven and a new earth in which the young would toil not
nor spin but would have purses like the widow’s cruse. And the rest of
us thought that there would certainly be a new earth--mostly made up
of revolutions. As the War went on we began to realise that the real
England--all the England that really mattered--was in Northern France,
in Gallipoli, in Salonika, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.
All the exciting events, from the point of view of police action, seem
to have been crowded into 1915 and the early part of 1916. September
was a notable month because we had at the same time the great forgeries
of the ‘G’ series of Treasury Notes, the seizure of the Austrian
dispatches from the United States which were being carried by an
American journalist, and the Indian murder conspiracy.
It had been reported to the police that the little active band of
Indian revolutionaries who were working with the Germans in Berlin
were running to and from Switzerland in connection with an extensive
assassination plot. A seizure of documents late in August corroborated
this. Whether the plot was devised by certain Indian revolutionaries or
by the Germans themselves is not clear. The plan was to bring about the
simultaneous assassination of the leading men in Entente countries.
The names of the King of Italy, Lord Grey, Lord Kitchener, Mons.
Poincaré, Mons. Viviani, and Sr. Salandro were specially mentioned.
The bombs had been manufactured in Italy and were tested by the German
military authorities at the military testing ground near Berlin. At
the English end of the conspiracy were certain British Indians, one of
whom was living with a German woman whom he declared to be his wife.
An Englishwoman was known to be privy to their plans, and a Swiss
girl was the messenger between Switzerland and the English group. The
case was one of extraordinary difficulty, because the real culprit,
Chattopadhya, an Indian well known in Berlin, made only flying visits
to Switzerland, and was careful never to set foot on the soil of an
Entente country. As soon as the available evidence was complete steps
were taken simultaneously to detain all the persons who were in British
jurisdiction. They were interned as persons dangerous to the safety of
the Realm, and kept in internment until the Armistice, despite repeated
appeals to the Committee set up to revise Internment Orders made by the
Home Secretary.
About the examinations in my room there was never anything in the
nature of what the Americans call the ‘Third Degree,’ which, I
understand, consists in startling or wearying the suspect into a
confession. If they preferred not to answer questions they were
detained until further inquiry could be made about them. In many cases
it was the detention that influenced them. They were not sent to prison
unless it was clear that their detention would have to be prolonged.
There was a range of cells in the adjacent building of Cannon Row
Police Station: one of these was furnished as a bed-sitting-room,
and was known as the ‘extradition cell’: the others were the ordinary
cells in which remand prisoners are placed after arrest. One has to
put oneself into the suspect’s position in order to realise what
this change of circumstances meant to him. He had been full of the
excitement and interest of foreign travel, fresh from a voyage in a
liner, where he was unsuspected and liked. Suddenly he found himself
within four narrow walls, in silence and without the amenities of
comfortable armchairs and tables. If he wished to write he might do so,
but everything he wrote would be subject to scrutiny. He had, however,
ample time for reflection, and now that the first move must come from
his side it was not long before he would send a request for another
interview. If he did not he would, in course of time, be sent for, but
the period of waiting without any fixed date usually had its effect.
In the middle of October 1915 very definite evidence reached us of the
extent of the German-Indian conspiracy and the length the conspirators
were prepared to go. The Indian Committee in Berlin was established
quite early in the War. After his expulsion from the United States
Har Dayal, who had been conducting the ‘Ghadr’ (Mutiny) newspaper
in California, went to Switzerland, and on the outbreak of war he,
Chattopadhya, and some other Indian revolutionaries who were living
in Switzerland went to Berlin. At first the Germans, feeling that
they had them quite in their power, treated them with some contempt,
but this attitude changed when one or two Germans who posed as Indian
experts persuaded the Government to found an Indian Committee to
concert measures for starting a revolution in India under a German
President. They had a Press Bureau and a regular working scheme for
corrupting the loyalty of Indian prisoners of war. Still, though tons
of paper and lakes of ink were consumed, no headway was being made
until March 1915, when an Indian land-owner named Pertabr conceived
the plan of going over to the Germans in the character of an Indian
prince. He had some slight claim to this self-assumed title since he
was the son of a deposed ruler of a small native State. Having obtained
a passport from the Indian Government on the backing of a man whose
loyalty was unquestioned, he arrived in Switzerland from Marseilles and
lost no time in communicating with Har Dayal, who took him to see the
German Consul. Now it does not take much to deceive a German official
about Oriental matters. Pertabr wore native dress, and was aloof and
condescending. In fact, his haughtiness was exactly what the German
Consul would have expected from a Rajah. When pressed to enter the
Fatherland Pertabr declared firmly that he would not cross the German
frontier until he had a promise that the Kaiser would receive him in
person. This arrangement suited Har Dayal admirably, for he would
become the intermediary between the two potentates and the springs of
money would begin again to flow. After several journeys to and from
Berlin an audience was arranged. It was characteristic of the German
Consul that he besought Pertabr in all humility to say a good word for
him to the All Highest when he should enter the Presence.
No doubt Pertabr had day-dreams of himself mounted on a fiery white
steed at the head of conquering bands as the new liberator of India. At
Delhi he would receive the homage of the native princes. He may have
imbued the Kaiser with some of these ideas, though one cannot imagine
that the Imperial mind had any day-dreams of Oriental conquests in
which some other man was to prance on a white horse; but however this
may be, a mission did start for Kabul, headed by ‘Prince’ Pertabr with
three German officers and several released Indian prisoners of war, to
raise the Amir against India. They passed through Constantinople during
the first week of September, and then they disappeared into space. It
was learned afterwards that they got no farther than Afghanistan, and
that the fragments of the mission were reported many months later to be
wandering as homeless outcasts about Central Asia.
That was not the end of the German attempts upon India. Some few months
later there came into our hands an autograph letter addressed by the
Kaiser to the ruling princes in India, which had been photographed down
to a size little exceeding that of a postage stamp, and enclosed in a
tiny tube to be concealed about the body. The belief in German circles
was that Persia was about to rise on the side of Germany, and that that
would be the signal for the invasion of India by the Afghans.
The headquarters of the Indian conspirators who were being manipulated
by the Germans in America were at Berkeley, California. It was there
that the ‘Ghadr’ (Mutiny) newspaper was printed in the vernacular,
and arrangements were made for shipping arms to India at the German
expense. It took many months to convince the Californian police
authorities that there were ample grounds for taking action under the
neutrality laws, but when they did move they moved to some purpose. The
two Indian leaders were arrested. When they were brought to trial one
of them, convinced from the intimate knowledge of his secret activities
disclosed by the prosecution that the other had turned informer,
slipped a pistol from his pocket and shot his companion in open court.
But in the Western States such incidents do not disturb the presence of
mind of Assize Court officials: the deputy-sheriff whipped an automatic
from his pocket, and from his elevated place at the back of the court,
aiming above and between the intervening heads, shot the murderer dead.
And so, in less than ten seconds the sentence which the Judge was about
to pronounce was more than executed.
The Germans are not naturally fitted to acquire an influence over
Orientals, though they have tried hard to do it. The Kaiser, who was a
master of pantomimic display, rode into Jerusalem properly clad as a
new Crusader. He conformed to such Oriental customs as were considered
compatible with his dignity, and he was getting on quite well until
some vulgar-minded non-German Europeans set the natives laughing at
him. Ridicule kills more surely than the assassin’s knife.
I remember a rather pompous proconsul who was determined to impress
the natives of the Pacific Islands by stage-management. He happened to
be a Doctor of Law at Cambridge, and, in addition to his gilded Civil
Service uniform, he arrayed himself in the scarlet robe of a Doctor of
Law, and stalked solemnly under the palm-trees with two little native
boys carrying his train. The natives had never seen anything quite so
gorgeous, and all went well until the procession had to pass a store
kept by a certain ribald Englishman with an extensive knowledge of the
vernacular. It was enough for him to utter one phrase in the native
language to scatter all the official pomp to the four winds. The
comment ran down the whispering gallery to the farthest recesses of
the island, and, instead of the awed hush on which the proconsul had
counted, he was received with broad and rather pitying smiles. That
finished any prestige that he might have had in this particular group.
It was so once with a French naval post-captain who determined to
overawe the natives with a display of naval force. To this end he
landed a considerable force of bluejackets and began to drill them on
shore. He had a peculiar strut in his walk which fired the imagination
of a small native boy who had been born lacking in a sense of
reverence. As the captain marched proudly at the head of his men he
became conscious that there was something about him which was provoking
roars of merriment among the spectators. He began furtively to pat
various parts of his anatomy to see whether there had been a mishap to
his clothing, and it was not for some time that he realised that just
behind him was a small boy caricaturing his every movement. That little
episode settled the French question.
But I am wandering far from my subject, which was German intrigues in
the Orient. Some little time before the War German agents had made
great play with the tribes in the hinterland of Tripoli, and when war
was declared they did succeed in producing in the Senussi a hostile
spirit against the Allies. In 1916 an English ship of war, the _Tara_,
was sunk by a submarine off the North African coast. As usual, the
German commander made no attempt to save the crew, but officers and men
to the number of about a hundred did succeed in getting ashore. They
found themselves in an inhospitable sandy desert, with nothing but what
they stood up in and with no means of communicating with the outside
world. For all that was known, the ship had been sunk with all hands.
The first step, of course, was to get something to eat and drink. A
little way inland they found a well, but there was a dead camel in
it. At first they thought that the death of the camel might have been
recent, and they hauled him up with the idea of eating him, but the
first cut with a knife was enough, and they left him where he was,
and yet forty-eight hours later some of them were glad to eat of this
loathsome food, or go under.
Very soon after their landing they fell into the hands of Senussi
Arabs, who gave them almost nothing to eat and insisted upon their
marching inland under the pitiless sun half dead with hunger and
thirst. At last they reached a little village presided over by what
they took to be a Mohammedan priest, but the bluejackets nicknamed him
‘Holy Joe.’ ‘Holy Joe’ was a holy terror. He drove these wretched men
out in the morning under the lash to till his fields, and he gave them
next to nothing to eat. Fortunately, the desert in these parts grew
snails--great grey-shelled monsters--in prodigious numbers, and it was
part of the routine to bring in from the fields a quota of these snails
for the evening meal. The cook became quite expert in the management
of snails. There was no lid to the pot, and there was not enough fuel
to bring the water to the boil before putting in his snails, so he put
them in cold and poured water upon them, or what passed for water in
these parts, and lighted the fire. As the pot warmed up, the snails,
not unnaturally, tried to get out, and the cook had to spend his time
in heading them back again. When the evening meal was ready the snails
had left their shells and lay in a muddy and unappetising mass at the
bottom of the soup. That is what our wretched men had to live upon for
months, and as time wore on the hunting-grounds were farther afield.
They had eaten all the snails for furlongs round the plantations.
Once the commander made an attempt to escape in order to report the
existence of the prisoners to some one who would communicate with
Egypt, but he failed. He had, however, written appeals to the Turkish
authorities for more food, and it was through one of these appeals that
deliverance came.
Every one remembers the fine exploit of the Duke of Westminster with
his fleet of armoured cars--how he scattered a Turkish army, and how he
carried terror into the hearts of the tribesmen. Now it chanced that
on the evening of the action some of his men discovered a derelict
motor-car and searched it, and that, in the course of the search, they
lighted upon a dirty piece of paper and brought it in to the Duke. It
was actually one of the commander’s appeals, and it gave the name of
the village. Thus, for the first time certain rumours that British
prisoners were detained by the Senussi were confirmed. But now came
a fresh difficulty. No one knew where the village was. It was not
marked in any of the maps, and one could not scour the desert in every
direction to find what might be a mythical village. Inquiries were made
of the Turkish prisoners, and at last one was found who had heard of
the village. In fact, his father had once taken him there when he was a
little boy, but all he remembered of it was that on the hill above it
there was a single date-tree and under the date-tree an ancient stone
well. He thought that it lay in the direction to which he pointed.
This prisoner was taken up on one of the light cars as a guide. For
many hours they ploughed the sand, and then there was a council of war.
They had petrol not much more than sufficient for the return journey.
If they went any farther they might have to leave the car behind them,
but the Duke would not turn back. Whatever happened, he meant to find
this village and to rescue the prisoners, and so they went on, and a
very few minutes later the guide uttered a loud cry, sprang from the
car, and lay grovelling in the sand. ‘An ambush!’ every one said, and
they covered him with their rifles in order that, if any had to die,
he should be the first, but it was no ambush. With keener sight than
theirs he had spied the single date-palm. They took him up again and
drove to the palm. He jumped down and dug at the sand like a dog, until
he disclosed the coping of an ancient well, and a few yards farther on
they came in sight of the village.
The company of prisoners were just sitting down to discuss their
evening snails when a bluejacket came in breathless to say that he
had seen a ‘blinking motor-car.’ Either he was pulling their legs or
he had a touch of the sun, and in either case the best treatment was
to throw stones at him, which they did, but he persisted, and at last
a few of them broke away from the circle to reconnoitre. There, sure
enough, in the slanting rays of the sun _was_ a motor-car. They ran
towards it hailing it as loudly as they could, and they in the car
itself, seeing a party of gaunt and vociferous natives almost naked
in their rags, were for keeping them at a safe distance. It was not
until they recognised the English language that they knew they were
fellow-countrymen.
Normally, the story stops there, but a bluejacket who was one of the
party added a little postscript of his own. Before they left the
village there was a little account to settle--a little matter of
account with ‘Holy Joe,’ who had wielded the whip over them all these
months. He winked and he nodded, and he would say no more, but it was
gathered that ‘Holy Joe’ did not go out of this world with a smile upon
his face.
The Germans were as busy with the Moors as they were with the Arabs,
and their efforts were quite as ineffective. It must have been uphill
work in Morocco for the German agent. There was one who had brought
the Sus tribes almost up to the point of rising, but they stipulated
for arms. Otherwise they would throw in their lot against Germany.
There was nothing for it but to tell them that arms had been written
for, and that they might be expected by ship at any moment. With such
promises the Germans managed to keep up the spirit of expectation
until one day the lights of a steamer were seen approaching. Evidently
this was the long-promised vessel. The whole tribe turned out upon the
beach to assist in landing the cargo, but suddenly a dazzling beam shot
out from the vessel, illuminating the whole of the foreshore. It was
a French warship, and in another moment a shell from one of the guns
landed right in the middle of the village. So that was the kind of
lie on which the German agent was feeding them! There were whispered
consultations. No one knows except the German agent, who is not now
in a position to tell us, exactly what happened. One must always make
subtractions from native stories, but the tale that reached Tangier was
that the German was bidden to a meal at which he ate certain viands
which disagreed with him, so that in the end, being a very fat man, he
burst asunder and gave up his life.
The war work of women made many friendships and a few implacable
enmities. The husband of a lady of high degree came to consult me about
an anonymous letter that had reached her. No threats, either actual or
implied, brought it within the criminal law, and, as he pointed out,
the handwriting and the notepaper, as well as an obviously intimate
knowledge of the lady, marked it as being the production of a person
of the same class, not improbably a ‘friend.’ To say that it contained
home-truths would be a reckless under-statement. It was the outpouring
of a spirit that can endure no more. ‘You are well known,’ it said,
‘as the most disagreeable and vulgar woman in London,’ and it went on
to tell her why. I could almost hear the sigh of relief as she signed
herself ‘A Well-wisher.’
No question here of a German spy nor of criminal proceedings, but
mysterious documents are always fascinating, and by the time the
husband called again I had identified the writer beyond possibility
of error as a lady of the same War Committee revolving in the same
social circle as the recipient of the letter. I told the husband that
the mystery was cleared up. ‘But what we want to know,’ he said, ‘is
who wrote it.’ On that point I said I could not enlighten him: it was
against the rules. The next day he returned with a list of his wife’s
friends whose attachment to her was doubtful, and asked me to say
whether the list did or did not include the anonymous writer. I fear he
has never forgiven me for remaining firm.
They have curious ideas abroad about the way in which the British
conduct a war. A Bulgarian who was taking leave of an English official
when returning to Bulgaria said, ‘Remember, I have nothing to say
about this plan of assassinating Ferdinand.’ ‘What plan?’ asked the
astonished Englishman. ‘Your plan. You are clearly within your rights,
but I think as time goes on you will find out that Ferdinand will be
more useful to you alive than dead.’ Before Roumania came into the War
a Roumanian met a general of the Prussian Staff at dinner in Berlin.
After dinner the general said, ‘I knew your late King. He was a fine
man. What a pity the English murdered him.’ The Roumanian replied that
there must be some mistake: the King died in his bed. But the general
brushed this aside, and gave him a list of the notables in various
countries who had been murdered by the English. One of them was Jaurès,
the French Socialist!
In July 1915 officers returning from the Front noticed a wave of
pessimism as unreasonable as the former optimism. People were just
recovering from the shock of learning that Lord Kitchener had foretold
that the War would last three years instead of the six months that
so many had been counting upon. The cry of ‘Look at the map’ was in
the mouth of constitutional pessimists in high places, and if one had
looked at the map instead of at the men there would have been no spirit
left in any one. Fortunately, geography is not efficiently taught us
at school. All we knew was that, man for man, our soldiers were better
than the Germans and that if, as we were sometimes told, the winning of
the War depended upon killing Germans we should win through in the end;
or if, as the Germans were never tired of telling each other, it was to
be a war of endurance, we felt sure that we could hold out longer than
they. When a party was criticising the conduct of the War in November
1915, I remember a naval officer retorting, ‘If our Admiralty and our
War Office and all our Government Departments had been perfect we
should have lost the War long ago.’
A little later in the War the same naval officer was examining a
captured German submarine officer. The German said bitterly, ‘I cannot
understand you English. If you had joined hands with us we should have
dominated the world between us.’
‘But,’ replied the British sailor, ‘we did not want to dominate the
world.’ The German appeared to feel that he understood the English less
than ever.
In the autumn of 1915 the horde of young Irishmen who were emigrating
to escape military service became a scandal. The number of Irish
emigrants of military age during October 1915 was four thousand.
Even so, it is to be doubted whether a new regulation prescribing
that no passport was to be granted to men of military age would have
been passed but for the fact that the Irish stokers on a White Star
liner refused to carry such emigrants, and one Company after another,
including even two American lines, refused to allow them to come on
board their ships.
The suppression of a daily newspaper was resorted to only once during
the War. On 5th November 1915 the _Globe_, which had helped the
police more than once, published a statement that Lord Kitchener had
tendered his resignation to the King, whereas, in fact, he was leaving
the country on an important mission which could not at the moment be
made public. On the following day a warrant was drawn up, empowering
officers of the Special Branch to suppress the paper. As no newspaper
had been suppressed in England for about a century there were no
precedents on which we could work, nor was I sufficiently acquainted
with the mechanical details of newspaper production to be able to
instruct the officers off-hand what part of the machinery should be
seized and removed. We entered the premises between five and six that
evening. The machines were in full blast in the basement. Newspaper
boys were hurrying in and out. The Inspector showed the warrant to
the manager, and the machines were stopped. Going downstairs, I found
a very obliging man who must have thought that I was a more or less
distinguished visitor who was to be shown over the plant. I said
to him, ‘Supposing that you wanted to take away some part of this
machinery which would make it impossible to run the machines again
until it was restored and yet do no damage to the plant, what would
you take?’ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said, and he led me to a certain
engine, from which he took a portion which I could carry away in my
hand. I thanked him, and carried it away. That was how the _Globe_ was
suppressed until such time as the directors of the newspaper had come
to an arrangement with the Government.
The restrictions on the liberty of the Press were really imposed by the
Press itself. Proprietors and editors measured all their criticisms
by one test--whether what they wished to publish would be turned
to account by the enemy. Their patriotism throughout the War was
whole-hearted and unquestioned.
In 1916 an Austrian submarine stopped a steamer in the Mediterranean
on which Colonel Napier and Captain Wilson were passengers. They were
carrying the diplomatic bags from the Legation in Athens. All but one
of the bags were immediately thrown overboard, but as they contained
buoyant packages insufficiently compensated by weights, one at least
failed to sink and was picked up by the submarine. From the fact that
the Austrians hailed the steamer and demanded the surrender of Colonel
Napier by name it was clear that a spy, probably at Corfu, had given
them information. Naturally there was some confusion: a lady concealed
the bag that had not been thrown overboard; Colonel Napier went on
board the submarine and was interned in Austria; the steamer continued
her voyage to Italy.
Now it chanced that on the steamer was a very tall, lank currant
merchant who spoke no tongue but his native Greek, but was brimming
over with geniality, particularly towards English people, on whom he
was dying to practise the few words of English that he knew. Another
British officer who was on board undertook to carry the bag to England,
and for this purpose the steamer called at an Italian port specially
to land him. The irrepressible Greek, seeing an opportunity of making
the journey to England with a companion who would interpret for him,
hastily collected his modest luggage and, wreathed in ingratiating
smiles, attempted to board the boat. He was sternly repelled from the
gangway; the steamer continued on her voyage and landed her passengers.
The officer had gained no time by his detour: the other passengers
arrived in Rome in time to take the same train for Paris; he was
just taking his seat with the precious bag when the currant merchant
recognised him and rushed upon him with outstretched hand, as who
should say, ‘My deliverer! We will travel in the same compartment.’
Probably he ascribed the rebuff he received to the well-known
eccentricity of the British character, for at the Gare du Nord the same
comedy was enacted, as well as on the Havre-Southampton boat. Long
before this he had been classed as a German spy, and at Southampton he
was handed over to the police and brought to me in custody.
In a seedy frock-coat, unshaved, speechless, except in voluble Greek,
and bewildered by British eccentricity, he certainly seemed to justify
all the suspicions that had been attached to him. I was about to send
for a Greek interpreter when I was informed that his brother, a currant
merchant of Mincing Lane, was asking leave to come in, and there walked
into the room his double--a man so like him in stature, attenuation
and feature that when dressed alike they could never have been
distinguished. But the brother spoke fluent English, and the motive for
all this misplaced geniality was explained. I hope that this currant
merchant has not lost his love for the English nation, but I have my
doubts.
At a time when the spy mania was at its highest we found ourselves
involved in a ghost story. A certain titled foreigner, a devout
Catholic, had taken and enlarged an early Tudor farm in one of the
southern counties in which, according to local tradition, a Spanish
friar named Don Diego had been found concealed during one of the
Recusant persecutions and murdered. To the simple villagers any
foreigner, disembodied or otherwise, was almost certain to be engaged
in intrigues against the Allied cause, and if he had been a priest in
these troublous times he could have had no love for this Protestant
country. Moreover, the farm had been filled with strange furniture
and was full of dark corners, mysterious doorways and galleries.
Strangers came down from London for week-ends, and it was whispered in
the village that there were strange doings behind the oaken shutters
after nightfall. In this rumour was for once correct. Don Diego made no
corporeal appearance: he was a voice and nothing more, but a voice of
such a musical and thrilling quality that, in the opinion of those who
listened, it could have proceeded from no earthly throat. Don Diego was
more concerned with mundane than with spiritual matters, and his chief
concern was match-making, which was unusual in disembodied spirits and
not altogether becoming in a murdered priest. He wanted his host to
make an advantageous marriage.
The manifestations began generally at dinner. A singularly sweet voice
of the quality which in ghost stories is called sepulchral would be
heard calling the name of a guest: the family professed not to hear
the voice. The guest would leave the table and follow the voice to
the hall, where she would commune with it in private and return to
her dinner filled with its mysterious injunctions. She had heard it,
now from the gallery, now from the staircase, for the shade of Don
Diego was amazingly agile in its movements, and to prove that it was
no human voice there was the fact that whichever lady happened to be
called the ghost could always tell her something of her past life, or
some family secret that was known only to herself. These, however, were
mere conversational by-paths; the burden of the sing-song voice was
that people must be up and doing if the Count (for that was the host’s
title) was to make an advantageous marriage.
The rumours of espionage became so persistent that I invited the
gentleman to an interview. He was nervous and evasive; he admitted
the supernatural manifestations, but remarked that he could not be
held responsible for having taken a haunted house. I felt certain,
nevertheless, that he knew all about it, and I told him plainly that
Don Diego must thenceforth lie quiet in his grave. It was a peculiarity
of the murdered priest that he became vocal when the Count was present
in the room. Sometimes the butler and one at least of the two footmen
were there too; at others the Count would be absent and the servants be
clearing the dinner-table.
The fame of Don Diego spread very rapidly, and a small party of
gentlemen interested in psychic phenomena took the matter up. What they
represented themselves to be in order to gain admission to the haunted
house I do not know, but I can conjecture. They found the poor Count in
a state of nervous prostration from a disturbing anonymous letter that
had reached him, and he was prepared for a visit of some kind; in fact,
he was in a condition very favourable to their designs. What passed at
an interview in which there was consummate acting on both sides has
not transpired, but it resulted in a full written confession, and Don
Diego has since appeared no more. The Count himself, aided by his Irish
butler and two other men-servants, had been the voice in turns, the
duty falling upon him who happened to be disengaged at the moment, and
the confession was countersigned by them all. The supposed apparitions
of Don Diego, it said, were produced by purely natural means for the
purpose of practical joking, and an undertaking was given that no more
phenomena would occur.
CHAPTER X
THE GERMAN SPY
My readers may now be asking themselves how soon I am going to write
about German spies. There are obvious reasons why it is impossible
to divulge secrets. I shall tell, therefore, as much as the military
authorities have already allowed to be divulged and nothing more, but I
shall tell most of it at first hand.
There is much confused thinking about the ethics of spying on movements
of an enemy. The very word ‘spy’ has acquired so ugly a significance
that we prefer to disguise our own spies as ‘Intelligence’ or ‘Secret
Service Officers,’ and to regard them as necessary evils; but any
Government that accepted the standards set up by certain censorious
newspapers and declined to ask Parliament for a vote for Secret Service
on the ground that it was dishonourable would be guilty of treason
against its own countrymen. To be forewarned about the intentions of
an enemy, whether internal or external, may be to save the lives and
property of many hundreds, and to allow the enemy to make all his
preparations unheeded would be criminal negligence of the worst kind.
The cost of a good system of Intelligence is like the premium paid for
insurance against fire.
Whether an individual degrades himself by engaging in espionage depends
on how and why he does it. If his motives are purely patriotic and he
performs this dangerous duty at the risk of his life, without thought
of personal gain; if in carrying out the duty he does not stoop to form
friendships in order to betray them, but comes out with clean hands,
what is there degrading in his service? But if he spies upon a nation
with which his country is not at war merely for the money he can make
and lives riotously, as nearly all such hirelings do, he should be
treated like the vermin that he is and nailed to the barn-door as a
warning to others. Nevertheless, there is something pitiful even about
such men when they have played their stake and lost and they feel the
cold hand laid upon them and all their profitless debaucheries sour
upon the palate. It is as if they ran unheeding round a corner and came
suddenly upon Death standing in the path. Then all honour to them if
they can meet him with a smile, for not all of us, feeling that cold
breath on our cheek and the grip of the bony fingers closing on us, can
be sure that we should pass through the ordeal with credit.
During the first few days of the War I remember a staff officer
remarking that we should repeat the experience of the Napoleonic Wars:
we should begin the War with the worst Intelligence Service in Europe
and end with the best. I was inclined to think that he was right about
the first part of his prediction, and I now think that he was right
about the second. But then if he had gone on to say that the Germans
started the War with the most elaborate Secret Service organisation in
Europe and ended it with the worst he would have been equally right.
I have already related how at the vital moment of mobilisation the
whole of the German organisation in the United Kingdom was broken
up; how it was possible for us to dispatch our Expeditionary Force
to France without the loss of a single man or a single horse, and
without the knowledge of the Germans. It was, of course, not long
before they attempted to make good. They had established espionage
centres at Antwerp and Brussels, they had branch offices in connection
with the German Consulate at Rotterdam. Unfortunately for them,
there was great jealousy between the navy and the army, and each had
been entrusted with a certain amount of Secret Service money, on
which they entered into a sort of civil war of competition. Anything
reported by a spy employed by the German naval authorities was at once
ridiculed by the military Intelligence, and _vice versa_. This keen
competition made them a very easy prey. On one occasion an adventurous
Englishman actually passed into Belgium to take service in one of these
Intelligence offices, and came back with useful information. They were
prone also to engage quite unsuitable people--the sort of people who
in war-time at once become what the French call _Agents doubles_; that
is to say, they attempt to serve both sides, either with the object
of obtaining double pay or of making their lives safe in the event of
detection. What these men do for a living in peace time is hard to
guess. I can imagine them running cheap gambling-hells, frequenting
the docks to pick up some dishonest profit, resorting to a little
blackmail, and performing the humbler offices for the White Slave
trafficker. In war-time you will find them swarming in every capital,
for war is their brief summer. The money they get by their complicated
villainies is spent with both hands. They live like princes and dress
like bookmakers’ touts. The Germans were so easy to manipulate that
quite early in the War some of these men came over and offered their
services to us. They felt sure that any story, however improbable,
would be swallowed. Certainly the Germans got more interesting
information from the _agents doubles_ than they ever got from their own
spies in England. Sometimes they acted upon it, and they paid quite
liberally. When you come to think of it, not many private Englishmen
were in a position to give naval or military information of importance,
and still less a foreigner who dared not ask questions.
There was in my office an armchair in which every spy, real or fancied,
sat while he was accounting for his movements. It was realised during
the first weeks of the War by the judges and the law officers, as well
as by the laity, that the ordinary criminal procedure was of no avail
against spies. If no questions could be asked of a person under arrest,
how were you to piece together the documents in his possession--marked
dictionaries, memoranda of addresses, code telegrams, and the like. The
only way and, to the innocent, the fairest way was to adopt something
like the French criminal procedure. As I have said, there was never
anything approaching what is called in America ‘the Third Degree.’ The
suspects were cautioned that they need not answer any questions, but
that what they said might be used in evidence against them, a caution
which almost invariably induced loquacity, and questions and answers
were recorded in shorthand. I suppose that on the average four persons
a day sat in that chair throughout the War. At the least, nine out of
every ten who might otherwise have been detained under suspicion for an
indefinite period were entirely cleared by the examination. It used to
be a joke among my staff that no single person, however angry he was
when he came in, left the room without thanking me profusely, though
one, and he was a Mexican, did afterwards make a claim of £10,000 for
moral and intellectual damages. One man was so grateful that he asked
leave to make a contribution to the fund of the Police Orphanage.
This I had not the face to allow, perhaps because his arrest had been
the result of a mistake, and I felt that, if money had to pass, it
should be going the other way.
[Illustration: ANTON KUPPFERLE. ROBERT ROSENTHAL. CARL HANS LODY.
COURTENAY DE RYSBACH.]
I made a discovery about that low armchair. For some time I had noticed
that whenever a particularly disconcerting question was put the suspect
instinctively raised himself by the arms to reply to it. My assistant,
in peace time an eminent K.C., suggested one day that I should sit in
it and be interrogated by him. I felt at once an irresistible impulse
to raise my face to the level of his. The fact is that if you want to
get the truth out of a witness the worst way is to put him in a box
above the level of the cross-examining counsel; if our law courts were
intelligently constructed the cross-examiner should take his stand in
a kind of lift and be suddenly elevated to the proper position just
before his cross-examination begins. Primitive races have found this
out, for their chiefs stand erect while their inferiors squat on the
ground when they are being questioned.
During the first few days of the War I detained a curious person
who arrived in the country on an American passport, and who claimed
to be a major in the Mexican army. He was a typical international
spy--mysterious, wheedling, and apprehensive. He pretended to be
eager to enter our service. I told him that we would make use of his
services--as a prisoner of war in Brixton Prison. It was not until
early in 1916 that the capture of von Papen’s cheque-books disclosed
his real activities. He had been engaged in the United States in
sabotage, and probably he had come to this country for the same
purpose, but he took alarm, imagining that his every movement was
being watched, and he came to us with offers of service to save his
own skin. When we found his name among the cheques I sent for him
from prison to ask him to explain. He then made a statement about his
activities in America, which was considered so important that on 18th
March 1916 he was sent over to the United States to give evidence
against two of the German Consuls, one of whom was Krupps’ agent, for
attempted outrage and breach of neutrality. The American Government was
quite ready to send us back our prisoner at the end of the case, but I
assured them that we were altruistic and had no desire to deprive them
of so interesting a personality. Afterwards he published in America his
own version of his adventures.
The first serious spy to be arrested was Lody. Carl Lody was a good
example of the patriotic spy. He had been one of those Germans who had
lived long enough in the United States to acquire what he believed to
be fluent English with an American accent. He had held a commission
in the German navy, and was a Reserve officer. He then entered the
employment of the Hamburg-America Steamship Line as a guide for
tourists. In that capacity he had travelled all over England, and had
even attempted, though unsuccessfully, to obtain employment under
Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son. A few days before 4th August 1914 Lody
returned to Berlin from Norway, and got into touch with the German
Intelligence. It happened that there was staying in Berlin at that time
an American named Charles A. Inglis, who had applied to the American
Embassy for a _visa_ to his passport, enabling him to continue his
travels in Europe. His passport was passed by the Embassy to the
German Foreign Office for the _visa_, but there it was ‘mislaid’ and
the Foreign Office promised an exhaustive search. This passport was
used by Lody. Mr. Inglis’s photograph was removed from it and Lody’s
substituted. Mr. Inglis obtained a new American passport from his
Embassy.
As Mr. Charles Inglis, Lody presented himself at the North British
Station Hotel in Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh he sent a telegram to
one Adolf Burchard, in Stockholm. Telegrams had to pass the Censor,
and there were matters in Inglis’s telegram that called for close
scrutiny. Meanwhile, Lody took private lodgings, realising, no doubt,
that hotels are not very safe places for spies. He hired a bicycle, and
spent a fortnight in exploring the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, looking
into Rosyth Harbour, and asking too many questions for the ordinary
sightseer. From Edinburgh he came to London, and put up at a hotel in
Bloomsbury. Here he interested himself in our anti-aircraft defences.
He was back in Edinburgh two days later, and on 26th September he went
to Liverpool, where ocean liners were being fitted out as auxiliary
cruisers. From Liverpool he went to Holyhead and thence to Ireland, and
here his nerve was a little shaken by the close questioning that he
underwent. From the Gresham Hotel in Dublin, where other Americans were
staying, he wrote to his Swedish correspondent that he was becoming
nervous. He wrote all his letters both in English and German in
ordinary ink, without any disguise. His information would have been of
comparatively little value even if it had reached the Germans, which it
did not. The only report that was allowed to go through was the famous
story of the Russian troops passing through England.
From Dublin Lody travelled to Killarney, no doubt on his way to
Queenstown, but on 2nd October he was detained by the Royal Irish
Constabulary to await the arrival of the detectives from Scotland
Yard. They found among his luggage the forged passport, about £175
in English notes and gold, a note-book with particulars of the naval
fight in the North Sea of a few weeks earlier, addresses in Berlin,
Stockholm, Bergen, and Hamburg, and copies of the four letters that
he had written to Stockholm. He was tried by court-martial at the
Guildhall, Westminster, on 30th and 31st October. His counsel made no
defence except that Lody was a man who, having done his duty, left the
consequences in the hands of the court. His grandfather had a military
reputation; he had held a fortress against Napoleon, and the grandson
wished to stand before his judges in that spirit. He was not ashamed
of anything that he had done, he would not cringe for mercy, he would
accept the decision of righteous men. He was found guilty and sentenced
to death, and was executed in the Tower five days later. A letter that
he wrote to his relations in Stuttgart before his execution was as
follows:
‘MY DEAR ONES,--I have trusted in God and He has decided. My hour has
come, and I must start on the journey through the Dark Valley like so
many of my comrades in this terrible War of Nations. May my life be
offered as a humble offering on the altar of the Fatherland.
‘A hero’s death on the battlefield is certainly finer, but such is
not to be my lot, and I die here in the Enemy’s country silent and
unknown, but the consciousness that I die in the service of the
Fatherland makes death easy.
‘The Supreme Court-Martial of London has sentenced me to death for
Military Conspiracy. To-morrow I shall be shot here in the Tower.
I have had just Judges, and I shall die as an Officer, not as a
spy.--Farewell. God bless you,
HANS.’
He wrote a letter also to the officer commanding at Wellington Barracks:
‘LONDON, _November 5th, 1914_.
‘SIR,--I feel it my duty as a German Officer to express my sincere
thanks and appreciation towards the staff of Officers and men who
were in charge of my person during my confinement.
‘Their kind and considered treatment has called my highest esteem and
admiration as regards good-fellowship even towards the Enemy, and if
I may be permitted I would thank you for make this known to them.--I
am, sir, with profound respect,
CARL HANS LODY, _Senior Lieutenant Imperial,
German Naval Res. 11. D_.’
He left a ring to be forwarded to a lady in America, and this was done.
It was believed that the German Government had insured his life for
£3000 in favour of his relations, and that when, after some months,
his death became known in Germany, the people of his native village
planted an oak to be known evermore by his name. He met his death
unflinchingly, and on the morning of his execution it is related that
he said to the Assistant Provost Marshal, ‘I suppose you will not shake
hands with a spy?’ and that the officer replied, ‘No, but I will shake
hands with a brave man.’ Lody made a favourable impression on all who
came into contact with him. In the quiet heroism with which he faced
his trial and his death there was no suspicion of histrionic effect.
He never flinched, he never cringed, but he died as one would wish all
Englishmen to die--quietly and undramatically, supported in his courage
by the proud consciousness of having done his duty.
In those early days there was some difference of opinion as to whether
it was sound policy to execute spies and to begin with a patriotic
spy like Lody. We came to wish later on that a distinction could have
been made between the patriotic spy and the hireling who pestered us
through the ensuing years, but on the whole I think that the military
authorities were right. It is an international tradition that spies in
time of war must die, and if we had departed from the tradition the
Germans would not. While the risk of death may appeal to the courageous
national, it was certainly a deterrent to the scum of neutral spies who
were ready to offer their services to either belligerent.
On 14th February 1915 there arrived in Liverpool another spy not less
courageous and patriotic than Lody, but grotesque in his inefficiency,
and forbidding in his personal appearance. This was Anton Kuppferle,
who was believed to have been a non-commissioned officer in the German
army. How von Papen, who had financed him, could have sent a man so
obviously German, so ignorant of the English language and the American
accent, into an enemy country is incomprehensible. He pretended to be a
commercial traveller in woollen goods, of Dutch extraction, and there
was some slight colour for this in the fact that he had once traded as
a woollen merchant in Brooklyn under the name of Kuppferle & Co. On the
voyage over he was profuse in his conversations with strangers, to whom
he represented himself as an American citizen with business in England.
From Liverpool he wrote a letter to a certain address in Holland, which
was probably the first letter that contained writing in invisible ink.
In this he conveyed information about the war vessels he had seen when
crossing the Atlantic. From Liverpool he went to Dublin, and from
Dublin to London, where he was arrested with all his belongings and
brought to New Scotland Yard. In his luggage was found letter paper
corresponding with that which contained the invisible writing, together
with the materials for communications in secret ink.
He proved to be a typical German non-commissioned officer, stiff,
abrupt, and uncouth. He made little attempt to explain his movements
and fell back upon monosyllables. By this time the machinery for
substituting civil trials for the military courts-martial was complete,
and when the case was ready he was arraigned at the Old Bailey before
the Lord Chief Justice of England and two other Judges, with all the
trappings that belong to that historic court, even to the herbs that
are scattered about the court in the ancient belief that they averted
the infection of gaol fever, though modern science knows that there
is now no gaol fever to avert, and that herbs would not avert it if
there were. Sir John Simon, the Attorney-General, prosecuted, and Sir
Ernest Wild defended. The evidence produced on the first day left
little doubt of the result of the trial, and the Court rose with the
practical certainty that it would meet again the following morning. But
it never met. During the night in Brixton Prison the chief warder heard
a muffled rapping from Kuppferle’s cell. He dressed himself hastily
and came out into the passage, where he was met by the night warder,
who announced that he could not see Kuppferle in his cell. With the
aid of the master key the door was thrown open, and there they found
the man hanging dead from the cell ventilator. He had tied his silk
handkerchief tightly round his neck and, taking his stand on a heavy
book, had kicked it away from under him. Every effort was made to
restore life by artificial respiration, but in vain. On his cell slate
was found the following message:
‘To Whom it may Concern! My name is Kuppferle. _Née_ to (born in)
Sollingen, Rastatt I.B. (Baden). I am a soldier with rank I do not
desire to mention. In regard to my behalf lately I can say that I
have had a fair trial of the U. Kingdom, but I am unable to stand the
strain any longer and take the law in my own hands. I fought many a
battles, and death is only a saviour for me.
‘I would have preferred the death to be shot, but do not wish to
ascend the scaffold as (a Masonic sign). I hope the Allmighty
architect of this Universe will lead me into the unknown land in the
East. I am not dying as a spy but as a soldier; my fate I stood as a
man, but cannot be a liar and perjur myself. Kindly I wish permit to
ask to notify my uncle, Ambros Broll, Sollingen, Rastatt, Germany,
and all my estates shall go to him.
‘What I done I have done for my country. I shall express my thanks,
and may the Lord bless you all.--Yours,
ANTON KUPPFERLE.’
On the back of the slate was written:
‘My age is thirty-one, and I am born June 11th, 1883.’
While in Brixton Prison he wrote a letter to another spy awaiting trial
which was confiscated by the authorities:
‘DEAR FRIEND,--After my study to-day I cannot refrain from writing
a few words again. Here is the true appearance of that deceitful
friendship. (He referred to our declaration that Belgian paper money
was worthless.) The English refuse credit to her so-called best
friend; so I suppose the fact that Belgium is now in our hands has
nothing to do with the state of things.
‘I believe Ypres and neighbourhood have now fallen. If I could only
see the day when the whole British trickery is exposed; England’s
shame must be made known, otherwise there can be no justice. Oh, if I
could only be at the Front again for half an hour!
‘That is my sole remaining wish. I shall not admit or say I am a
soldier, or that I know anything about Military matters.
‘Our Cavalry has been heard of in Russia for the first time. Of
course, the Cavalry has been used by Infantry Service. Reports have
been made by cycle and telephone, and the latter is of greater
importance. The gas must have a great effect and be distasteful to
the English. In any case, it is a stupefying death and makes them
first vomit, like sea-sickness. It is an easy death, and if the
war lasts for some time many more will be killed by it.’
[Illustration: THE PRISON SLATE ON WHICH ANTON KUPPFERLE WROTE HIS LAST
MESSAGE.]
This letter shows Kuppferle in a less amiable light. He had the true
Prussian mentality. It was believed that in the early days of the War
he had fought on the Western Front: he bore on his face the marks of
a blow which may have been caused by the butt end of a rifle. He was
buried in Streatham Park Cemetery.
CHAPTER XI
MÜLLER AND OTHERS
Early in 1915 the Germans began to organise spy-receiving offices in
Holland. Usually they pretended to be legitimate commercial agencies.
Sometimes one member of a not too prosperous firm of commission agents
would lend his offices for the purpose; sometimes a ‘business’ was
opened in some upper room, where a few samples of cheap cigars and
other goods were on view. Quite early in the year it was discovered
that some foreigner who could write fluent English was sending regular
communications to one of these addresses in a simple secret ink, and it
was evident that he was the sort of person who would find out something
which might at any time be of great use to the enemy. The letters were
posted at various places in London, and there was no clue at all to
the sender’s address. Like all spies, he was continually demanding
money, and it was hoped for some time that a remittance from Holland
would disclose his identity, but in the end the _dénouement_ came
about in quite another way. A letter was intercepted in the Censorship
which disclosed secret writing. It was not in the usual hand, and the
incriminatory words said that ‘C’ had gone to Newcastle, and that the
writer was sending the communication ‘from 201’ instead. I remember
very well the morning when this sentence was shown to me. The postmark
was Deptford. ‘201’ might or might not be the number of a house. We
rang up Deptford Police Station and asked for a list of the streets in
their area which ran to 201 houses. There was only one--Deptford High
Street--and the occupant of that house had a German name, ‘Peter Hahn,
Baker and Confectioner.’
No one was more surprised than the stout little baker when a taxi
deposited a number of police officers at his door. He proved to be a
British subject, and to have been resident in Deptford for some years.
While he was being put into the cab a search was made of his premises,
and in a back room the police found a complete outfit for secret
writing neatly stowed away in a cardboard box.
When seated in my armchair Hahn was not at all communicative. He
professed to know nothing of ‘C,’ and when further pressed he refused
to answer any questions, but patient inquiry among his neighbours
produced a witness who remembered that a tall Russian gentleman had
been visiting Hahn at frequent intervals. His name was believed to
be Müller, and his address a boarding-house in Bloomsbury. This
limited the field of search. The register of every boarding-house
was scrutinised, and within a few hours the police found the name of
Müller; the landlady of the boarding-house confirmed the suggestion
that he was a Russian, and said that he had lately gone to Newcastle
to see some friends. The search was then transferred to Newcastle, and
within a few hours Müller was found, arrested, and brought to London.
He was a tall, spare, worried-looking person, anxious only to have an
opportunity of clearing himself. He had never seen Hahn; had never been
in Germany, and could not even speak the language. For some time he
adhered to the story that he was a Russian. An inquiry into his past
showed that he was one of those cosmopolitan, roving Germans who are
hotel-keepers in one place, commercial travellers in another. At some
time they have all been motor-car agents and touts. He spoke English
with scarcely any trace of a foreign accent. With his glib tongue he
had gone through the usual spy routine of making love to impressionable
young women, and winning acquaintance by the promise of partnership in
profitable speculations. He had some claim for registering himself as
a Russian, for he had been born in Libau and spoke Russian as well as
Flemish, Dutch, French, German, and English. Hahn, on the other hand,
was merely a tool. He had been born in Battersea, and was therefore a
British subject. In 1913 he was a bankrupt with assets of £3 to meet
liabilities of £1800. His object, no doubt, was purely mercenary. As
a British subject he had the right to be tried by civil court, and
therefore, as it was not desirable to have two trials, both he and
Müller were indicted at the Old Bailey in May 1915. Both were found
guilty of espionage. Müller was sentenced to death, and Hahn to seven
years’ penal servitude on the ground that he had been acting under
Müller’s influence. Müller appealed unsuccessfully against his sentence.
On 22nd June 1915 Müller was removed from Brixton Prison to the
Tower in a taxi-cab, and by a curious fatality the cab broke down in
Upper Thames Street. It was the luncheon hour, and a crowd formed
immediately. A foreigner seated between two military policemen and
going up the street towards the Tower was not lost on the crowd, which
raised a cry of ‘German spy!’ Another taxi was quickly found, and the
journey was resumed without further accident. The condemned man was
highly strung, and he broke down on the night before his execution.
On the following morning he pulled himself together, and insisted on
passing gravely down the firing-party and shaking hands with each
man. The Germans did not hear of his death for some time, for letters
containing remittances continued to be received.
About the middle of 1915 we learned that on a steamer bound from
Rotterdam to Buenos Aires was an Argentine citizen named Conrad Leyter,
who was believed to be carrying dispatches from Berlin to the German
Embassy in Madrid. Leyter was removed from the steamer and brought to
London. He said he was a shipping clerk, that he had come to Europe for
a holiday, and was now on his way back to Buenos Aires. He gave a long
and rather wearisome account of his holiday adventures in Germany and
Holland, and nothing could be done until the clockwork had run down.
Then we said, ‘But why were you going to Spain?’ There was another
burst of eloquence, but no reply to that particular question. Whenever
he paused for breath he was asked, ‘Why were you going to Spain?’ At
last he could bear it no more. He jumped from his chair and said,
‘Well, if you will know, I am going to Spain, and if you want to know
why, I am carrying a dispatch to Prince Ratibor, the German Ambassador
in Madrid.’
‘Thank you. And where is the dispatch?’
‘I have not got it. It is sewn up in the life-belt in my cabin.’
That was all we wanted to know. Leyter went to an internment camp, the
wireless was got to work, and in due course the dispatch was found in
the life-belt, as he said. It was quite useful.
Every now and then doubtful persons captured at sea came to us from far
afield. In October 1915 a boarding officer in the Mediterranean, who
was examining passengers on board the blue-funnel liner _Anchises_,
found a man who was carrying a false passport believed to be forged.
He was detained and sent to Egypt. In Cairo the luck was against him.
While he was being interrogated and his imagination was soaring in full
flight, a British officer who had known him in former years chanced
to pass through the room and recognised him. ‘Hullo, von Gumpenberg!’
he cried, slapping him on the back. After that it was useless to
dissemble, and he gave his name as Baron Otto von Gumpenberg, and said
that he had been squadron commander in the Death’s Head Hussars, and
had been involved in a scandal for which he was arrested and imprisoned
for seven months. On his release he became a vagabond adventurer. In
Constantinople he was aide-de-camp to Enver Pasha; later he attached
himself to Prince Wilhelm of Wied in his futile attempt to govern
Albania. When war broke out he was called back to Germany to serve as
a trooper, and, according to his own account, he served for eighteen
months on the Russian Front with such distinction that when he returned
wounded to Germany his commission was restored to him and he was posted
to the command of a troop at the Front; but at this moment there
happened to be a scheme for stirring up the tribes in North Africa,
and he was dispatched to see what he could do with the Senussi. About
that time the Senussi had captured a number of Italian prisoners, and
von Gumpenberg accounted for being on the _Anchises_ by saying that he
was being sent to the Senussi to obtain the release of these prisoners.
We were impolite enough to express entire disbelief in this story.
Unfortunately, in return for his confession made in Egypt he had been
promised that he would be treated as an officer prisoner of war, and
he had to be interned at Donnington Hall. His real object, no doubt,
was to direct the hostile movements of the Senussi and other tribes
against the Allies.
The Germans now adopted commerce as the best cover for their agents.
England was to be flooded with commercial travellers, especially
travellers in cigars. The Censor began to pick up messages containing
orders for enormous quantities of cigars for naval ports such as
Portsmouth, Chatham, Devonport, and Dover. The senders turned out to be
furnished with Dutch passports, though their nationality was doubtful.
Now something happened to be known about their supposed employers
in Holland, who kept one little back office in which a few mouldy
samples were exposed, and yet here they were with a traveller in the
Southern Counties and another sending orders from Newcastle. Naval
ratings are not abstainers from tobacco, but they are not known to be
in the habit of consuming large quantities of Havana cigars. One of
the travellers named Haicke Petrus Marinus Janssen and the other named
Wilhelm Johannes Roos were found doing the sights of London. Janssen
was questioned first. He was a self-possessed person of about thirty
years of age, and he claimed to be a sailor. He knew no German, in fact
he had never been in Germany, and, being a Dutchman, he had a dislike
for Germans. Why, he was asked, did his employers, Dierks & Co., engage
a sailor to travel in cigars? To that he had no answer except that he
had been unsuccessful in obtaining a berth as officer on a steamer. A
friend had introduced him to Mr. Dierks because he could speak English
and was looking for work. He said that he was the only traveller that
Dierks had in England. We asked him whether he knew a man named Roos.
‘No,’ he said, he had never heard of him. He was then sent to another
room while Roos was brought in. He, too, was a seaman, a big, powerful
man with the cut of a German seaman. He, too, said that he was a
traveller for Dierks & Co.; that Dierks had two travellers, himself
and Janssen. Would he know Janssen if he saw him? Certainly he would.
Janssen was brought again into the room. He made a faint sign with his
eyes and lips to Roos, but of course it was too late. ‘Is this the man
you say you know?’ he was asked. He nodded, and Janssen was silent. On
the way over to Cannon Row Roos suddenly dashed at a glass door which
opened into the yard, smashed the panes, and jabbed his naked wrists
on the jagged fragments of glass in the hope of cutting an artery. He
was taken to Westminster Hospital to be bandaged, and later was removed
to Brixton Prison, where he was put under observation as a potential
suicide.
The code used by these men was simple enough. They would send telegrams
for 10,000 Cabañas, 4000 Rothschilds, 3000 Coronas, and so on. A
message telegraphed from Portsmouth of this kind would mean that there
were three battleships, four cruisers, and ten destroyers in the
harbour, and these messages, so interpreted, corresponded with the
actual facts on the dates of the telegrams. Neither man could produce
any evidence that he had transacted _bona fide_ business with his
cigars. They could not produce one genuine order. They were brought
to trial for espionage and were convicted. A few days later both made
confessions. Janssen actually gave some useful information about the
German spy organisation in Holland. He said that his sympathies were
really with us, and he could not understand how he had been tempted to
serve the other side. It appeared that in 1913 he had actually been
granted a silver medal by the Board of Trade for life-saving on the
immigrant steamer, _Volturno_, which was burnt at sea with the loss of
400 lives. Her wireless call for help was responded to by the vessel in
which Janssen was serving, and he, among others, was instrumental in
saving 500 lives. Roos feigned insanity in prison, and it was one of
the pleas put forward by his counsel. There was, however, no medical
support for this plea, and it was arranged that on 30th July both men
should be executed in the Tower. They met their end stoically. Janssen
was shot first. Roos asked as a last favour to be allowed to finish his
cigarette. That done, he threw it away with a gesture as though that
represented all the vanities of this world, and then he sat down in
the chair with quiet unconcern. The news of the execution soon reached
Holland, and the Germans began to find it very difficult to obtain
recruits from neutral countries.
[Illustration: WILHELM JOHANNES ROOS. AGUSTO ALFREDO ROGGIN. FERNANDO
BUSCHMAN. GEORG BREECKOW.]
During May and June 1915, in about a fortnight, no less than seven
enemy spies were arrested. The most spectacular were Reginald Roland,
whose real name was Georg T. Breeckow, and Mrs. Lizzie Wertheim.
Breeckow was the son of a pianoforte manufacturer in Stettin, and he
was himself a pianist. It is curious to reflect that professional
musicians should have formed a respectable proportion of the detected
spies. One would have thought that it was the last class that would be
able to report intelligently on naval and military matters. Breeckow
spoke English fluently, and knew enough Americanisms to pose plausibly
as a rich American travelling in England for his health. Before he
left Holland he was furnished with the address of Lizzie Wertheim, a
German woman who had married a naturalised German and had thus acquired
British nationality. She was a stout and rather flashy-looking person
of the boarding-house type, and she had been in England for some
years. She was separated from her husband, but on terms that made her
independent. She was equally at home in Berlin, the Hague, and London.
Breeckow, who appeared to be possessed of a considerable sum of money,
was at once accorded a warm welcome. The pair hired horses from a
riding-school, and rode in the Park during the mornings. They took
their luncheon at expensive restaurants, and Lizzie Wertheim became
intoxicated with this kind of life and waxed so extravagant that
Breeckow had to expostulate and report the matter to his employers. She
would no longer travel without a maid.
It was decided between the two that the best working arrangement would
be for the woman to do the field work, and for Breeckow to work up her
reports in London and dispatch them to Holland. Mrs. Wertheim went to
Scotland, hired a motor-car, and drove about the country picking up
gossip about the Grand Fleet. Her questions to naval officers were,
however, so imprudent that special measures were taken; Breeckow’s
address was discovered, and in due course the two were brought to New
Scotland Yard for interrogation. The artistic temperament of Breeckow
was not equal to the ordeal. His pretence of being a rich American
broke down immediately, and he was aghast to find out how much the
police knew about his secret movements. Though he made no confession,
he returned to Cannon Row in a state of great nervous tension. Lizzie
Wertheim, on the other hand, was tough, brazen, and impudent, claiming
that as a British subject she had a right to travel where she would.
She declined to sit still in her chair, but walked up and down the
room, flirting a large silk handkerchief as if she was practising a
new dancing step. Further inquiries showed that, unlike the previous
American passports carried by spies, which were genuine documents
stolen by the German Foreign Office, this passport was a forgery right
through. The American Eagle on the official seal had his claws turned
round the wrong way, and his tail lacked a feather or two. The very red
paper on which the seal was impressed did not behave like the paper on
genuine documents when touched with acid, nor was the texture of the
passport paper itself quite the same. It also transpired that Breeckow
had been in America continuously from 1908, that he had got into touch
with von Papen’s organisation, which had sent him back to Germany for
service in this country. For this purpose he became an inmate of the
Espionage School in Antwerp, where he was taught the tricks of the
trade, which were quite familiar to us. He had also a commercial code
for use when telegrams had to be sent.
Breeckow had maintained throughout that he knew no German, but his
assurance began to break down in the loneliness of a prison cell. He
had a strong imagination, and no doubt the thought that his female
accomplice might be betraying him worked strongly on his feelings. One
morning I went over with a naval officer to see how he was. There was a
question about signing for his property, and he was sent into the room
for the purpose. When he found himself alone with us he said suddenly,
‘Am I to be tried for my life?’
‘I understand that you are to be tried.’
‘What is the penalty for what I have done?’ (Up to this point he had
made no confession.) ‘Is it death?’
‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘You have not yet been tried.’
‘I can tell from your face that it is death. I must know. I have to
think of my old mother in Stettin. I want to write a full confession.’
I told him that of course he was free to write what he pleased, but
that anything he did write would almost certainly be used against him
at his trial. ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I have carried the secret long
enough. Now I want to tell the whole truth.’
So paper and ink were supplied to him, and he wrote his confession.
As Mrs. Wertheim was a British subject and could claim trial by civil
court the two were tried together at the Old Bailey on 20th September
before three Judges of the High Court, and were found guilty. Breeckow
was sentenced to death and Mrs. Wertheim to ten years’ penal servitude,
as it was considered that she had acted under the man’s influence.
Breeckow appealed unsuccessfully, and his execution was fixed for 26th
October at the Tower. The five weeks that elapsed between the sentence
and the execution were extremely trying to the persons responsible for
his safety. He had broken down completely, and was demented by fear. On
the morning of his execution he was almost in a state of collapse. At
the last moment he produced a lady’s handkerchief, probably the relic
of some past love-affair, and asked that it might be tied over his
eyes instead of the usual bandage, but it was too small. It had to be
knotted to the bandage and then tied. He was shivering with agitation,
and just before the shots were fired there was a sudden spasm. It was
believed afterwards that he had actually died of heart failure before
the bullets reached him.
Lizzie Wertheim was removed to Aylesbury Convict Prison to undergo her
sentence, and there she died some two years after the Armistice.
Of all the spies that were convicted and executed the man for whom I
felt most sorry was Fernando Buschman. He was a gentleman by birth,
he had no need of money, for he was married to the daughter of a rich
soap manufacturer in Dresden, who had kept him liberally supplied with
funds for his studies in aviation. He was quite a good violinist, and
he had all the instincts of a cultivated musician. He was of German
origin, but his father had become a naturalised Brazilian, and he
himself had Latin blood in his veins. He was born in Paris, but his
boyhood was spent in Brazil, where he attended a German school. He
had invented an aeroplane, and in 1911 the French Government allowed
him to use the aerodrome at Issy for experimental purposes. For the
three years before the War he had been travelling all over Europe,
and when hostilities broke out the German Secret Service got hold
of him. He had been to Spain, to Genoa, and to Hamburg, and in 1915
he was in Barcelona and Madrid, and then in Flushing, Antwerp, and
Rotterdam. It speaks volumes for the stupidity of the directors of the
German Espionage School in Antwerp that they should have selected as a
disguise for such a man as Buschman the role of commercial traveller.
The imposture was bound to be discovered at once. He was far too well
dressed and well spoken, and he knew nothing whatever about trade. He
arrived in London with a forged passport, and put up at a good hotel
with his violin, not usually part of the luggage of a commercial
traveller. After a few days he moved to lodgings in Loughborough
Road, Brixton, and thence to lodgings in South Kensington. This he
thought was enough to fit him for moving about in England. He visited
Portsmouth and Southampton, and from certain minute notes found among
his papers it became evident that his one qualification--his knowledge
of aeronautics--was not to be turned to account: he was to be employed
as a naval spy. Unfortunately for him he ran short of money, and was
compelled to write to Holland for fresh supplies. He was arrested at
his lodgings in South Kensington, and was found to be quite penniless.
When the detective arrived he said, ‘What have you against me? I will
show you everything.’ Then he reeled off his lesson. He was in England
for the purpose of selling cheese, bananas, potatoes, safety razors,
and odds and ends, and in France he had sold picric acid, cloth, and
rifles. He implied that his employers did a miscellaneous business
almost unrivalled in commercial annals, but when he said that they were
Dierks & Co., of the Hague, we pointed out that they occupied one room
and were cigar merchants. Moreover, it was found that his passport was
written in the well-known handwriting of Flores, who used to instruct
German spies in Rotterdam. This man had been a schoolmaster, and his
characteristic handwriting was well known. There was also a letter from
Gneist, the German Consul General in Rotterdam, from Colonel Ostertag,
the German Military Attaché in Holland, and from two persons who were
known to be active in recruiting for the German Secret Service. He
was tried at the Westminster Guildhall on 20th September 1915, the
day of the trial of Breeckow and Mrs. Wertheim at the Old Bailey, and
was sentenced to death. I know that persons who were present at the
trial were impressed by his manly bearing and his frankness. After his
sentence he was not separated from his violin. It was his great solace
through the long hours of waiting. He asked for it again on his removal
to the Tower on the night before his execution, and played till a late
hour. When they came for him in the morning he picked it up and kissed
it, saying, ‘Good-bye, I shall not want you any more.’ He refused to
have his eyes bandaged, and faced the rifles with a courageous smile.
How differently the artistic temperament works in men and women!
CHAPTER XII
THE HIRELING SPY
Having failed with Germans, the enemy now turned to South America for
their spies. The large German colony in Central and South America was
an excellent recruiting-ground. In June 1915, a few days after the
capture of Fernando Buschman, two postcards addressed to Rotterdam
attracted the attention of the Postal Censor. They announced merely
that the writer had arrived in England and was ready to begin work.
The postmark was Edinburgh. The police in Scotland were set to work,
and a few days later they detained at Loch Lomond a native of Uruguay,
who gave his name as Agusto Alfredo Roggin. He was a neat, dark little
man, not at all like a German, though he admitted that his father was a
German naturalised in Uruguay in 1885, and that he himself was married
to a German woman. Unlike many of the spies, he did not pretend that
his sympathies were with the Allies. His account of himself was that
he had come to England to buy agricultural implements and stock; that
his health was not very good, and that Loch Lomond had been recommended
to him as a health resort. He spoke English fluently. According to his
admissions, he had been in Hamburg as lately as March 1914, and was in
Switzerland just before war broke out. In May he was sent to Amsterdam
and Rotterdam, probably to receive instructions in the School of
Espionage. He arrived at Tilbury from Holland on 30th May, and after
staying for five days in London, where he asked quotations for horses
and cattle, he went north. So far he had transacted no business.
As a spy he was one of the most inept that could have been chosen.
Even on the journey north from King’s Cross he asked so many questions
of casual acquaintances that they became suspicious, and took upon
themselves to warn him not to go anywhere near the coast. In fact,
they were so hostile that he left the compartment at Lincoln and
spent the night there. Nor was his reception in Edinburgh any more
auspicious. When he came to register with the police he was put through
a searching inquiry. He was very careful to tell every one at Loch
Lomond that he had come for the fishing, but it chanced at that moment
that certain torpedo experiments were being carried out in the loch,
and the presence of foreigners at once gave rise to suspicion. The
sending of the two postcards was quite in accordance with ordinary
German espionage practice. In order to divert suspicion the spies were
instructed to send harmless postcards in English addressed to different
places. Moreover, a bottle of a certain chemical secret ink was found
in his luggage. He was tried on 20th August, found guilty, and executed
at the Tower on 17th September. He went to his death with admirable
courage, and declined to have his eyes bandaged when he faced the
firing-party. Some time after his execution a Dr. Emilio Roggin was
removed from a steamer bound from Holland to South America. He turned
out to be the brother of the dead spy, and was greatly distressed at
the news of what had befallen him. It transpired that he was in Germany
on the outbreak of war, and had been compelled by the German Government
to serve as a medical officer with the troops in the field. It had
taken nearly two years for him to obtain his release, and he was now
on his way back to Uruguay.
Roggin was at large in England only for eleven days, and therefore
he was unable to send any information of value to his employers.
Nevertheless, he was a hired spy, and it was at that time most
necessary to make the business of espionage so dangerous that recruits
would be difficult to get.
About the same time a well-educated and well-connected Swede of between
fifty and sixty years of age named Ernst Waldemar Melin arrived in
this country. He had been a rolling-stone all his life. At one time
he had managed a Steamship Company at Gothenburg, in Sweden, and then
on the breakdown of his health he began to travel all over the world.
He had found casual employment in London, Paris, and Copenhagen, and
at the beginning of the War he found himself in Hamburg without any
means of subsistence. He applied, without success, to his relations,
and then, hearing that there was plenty of remunerative work to be
had in Antwerp, he went to Belgium with the genuine desire to obtain
honest employment. There at a café he came into touch with one of
the espionage recruiting agents, who were always on the look-out for
English-speaking neutrals. At first, according to his own account,
he resisted the temptation, but at last, being utterly penniless, he
succumbed and was sent to the Espionage Schools in Wesel and Antwerp.
At Rotterdam he received his passport and the addresses to which he
was to send his communications. He put up in a boarding-house in
Hampstead as a Dutchman whose business had been ruined by the German
submarine campaign, and who was anxious to obtain employment in a
shipping-office. He made himself agreeable to his fellow-lodgers, who
fully accepted his story. He was under police suspicion from the
first, but there could be no confirmation until he began to write.
His first communications were written on the margin of newspapers, a
method which the Germans had then begun to adopt. He took his arrest
quite philosophically. Fortune had dealt him so many adverse strokes
that she could not take him unaware. A search of his room brought to
light the usual stock-in-trade at that time--the materials for secret
writing and a number of foreign dictionaries used as codes, as well as
a Baedeker. He made a clean breast of his business, protesting that he
had no real intention of supplying the Germans with useful information.
All he meant to do was to send some quite valueless messages that
would procure for him a regular supply of funds. He was tried by
court-martial on 20th and 21st August. His counsel urged that he had
sent nothing to the enemy which could not have been obtained from
newspapers, but he could not, of course, put forward the plea that he
was not a spy. Melin took this last stroke of fortune like a gentleman.
He gave no trouble, and when the time came he shook hands with the
guard, thanking them for their many kindnesses, and died without any
attempt at heroics.
One German agent was discovered through the purest accident. It was
apparently the practice at that time for the Germans to make use
of ex-criminals on condition that they undertook espionage in an
enemy country. It chanced that some postal official in Denmark had
mis-sorted a letter addressed from Copenhagen to Berlin, and slipped
it by mistake into the bag intended for London, and this letter was
written in German by a man who said he was about to start for England
under the disguise of a traveller in patent gas-lighters, in order to
collect military and naval information. The letter was already some
weeks old, and there was no clue beyond the fact that some person
might be in the country attempting to sell gas-lighters. A search of
the landing records was at once instituted, and it was found that at
Newcastle at that very moment a young man named Rosenthal was on board
a steamer about to sail for Copenhagen, after making a tour with his
gas-lighters in Scotland. In another hour he would have been outside
the three-mile limit and out of reach of the law. He proved to be a
young man of excitable temperament and a Jew. He was very glib in his
denials: he had never lived in Copenhagen, he was not a German, he knew
nothing about the hotel from which the letter had been written. It was
growing dusk, and so far the letter had not been read to him, but he
had given me a specimen of his handwriting, which corresponded exactly
with that of the letter. Then I produced it and read it to him. While
I was reading there was a sharp movement from the chair and a click of
the heels. I looked up, and there was Rosenthal standing to attention
like a soldier. ‘I confess everything. I am a German soldier.’ But
the remarkable part of this story was that he was never a soldier at
all. On a sudden impulse he had tried to wrap his mean existence in a
cloak of patriotic respectability. Subsequent inquiry showed that his
full name was Robert Rosenthal, a German born in Magdeburg in 1892. As
a boy he had been apprenticed to a baker in Cassel. He disliked the
work, returned to Magdeburg, and at a quite early age was sentenced to
three months’ imprisonment for forgery. After his discharge he became a
rolling-stone, and went to sea, but he was in Hamburg on the outbreak
of war, and was engaged for a time by the American Relief Commission.
It is not clear whether he was actually liberated from prison for the
purpose of espionage, but espionage was the kind of work for which
undoubtedly he was most suited. It was not surprising that such a man
should try to save his life by offering to disclose the methods of his
employers.
When he found that acquittal was hopeless he tried to carry off the
pretence of patriotism at his trial, but after his conviction he made
two unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide. Unlike the other spies, he
was sentenced to be hanged, and was executed on 5th July 1915. He had
some ability, for he wrote English very well and was profuse in written
accounts of his adventures.
The next spy to be arrested in England was a Peruvian whose father was
a Scandinavian. Ludovico Hurwitz-y-Zender was a genuine commercial
traveller, though far better educated than most men of his calling. In
August 1914 he went to the United States with the intention of coming
to Europe on business, for he was already the representative of several
European firms in Peru. Probably it was not until his arrival in Norway
that he got into touch with the German Secret Service agents, who were
then offering high pay for persons with the proper qualifications who
would work for them in England. It happened that the Cable Censor began
to notice messages addressed to Christiania ordering large quantities
of sardines. Now, it was the wrong season for sardine-canning, and
inquiries were at once made in Norway about the _bona fides_ of the
merchant to whom the messages were addressed. He turned out to be
a person with no regular business, who had frequently been seen in
conversation with the German Consul. The messages were then closely
examined for some indication of a code. They had been dispatched by
Zender. On 2nd July Zender was arrested at Newcastle, where he had made
no secret of his presence. He professed great surprise that there
was any suspicion against him, and freely admitted that he had been
at Newcastle, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. In none of these places did he
appear to have transacted any real business, and on account of the
season the experts in sardines laughed to scorn his suggestion that his
order for canned fish was genuine. When all arrangements had been made
for his trial by court-martial Zender demanded that certain witnesses
should be brought from South America for his defence. The proceedings
were therefore postponed for eight months, and it was not until 20th
March 1916 that it was possible to bring him to trial. The witnesses
that had been brought at great trouble and expense could really say
nothing in his favour, and in due course he was found guilty and
executed in the Tower on 11th April, nine months after the date of his
arrest. Zender was the last German spy to be executed in this country
during the War. Others were tried and convicted, but for various
reasons the death sentences were commuted to penal servitude for life.
It became evident throughout the War that the only form of espionage
that is really worth undertaking is the gathering of intelligence just
behind the enemy lines and on the lines of communication. To be of any
real value in an enemy country a spy must be highly-placed. The enemy
must, in fact, buy some one who is in naval and military secrets, for
even the ordinary citizen of the country is very rarely in a position
to give useful information. As the War dragged on the Germans became
increasingly concerned with the question of morale. They had based
their air-raids and their submarine campaign upon false reading of the
British character. They thought that they were breaking down the war
spirit, and that it was becoming evident that the British would be
tired of the War before they were.
Perhaps the most astonishing figure that bubbled up to the surface
during the War was that of Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln. That a
Hungarian Jew should succeed in being by turns a journalist, a Church
of England clergyman, and a Member of Parliament in England shows an
astonishing combination of qualities. His original name appears to
have been Trebitsch. He was born at Paks, on the Danube, about 1875.
His father, a prosperous Jewish merchant, had started a shipbuilding
business, and Ignatius was intended to enter the Jewish Church. He
made a study of languages, and when he was little more than twenty he
visited London. On his return to Hungary there were quarrels between
father and son, and in 1899 Ignatius went to Hamburg and was received
into the Lutheran Church. Later he crossed to Canada to assist in a
Presbyterian mission to the Jews, and when that mission was transferred
to the Church of England Trebitsch changed his denomination. He had
a gift of oratory, and made some impression in Canada. When he came
back to Europe he applied for an English curacy, was ordained and
appointed to the parish of Appledore in Kent. It cannot be said that
he was a successful curate. Probably fiery oratory in a strong foreign
accent would not have appealed to a Kentish congregation under any
circumstances. He left his curacy and went to London, where for some
two years he supported himself as a journalist.
About 1906 he came into touch with Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, who was so
much impressed with his abilities that he engaged him as his private
secretary. Mr. Rowntree was at that time in close touch with the
leading Liberals, and this brought Lincoln, as he then was, into
constant communication with the organisers of the party, who at last
put him up to contest the Unionist constituency of Darlington in the
Liberal interest. Who can fail to admire the audacity with which this
election was successfully fought?
The House of Commons is no more impressed with fiery oratory in a
foreign accent than a Kentish congregation, and Mr. Lincoln was glad
to absent himself from the House in order to undertake an inquiry into
economic conditions on the Continent, which would bring him into close
communication with notable personages, for high politics had fired his
imagination, and he began to regard himself as destined to become one
of the future great figures in European history.
I do not think that when the War broke out Lincoln had any idea of
giving information to the enemy. He had lost his seat in the House of
Commons, and he was in financial straits, but his first inclination
was undoubtedly to offer his services to England. The first step was
to apply for a position in the Censorship for Hungarian and Roumanian
correspondence, and for the short time of his employment he is believed
to have done his work conscientiously, but he was not popular with his
colleagues, and their treatment of his friendly overtures must have
galled him. The iron entered into his soul, and from that time he was
definitely anti-British in his sympathies.
His first act of disloyalty was to attempt to obtain admission into our
own Intelligence organisation. He professed to be able to tempt the
German Fleet out into the North Sea, where it could be destroyed, and
for that purpose he proposed to cross to Holland and offer his services
to the German Consul. Though his application was rejected, he did
succeed in obtaining a passport, and on 18th December 1914 he arrived
in Rotterdam. The German Consul, Gneist, was a very active espionage
agent, and Lincoln appears to have made some impression upon him at
first, for he did entrust to him some valueless information to carry
back with him to England. With this he again pestered the authorities
to take him into the Intelligence Service, but he was so coldly
received that he took alarm and left for New York on 9th February.
Here he made a living of some kind by journalism, in ignorance of the
fact that the authorities in England were investigating a certain
signature to a draft for £700. It transpired that Lincoln had forged
Mr. Seebohm Rowntree’s name for that amount. Chief Inspector Ward,
who was afterwards killed by a Zeppelin bomb, was sent over to the
United States in connection with the extradition proceedings, and on
4th August 1916, Lincoln was arrested. After the usual delays in such
cases he was brought to England, was tried at the Old Bailey, and
received a sentence of three years’ penal servitude. When his sentence
expired in the summer of 1919 it was intended to send him back to his
own country, but at that time Bela Kun was in power and the plan had
to be deferred. When the Communist Government fell the deportation
was carried out, and in September 1919 Lincoln found himself again
in Buda-Pesth. The atmosphere of that city, just recovering from the
Communist orgy of misrule, did not suit him. He went to Berlin, and
renewed his acquaintance there with Count Bernstorff, the former German
Ambassador at the United States. It is said in Germany that the extreme
Right will swallow anything. Their political sagacity has never been
conspicuous. Kapp was at the moment secretly preparing for his Putsch,
and it surprised no one when it was reported that Ignatius Timothy
Trebitsch Lincoln had solemnly been appointed Propaganda Agent to the
short-lived Kapp Government. How many days the appointment lasted is
not quite certain, but apparently even Colonel Bauer found him more
than he could manage. The troubled waters of Central Europe are the
only fishing ground in which a man such as Lincoln could hope to make a
living. We may even hear of him again.
CHAPTER XIII
THE LAST EXECUTIONS
Irving Guy Ries was a German-American who had been recruited by the
Germans in New York. He landed at Liverpool in the guise of a corn
merchant, though in private life he was actually a film operator. After
a few days spent at a hotel in the Strand he, too, visited Newcastle,
Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and went through the routine of calling upon
a number of produce merchants as an excuse for his journey, but, like
the other spies, he did no genuine business with them. He returned to
his hotel in London on 28th July after a fortnight spent in the north.
He was more careful than most of the other spies, for he preserved
copies of every business letter that he wrote. Unfortunately for him,
his employers had not kept him properly supplied with money, and by ill
chance the Censor intercepted a letter addressed to him from Holland
which contained the exact amount of the remittance usually made to
spies. Ries carried an American passport, and the first step taken was
to ask the American authorities to withdraw from him his passport in
order that it might be examined by experts. It proved to be forged,
and on 19th August late at night the police went to Ries’s hotel and
arrested him just as he was going to bed.
He was a grave and measured person who answered all my questions very
deliberately and thoughtfully. On one point he refused altogether to be
drawn. He would not tell his true name, but he explained that this was
only because if the name ever came to be published it would give pain
to his relations. About his movements he was frank enough. He explained
that he would have already left for Copenhagen if the Americans had
not required him to surrender his passport. Among his effects was
found a letter from Rotterdam, directing him to meet a certain person
in Copenhagen and report to him the result of his investigations in
England. He was asked to account for this, and he immediately dropped
all the pretence that he was in this country on genuine business. ‘I
am in your power,’ he said; ‘do what you like with me.’ There was
no doubt whatever that he was a spy, but his case differed from the
others in the fact that it could not be shown that he had ever sent
information to the enemy. In fact, it seemed clear that the Germans
were adopting new tactics, and that they intended in future to send
spies on flying visits to England, and get them to come and report the
result of their observations verbally. He was tried on 4th October, was
found guilty, and sentenced to death. He took his condemnation with
perfect philosophy. He spent all his time in reading, and he gave his
guards the impression that he was a man who had divested himself of all
earthly cares and felt himself to lie under the hand of Fate. If he
expected that the American Government would press for a reprieve and
would be successful he never showed it.
On 26th October he was removed to the Tower, and as soon as he knew
that a date was fixed for his execution he called for writing materials
and made a full confession, giving at the same time his true name.
This, of course, cannot be published in view of the considerations that
had made him conceal it when he was arrested. He was permitted to shake
hands with the firing-party, and he said, ‘You are only doing your
duty, as I have done mine.’
I have said that throughout the War there was no case of espionage by
any Englishman, but there was one curious exception. In November 1917,
it came to our knowledge that a young bluejacket who had deserted his
ship in Spain had gone straight to the German authorities in Madrid,
and given them such naval information as a bluejacket might be in
possession of. He had then given himself up as a deserter, and had been
discharged from the service. He had since obtained work in a munition
factory in the north of England near his home. He was arrested at
Barrow and sent to London, and so uneasy was the Labour situation at
the time that a strike was immediately threatened until the nature of
the charge was explained to the responsible leaders.
The young man did not attempt to deny the charge. He was the youngest
of a family who were all serving in the War in some form. His
explanation was that he went to the Germans in Spain in order to find
out their military secrets but, though there could be no doubt about
the facts, there was doubt about his mental condition, and as his
family made themselves responsible for his future good behaviour he was
discharged to their care.
Courtenay Henslop de Rysbach was a British subject, but his father was
an Austrian naturalised in this country. De Rysbach was a music-hall
artist, who, on the outbreak of war, had an engagement in Germany. He
was a comedian, one of those who can sing and juggle and play tricks on
bicycles. Like the other foreigners, he was swept into Ruhleben, and
when the Germans separated those who favoured Germany from the others
and accorded them better treatment he began to listen to suggestions
that he should undertake work for the enemy. He was removed to Berlin
to undergo a course of training. From Berlin he went to Zurich and to
Paris in the guise of a British subject who had been released from
internment on account of his health. He landed at Folkestone on 27th
June, and at once found himself free to move about the country without
restriction.
One day the Postal Censor detained two songs addressed to a man in
Zurich. One was called ‘The Ladder of Love’ and the other, ‘On the way
to Dublin Town.’ The songs were signed ‘Jack Cummings, Palace Theatre,
London.’ No such person existed, and for some time there was nothing
to indicate the sender. An examination of the songs with a suitable
developer brought up between the bars of music an account of what the
writer had seen in this country. De Rysbach was then appearing at a
local music-hall in Glasgow with a female trick cyclist. As soon as
his identity with Jack Cummings was established he was brought to
London and put through a detailed examination. It transpired that
after his arrival in this country he had attempted to obtain a post
in the Censorship, though employment in that department can scarcely
have been more remunerative than his earnings in the music-halls. He
told us that with a view of gaining his liberty he had promised to
serve the Germans, though he never intended to fulfil his promise. He
admitted that he had been supplied with a secret ink made up in the
form of an ointment, but declared that he had thrown it away while
crossing Lake Constance, and had kept only one tube as a souvenir.
Being a British subject he was tried at the Old Bailey before a judge
and jury. The jurymen were so far impressed with his story that they
disagreed. Probably he expected then that he would be released, but
he soon found that he was to undergo a new trial. In October 1915 he
was found guilty and sentenced to penal servitude for life, though his
guilt was really greater than that of several of the spies who had been
executed. His name was not made public at the time; only the fact that
a British subject had been found guilty of espionage was disclosed, and
the newspapers began to wonder why a British spy had been so leniently
treated. Soon after his sentence de Rysbach offered to give much fuller
information about the German espionage methods on condition that he was
released. His offer was not accepted.
De Rysbach was not the only Ruhleben prisoner of whom the Germans made
use. Among the British subjects interned were, of course, certain
Germans who had been naturalised in this country. Among these was a
German-Jew--we will call him Preiznitser--whose history is instructive.
He came over to England as a boy, and in furtherance of his ambition
he obtained naturalisation. He married an Englishwoman, and rose to be
manager of his company. In the course of business he was in Germany on
the outbreak of war. It is doubtful whether he had any real national
allegiance at all, but certain unguarded utterances had aroused the
suspicions of his fellow-prisoners, who made a clandestine examination
of his personal effects. Among these were discovered copies of articles
apparently furnished to German newspapers, abusing the allies, and
particularly the British. There was one paper, evidently the copy
of a letter, in which he suggested that he should act as a guide to
Zeppelins attacking England, on account of his intimate knowledge of
the English roads through motoring in the course of business.
A few days before this Preiznitser had disappeared from the prison,
and it soon became known among the prisoners that the Germans had
released him. Some of the British then made it their business to have
the copies of Preiznitser’s incriminating letters conveyed to me. After
some weeks, for some unexplained reason, the Germans put Preiznitser
back in Ruhleben, and it may well be understood that his reception
was neither flattering nor cordial. In fact, his life became such a
hell that he determined to escape. That was his story. How far it was
true, how far the Germans connived at his escaping it was impossible to
determine, but he did arrive in England and he did present himself at
my office, without knowing that I had in my possession copies of his
letters written from Ruhleben. It was there that he told the marvellous
story of his escape.
All went well until I produced his letters and read them to him. He was
abashed for a moment, but only for a moment. His explanation was that
his object in offering to guide Zeppelins to England was to be sent
over here in order to offer his services to the Air Ministry as a guide
for aeroplanes bombing Germany. I think that during the War I never
met a more loathsome type of international. He was ready to serve any
and every master if only it should be to the advantage of Lionel Max
Preiznitser. And we could do nothing more drastic than intern him until
the end of the War.
The spy who made the worst impression was Albert Meyer, a Jew, with a
very mean history. He was one of those young scoundrels who live upon
women, defraud their landladies, and cheat their employers. A letter
was stopped in the Censorship which proved on examination to be full of
secret writing. The name and address of the sender were false. There
was nothing to do but to sit down and wait. During the next few weeks
many more of these letters were stopped in the same handwriting,
but with different names and addresses. All that could be gathered
from them was that the writer was of foreign nationality, and that
he was living somewhere in London. After a long and patient search a
little Jew of uncertain nationality named Albert Meyer was arrested
in a lodging-house. He had been moving from one lodging-house to
another, promising the landladies that he would pay them as soon as his
remittances arrived from ‘his parents abroad.’ He was living the kind
of life which spies affect--dining one day in an expensive restaurant
and the next, when the money was exhausted, begging a meal from an
acquaintance. He could not even keep faith with his employers, for his
communications contained a mass of fictitious information. When he was
required to furnish a specimen of his handwriting, and the similarity
with the writing in the letters was pointed out to him, he explained it
by saying that it had been the malicious work of a so-called friend,
and the invisible ink found in his possession had been also planted on
him by this ‘friend.’ He was tried by court-martial on 5th November and
sentenced to death. His end was characteristic. He had behaved quietly
during the weeks that followed his sentence, but as soon as he knew his
fate and was taken from his cell to the place of execution he struck up
the tune of ‘Tipperary.’ On reaching the miniature rifle-range he burst
into a torrent of blasphemy, and he had to be placed forcibly in the
chair and strapped in. He tore the bandage from his eyes, and was still
struggling when he died.
The most curious and ineffective of the German spies during the War
was Alfred Hagn, a young Norwegian whom we arrested on 24th May 1917.
He was one of those young people who write novels, paint Futurist
pictures, compose startling poetry and prose for the magazines, and
fail to arrive anywhere. He had gone to America in the hope of selling
his pictures, and had returned penniless in 1916. We were afterwards
told that his parents, who were in quite humble circumstances, were
really to blame for his misfortunes. They had educated him above his
station, and filled him with the belief that he was destined to become
a great artist.
In the autumn of 1916, while he was trying to dispose of some of his
pictures in Norway, he met a German painter named Lavendel and a member
of the German Intelligence who called himself Harthern. To those men he
related to what straits he was reduced, and they suggested to him in
a joking manner that he should go to England as an agent. He rejected
this suggestion at the time, but later, on the assurance of Harthern
that, as a correspondent of a Norwegian newspaper, he was not at all
likely to be suspected, he consented. He approached the editor of a
daily paper, offering to act as special correspondent, and the low
price which he was prepared to accept for his articles, which were to
be contributed free of any claim for expenses, clinched the matter. He
arrived in England on 10th October, and for some weeks gave no ground
for suspicion. He wrote a few articles for his Norwegian newspaper, and
then returned to Norway. Here the German agents again got hold of him.
His money had run short, and there was nothing for it but to undertake
another trip. His second arrival was on 13th April 1917. He went to a
boarding-house in Tavistock Square. Here he appears to have excited
suspicion by his taciturnity. An Italian professor who was staying in
the same house came to the conclusion that a man who had evidently so
much on his mind must be a German spy. While at this boarding-house he
received a notice calling him to join the Colours, which had been sent
under the impression that he was a British subject. He called at the
recruiting office to explain that he was not liable.
It was to the Italian professor that the credit for unmasking Hagn’s
real employment was due. He was so convinced by his conduct in the
hotel that he called at the nearest police station to denounce him
as a German spy. There were many hundreds of such denunciations, but
they were all passed to the proper department. A careful examination
was made of the documents produced by Hagn when he received permission
to land in this country. Though there was nothing incriminating in
these there was some reason for suspecting that he might be using a
new secret ink. His room was visited, and on the table was noticed a
bottle labelled ‘Throat Gargle.’ A little of the liquid was abstracted
for analysis, and it proved to be an ink with which invisible writing
might be produced. On 24th May, therefore, Hagn was taken into custody.
He took his arrest quite calmly. In fact, he behaved as if he had
been expecting it. When a search was made of his effects the police
discovered pieces of cotton-wool bearing traces of ammonia, a drug
which had to be used with this ink. In examination it transpired that
he had written only two or three articles, for which he received £2
a piece, and that his expenses in England had come to much more than
this. He could not account for the source of his livelihood, but in
the end he broke down and admitted everything. He told us that his
mission was to obtain particulars of the alleged misuse of hospital
ships: probably he had not sent the Germans anything of importance.
It transpired that among other things he had made application for
permission to visit the Western Front on behalf of his newspaper.
He was brought to trial on 27th August 1917, when his counsel told the
whole of his unhappy story. He had been a spoilt child, whose every
whim had been indulged by his parents. All went well while his father
lived, but at his death the mother was left nearly destitute. She
brought her son back to Norway in the hope that he would be able to
support her, but what can a Futurist artist, whose pictures no one will
buy, do to support himself, much less a dependent? And, to crown his
troubles, Hagn was suffering from unrequited love. His death sentence
was afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life. He gave no trouble in
Maidstone Prison for two years, and then he went on hunger-strike--not
for the usual reason of forcing the hands of the authorities, but
because he had become convinced that such a wretch as he had no longer
the right to cumber the earth. It was a form of delusional insanity.
Counsel was taken with the Norwegian Government, and on 13th September
1919 he was sent back to Norway on an undertaking that he would never
come to England again.
After Hagn’s conviction there was a lull. A good many suspects were
interned or deported during 1917, but it was not until September that
another real spy landed in England. José de Patrocinio, a Brazilian
half-caste, the son of a well-known negro journalist in Brazil who had
been largely concerned in the liberation of the slaves, arrived at
Gravesend from Flushing. He cut so unsatisfactory a figure while he was
being questioned that the port authorities felt sure that he was a spy.
He was taxed with it, and almost immediately he made a confession.
According to his story, he had gone to Paris in 1913 as a correspondent
for a newspaper, and while there he had been offered an appointment as
attaché to the Brazilian Consulate. In 1916, however, his appointment
came to an end, and he found himself in Amsterdam short of funds and
with a wife to support. He was actually considering how he could get
money enough for returning to Brazil when a German agent came into
touch with him. To this man he related all the squalid little details
of his struggle to accumulate sufficient money for his passage. The
next day a man named Loebel, afterwards known as a recruiter of spies,
began to talk about his approaching visit to Brazil. ‘How are you
going?’ he asked. ‘There are no Dutch boats.’ Patrocinio told him that
he would go first to the United States and thence to South America.
Loebel said that in his opinion it was a stupid plan. He might make
a great deal of money if he stayed in Europe. In the end Patrocinio
promised to be in the same café at a fixed hour the next day in order
to be introduced to a person who would put him in the way of making
this money.
The new-comer turned out to be a sallow, swarthy person with
ingratiating manners, who wore spectacles and perpetually rubbed
his hands. He gave his name as Levy, and declared himself to be a
Brazilian. Patrocinio thereupon addressed him in Portuguese, and was
immediately aware that whatever Levy’s nationality might be he was not
a Brazilian. Levy went on to say that he had been born at Rio Grande
do Sul, but on hearing that his Portuguese accent was not all that
it should be, he said, quite unabashed, ‘Oh, but I am a naturalised
Brazilian.’ Then Patrocinio pressed his questions, and said at last,
‘You see, you have never been to Brazil at all.’ Mr. Levy was not in
the least abashed. He laughed and said, ‘You are very clever. You are
just the kind of man I want.’ He then told him he was a Swiss, but
wanted a Brazilian passport with which to go to England, and would
pay a great deal of money for such a passport. In the subsequent
conversation about the use of fraudulent passports, Levy whispered to
him, ‘I can put you in the way of getting a thousand pounds,’ and then,
a little later, ‘How would you like to look after my affairs in England
and France?’
‘You see, I know nothing about your business.’
‘You are an intelligent man. If you want to earn a thousand pounds try
to find out where the next offensive in France will take place.’
According to Patrocinio, he decided at that moment to track down this
ingratiating and shameless person as a service for the Allies and for
Brazil. That was an oft-told tale. According to his story, he then
asked Levy how he could communicate such information even if he found
it out.
‘I will tell you everything. I am specially employed by the police in
Berlin. If you are faithful to us we can protect you both in France and
in England, and if you are willing to obtain this information we will
give you a secret ink in which you can write your messages in perfect
safety, and we can give you addresses which no one will suspect.’
Patrocinio asked for the ink.
‘Oh, I don’t carry that about with me. Come and see me again at
Loebel’s house and we will have another talk.’
Late in the evening he met the two men again, as arranged, and Levy
said, ‘You must not go unwillingly. There is plenty of time to draw
back if you are afraid.’ Patrocinio resented the suggestion of fear,
but said that he did not altogether like being branded as a spy. ‘But
a thousand pounds!’ whispered the tempter, and Patrocinio fell. As
a parting injunction, Levy said, ‘Remember if you betray us I can
have you assassinated either in London or in Paris.’ There were claws
beneath his velvet gloves!
The instructions Patrocinio received were that he was to obtain news of
the movements of troops and forward it written in secret ink between
the lines of an ordinary letter to six addresses, of which some were in
Switzerland and some in Denmark. At the end of six weeks he was to go
to Switzerland and write a letter to Frankfurt-on-Maine announcing his
arrival. He would be paid according to the value of his information,
and if he served faithfully he would receive further employment. Levy
then took Patrocinio into another room and gave him instructions in
the use of this new secret ink, which was contained in a soft linen
collar and two or three handkerchiefs. These had to be soaked in
water, and the water then became the ink. He gave a demonstration by
writing a message, but when Patrocinio asked how it was to be developed
the claws again peeped from the velvet gloves. Patrocinio went back
to his wife thoroughly frightened, and it was probably due to her
intervention that the confession was made. It appears that as the boat
conveying Patrocinio and his wife to England left the quay at Flushing
one of the passengers saw the little Brazilian lean over the side and
throw some collars into the sea. This seemed to him so remarkable a
proceeding that he kept the little man under observation. And, to make
Patrocinio’s fears even more acute, a lady, addressing his wife in
his hearing, asked whether she knew a Mr. René Levy, who was staying
in the hotel, and said he was a Brazilian. A few minutes later the
fellow-passenger who had noticed the incident of the collars came up to
him and asked him whether he had had any dealings with Germans while he
was in Holland. By this time Patrocinio’s nerves were so shaky that
he blurted out to this stranger a great deal of what he afterwards
confessed to us. On the whole, it seems doubtful whether Patrocinio
ever intended to act as a spy, though he had certainly promised the
Germans that he would become one. If he had really intended to unearth
the conspiracy and bring the information to England he would have lost
no time in making a full report, but being a timid person he very
foolishly told falsehood after falsehood until his story had become so
involved that the whole of it was suspected.
He was detained while a communication was made to the Brazilian
Government. It then appeared that his father was regarded as a sort of
national hero, and was known as the liberator of the slaves, and that
if anything happened to his son there would be an outburst of popular
feeling in Brazil. For this reason Patrocinio was sent back to Brazil
with the usual warning.
In February 1916 we had information that a young man of good family
named Adolfo Guerrero was on his way to England in the employment of
the Germans. The port authorities allowed him to land in order to
keep him under close observation. He told them that he was a Spanish
journalist representing a Madrid newspaper, _Libral_, and they made
the astonishing discovery that he could not speak a word of English.
How the Germans could have brought themselves to engage such a person
passed their comprehension. Guerrero had brought with him as far
as Paris a young woman, a professional dancer, who called herself
Raymonde Amondarain, with the ‘sub-titles’ of ‘Aurora de Bilbao’ and
‘La Sultana.’ Guerrero first set to work to pull the strings to obtain
permission for this young woman to come to London, and he found a
Spanish merchant in Fenchurch Street who was ready to write a letter
telling her that he had a clerical position in his office open to
her if she would come. It did not seem to strike either of them that
a young dancer with an extensive wardrobe was scarcely the kind of
person who would settle down to clerical work in a city office, but it
was good enough for the French Passport Office; and when Amondarain
announced at the port that she had come to join her future husband,
Senor Guerrero, she was detained, for it was found that she had given
false answers to the questions put to her for passport purposes.
On 18th February 1916 Guerrero was arrested and brought down for
examination. From his point of view, it was tragic that the lady was
lodged, all unknown to him, a few streets off. For a time he adhered to
his ridiculous story that he was to be a correspondent for the _Libral_
on payment of £2 an article. In sixteen days he had written two such
articles, and he was proposing to keep himself and Amondarain on the
earnings of his pen.
It was now necessary to ascertain who Guerrero really was. Officers
were sent out to Spain, and they found that part of the story was true.
He did belong to a noble family, but he had fallen into wild habits,
and had become an easy victim to the German agents then living in
Spain. The editor of the _Libral_ had never heard of him. It was not
until 13th July that he appeared at the Old Bailey, but before this it
had been decided not to include Amondarain in the charge, because her
strenuous advocacy of her intended husband and the inquiries we had
made about her antecedents seemed to make it clear that she was not
implicated in espionage. She was, however, kept in custody until the
issue of Guerrero’s trial, and then sent back to Spain. He was found
guilty and sentenced to death.
A few days after his trial he wrote to say that if his life was spared
he would give information that would break up the whole of the German
espionage system, but his confession proved to be a tissue of fiction.
He said that his name in the German Secret Service was Victor Gunantas,
that he was known as No. 154, which meant that he was the 154th spy who
had come from Spain to England. He was to visit mercantile ports and
report merchantmen who were about to sail to ensure their becoming a
prey to the submarines; he was to receive £50 a week and a commission
on all ships sunk as the result of his information. No man ever
deserved the extreme penalty more richly, but influences had been at
work in Spain and, in deference to the representations of the Spanish
Government, his life was spared. I am not sure that there have not been
moments during Guerrero’s imprisonment when he wished that his friends
had not been so insistent in his behalf.
It was a curious fact that among the papers found upon him was a letter
telling him to call on a certain number in Stockwell Road, Brixton, the
address of the spy, de Rysbach, who had been arrested in 1915.
Early in 1916 we learned that, besides the perennial question of
movement of troops, the Germans were anxious to locate our munition
factories. But they were even more anxious to know about our national
morale, probably because their own was beginning to give them cause
for anxiety. We learned that a certain Dutch Jew who passed under the
name of Leopold Vieyra was being sent to England specially to report
upon these points, and that the Germans had given him a sum of money
calculated at the rate of 50s. a day for the expenses of his trip. He
was allowed to land, and very careful observation was kept upon him.
It was found that he was communicating with a person in Holland whom
he addressed as Blom, that he had once dealt in films under the name
of Leo Pickard, and that he had been getting his living in buying
and selling films, both in England and in Holland. In July 1916 he
mentioned in a letter to Blom that he was about to return to Holland,
and in one of Blom’s letters occurred the passage, ‘If you cannot do
anything in London try the provinces.’ It was arranged that a call
should be made at Blom’s address, and it was found that no one lived
there except a Mrs. Dikker, who admitted that her maiden name was
Sophia Blom. Further inquiries showed that this address was an ordinary
post-box for letters addressed to the German Secret Service. In August
Vieyra was arrested, his house was searched, and in it was found the
usual outfit for secret writing. His explanation of his connection with
Blom broke down under interrogation. He was tried by court-martial on
11th November, found guilty, and sentenced to death, but the sentence
was afterwards commuted to one of penal servitude for life.
The most absurd person employed by the Germans was Joseph Marks. I was
watching the work of the port officers at Tilbury one summer afternoon
when one of my inspectors whispered to me that in the next room was
a person over whom they would be glad to have my help. He said that
his very first question had reduced the man to a pitiable condition
of fright, and that when he was told that within a few minutes he
would have an opportunity of making his explanations to me in person
he collapsed, murmuring, ‘Then Basil Thomson knew I was coming or he
wouldn’t be here.’
Adopting a manner suitable to the occasion, I sat down at a table and
sent for Marks, and there stumbled into the room a positive mountain
of flesh, over six feet in height, and proportionately broad and deep:
he must have weighed at least sixteen stone. At the moment the whole
mass was trembling like a jelly. The passport he produced was Dutch,
but almost at my first question he broke down and said: ‘If you will
have patience with me I will tell you the whole story. When I saw one
of your men on board the steamer watching me I knew I was in a trap,
and if you hadn’t been here to meet me I should have gone straight to
your office to-morrow morning.’ (His guilty conscience had converted an
ordinary fellow-passenger into a police agent.)
According to his story, he belonged to an important commercial
family in Aix-la-Chapelle, where he had three times been accused by
the Germans of being an agent for the French. They told him that he
could clear himself from suspicion only by proceeding to England to
obtain naval information for them. He preferred to take his chance of
escaping discovery in England to being shot as a French spy by his own
people. He attended a spy school, where they furnished him with an
album of postage stamps--a method of conveying information that was
new to us. He was to send to Switzerland stamps indicating particular
classes of warships. Thus, ten Uruguay stamps taken in conjunction
with an Edinburgh postmark would mean that ten battleships were lying
in the Firth of Forth, and so on. Whether he ever intended to carry
out his instructions is uncertain: usually so well-fed a person has
no stomach for adventure, but he was put on his trial for having come
to this country after being in communication with an enemy agent, and
was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. In a convict prison he
was safe for the duration of the War, and when he was repatriated in
October 1919 he was profuse in his gratitude. Probably no one has ever
gone to prison with a lighter heart. I imagine that any philatelist
who may in future produce his album for the inspection of Mr. Joseph
Marks will be startled by the effect he will produce.
The bottom rung of the ladder of infamy was touched by a young Fleming
whom I examined in 1917. He had been employed by the Belgians to pilot
young Belgians over the Dutch frontier. He proposed to a Frenchman
that they should sell the secret to the Germans and divide the money.
He said that eight men were to cross that night: for a few gulden he
would have sacrificed the lives of eight of his fellow-countrymen who
had trusted him. With great presence of mind, the Frenchman gave him
to understand that he himself was a German agent, and that he would
arrange the whole business, and further, that if he would make a trip
with him to England at once he would earn a much larger sum. So great
was the Fleming’s cupidity that he embarked and was received on landing
by Special Branch policemen.
CHAPTER XIV
SOME AMERICANS
It was not to be expected that the Germans would do no recruiting among
Americans as long as the United States remained neutral. American
journalists were travelling to all the belligerent countries, and
were allowed to see much that could not properly be shown to private
citizens. I believe that all the reputable American newspapers were
very careful in the selection of their foreign correspondents during
the War, and it is, perhaps, for that reason that there was no cause
for suspicion until late in 1916. About that time two so-called
American journalists, B---- and R---- arrived in Europe. The former had
spent several weeks in England before he applied, on 20th September
1916, for permission to travel to Rotterdam as European representative
of the Central Press of New York. Before leaving he told the people in
his hotel that he was going to a certain hotel in Rotterdam which was
known to us as being the resort of German spies, and he wrote a letter
to a person in Amsterdam named D----, against whom there was already
suspicion, about the production of a cinema play. It was noticed that
the letter contained a number of underlined words. In the meantime he
had left for Holland. All that could be done was to keep observation
upon him in that country, and it soon became known that his only
associates were two Americans, one of whom, R----, was marked down for
arrest if ever he came to this country. B---- did appear to have made
a few inquiries from film dealers, but that was all. On 3rd November
he landed at Gravesend and, probably to disarm the suspicions of the
port authorities, he volunteered a statement that while in Amsterdam a
Dutchman had tried to pump him for information, but he had indignantly
refused to have anything to do with him. His luggage was searched, but
not in a way that would allow him to think that he was under suspicion.
He stayed in London for a few hours and then left for Worcestershire.
He travelled about the country for a month, sending occasional articles
to New York; then he left for Ireland and visited Dublin, Cork,
Killarney, and Belfast. At that time the Germans were specially anxious
to receive news from Ireland subsequent to the Rebellion, because they
were being pressed to furnish a fresh supply of munitions together with
German troops.
Meanwhile, careful inquiries had been made in Holland regarding the
man D----, to whom B---- had written when he was last in England, and
it was found that he was a German, and that he consorted with persons
who were known to be in the Secret Service of the enemy. On this a
letter was written to B---- asking him to call at Scotland Yard, and
he crossed from Dublin on the night of 8th December. He could give no
satisfactory explanation as to why he had underlined certain words in
his letter to D----, and he professed the greatest astonishment when
he heard that D---- himself was suspected of being a German spy. A
search of B----’s effects produced the usual ball-pointed pen, unglazed
notepaper, and a bottle of mixture which could be used as invisible
ink. Moreover, he was in possession of a draft for £200 issued to him
on 19th October. It was found that he had attempted to obliterate the
address of D---- in his note-book, and he had the name and address of a
certain person in Rotterdam, who had been known to us for months as an
enemy agent.
Now it chanced that our authorities in New York were in full possession
of the details of the new German conspiracy to flood this country
with journalists. The spies were recruited by a man who passed under
the name of Sanders, who was believed to be closely in touch with
the disaffected Irishmen in America. For this reason the spies were
to take an opportunity of visiting Ireland, and after gathering all
the information that they could they were to go to Holland, impart it
to the German agents there and receive the wages of their hire. They
had instructions also to get into touch with wounded officers lately
returned from the Front and obtain their views on the morale of the
troops.
Now B---- had done all these things: he had visited Ireland, he had
made friends with a wounded officer, and had even suggested to him
that they should make a trip to Scotland together; he had gone to
Holland and had upon him a draft for £200, the equivalent of the 1000
dollars which was always given for preliminary expenses. This man had
heard that B---- had been provided with a wonderful new invisible ink
disguised as a medical mixture, which could be used only on unglazed
paper with a ball-pointed pen. There was also a statement that an
American journalist whose name began with ‘R’ was already doing good
work for the Germans in London.
While B---- was under detention he received a letter from R---- in
Holland: ‘Wish old “C” had been here to help me read the letter.’ Why
should R---- require any help in reading a letter unless it was written
cryptographically? So far, the case was one of suspicion, but on 3rd
February 1917 B---- wrote from Brixton Prison, asking that he might
be visited by some one in authority to whom he was prepared to make
an important statement. A senior officer was sent to Brixton, and to
him B---- made a full confession. He had formerly been the New York
publicity agent for a well-known firm of film producers. One day he
received a telephone message from a man with a foreign accent, asking
whether he would care to go to Europe. He said that it was for very
special work, for which he would be well paid. The voice directed him
to call at an office in New York, where he would meet a man named
Davis. Davis was a pseudonym for Charles Winnenberg, who told him
frankly that the special work was to obtain information which would
be useful to the German Government. The Germans wanted particulars
about our anti-aircraft defences, the movements and the morale of
our troops, and the actual position of British squadrons in Scottish
waters, together with anything he might be able to glean about our new
battleships. Not unnaturally, B---- referred to the danger of such a
service, but Winnenberg treated this with great scorn, saying, ‘They
have only caught two or three, and they were all fools. There will
be no suspicion against you. We will pay you £25 a week and give you
liberal expenses.’
Then, according to B----, Winnenberg became confidential and said
that he intended to go himself to London, whence one of his agents,
known as Robert W---- had already sent him useful reports. He gave him
particulars of the people in Holland with whom he was to communicate,
and added that there were three or four Americans in that country who
would relay his messages if necessary. When B---- pointed out that
the Censor would probably intercept his messages, Winnenberg said,
‘As soon as you have got your passport I will give you the secret
of fooling the Censor.’ On this B---- called on the Central Press
and told them that as he was going to Europe on business he would be
prepared to collect war pictures for them on commission, and in this
they acquiesced. Thus he had a business cover for his journey, and no
difficulty was made about his passport. He then called on Winnenberg
again, who was much pleased with the energy he had displayed. ‘Have you
got a pair of black woollen socks?’ he asked. B---- had not. ‘Well,
go and buy a pair at once.’ When this was done Winnenberg produced a
collapsible tube, from which he squeezed a thick brown liquid. This he
smeared all round the top of the socks. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that is a
secret ink which the English will never discover. All you have to do
is to soak these socks in water and use the fluid as an ink. You must
use a ball-pointed pen and a rough paper, on which the ink will not
run. You must mark all your reports “M,” which will stand for “Marina,
Antwerp.” That is the only place which knows the secret of developing
the ink.’ B---- was given a thousand-dollar bill for preliminary
expenses, and was told that if he got good information he would be
treated very liberally. He explained his visit to Worcestershire by
saying that the wounded officer whose acquaintance he had made had
asked him down there, and he tried to excuse himself with the usual
plea that he had not intended to give the Germans anything of value,
but merely to draw money from them. As a matter of fact, when he went
to Holland he was nearly at the end of his resources, and probably it
was in the hope of obtaining a draft for £200 that he went.
It became clear from subsequent investigations that B---- was trying to
spread his net wide. His wounded officer friend was nominally to be
made a representative of a big shipping firm in America, but actually
of another German agent who was to use him without his knowledge. B----
was also suggesting to a girl acquaintance that she should obtain a
post in the Censorship.
B---- was tried by court-martial on 17th March 1917. His counsel stated
that he could trace his descent back to 1644, that his ancestor had
fled to America after the battle of Marston Moor, and that his mother’s
ancestors had fled from France at the time of the Edict of Nantes. He
was said to be a Bachelor of Arts in the United States, but the only
defence put forward was that he had yielded to a sudden temptation to
make money. He was sentenced to death by hanging.
Fortunately for B---- the United States was about to enter the War,
and his value as a witness against the numerous persons who were being
arrested was realised. It was decided to send him over to New York
under arrest. On his arrival he was charged with a breach of neutrality
laws, and sentenced to imprisonment for a year and a day, for the
sentence pronounced by the British court-martial could not, of course,
run in America. While imprisoned in the United States he gave evidence
against the German master spies, and he seems to have greatly recovered
his spirits, if we may judge from a letter that he wrote to a friend in
England, asking him to try and forward the balance of the money which
he had received from his German paymasters.
Winnenberg, alias Davis, and Sanders were arrested and convicted.
The former made a full confession, which contained, no doubt, a
good deal of romance, for he tried to inculpate many other foreign
representatives besides Germans. According to his story R---- entered
England as an American journalist sent to write articles on the food
situation in Europe for publication in American newspapers. He lost
little time in communicating with a certain Cookery School organisation
which was employed by the Government for instructional purposes. R----
made frequent trips to and from Holland, and then, having run what he
thought was more than his share of risk, he persuaded the Germans to
allow him to remain in Holland as one of their chief agents to deal
with any American journalists who might come after him. Arrangements
were made to arrest him as soon as he set foot again in this country,
but that moment never came. Even when he communicated articles to
the British Press on the International Food question he was careful
to arrange that payment should be sent to him in Holland. After the
articles had been published it was brought to the notice of the editor
that the writer was under strong suspicion. Payment was withheld. R----
then wrote asking for a cheque, and received the reply that if he would
come to England the money should be paid, but he never came, and it is
not known what became of him.
Two other American journalists who were believed to be agents of
Winnenberg were stopped, but since the evidence was insufficient for
bringing them to trial they were sent back to America with a strong
caution against returning to England. It must be understood that
the vast body of American correspondents was quite above suspicion.
These spies were needy free lances who were on the outskirts of the
profession.
CHAPTER XV
WOMEN SPIES
It is no disparagement of the sex to say that women do not make good
spies. Generally they are lacking in technical knowledge, and therefore
are apt to send misleading reports through misunderstanding what they
hear. Their apologists have urged that one of their most amiable
qualities, compunction, often steps in at the moment when they are in
a position to be most useful: just when they have won the intimacy of
a man who can really tell them something important they cannot bring
themselves to betray his confidence.
Throughout the War, though women spies were convicted, no woman was
executed in England. In France there were one or two executions apart
from any that may have taken place near the Front, where espionage was
highly dangerous. The case of Margaret Gertrud Zeller, better known
as Matahari (‘Eye of the Morning’), has overshadowed all the other
cases. Her father was a Dutchman who, while in the Dutch East Indies,
married a Javanese woman. He brought her home to Holland, and there the
daughter became known as an exponent of a form of voluptuous oriental
dancing that was new to Europe at that time. She was tall and sinuous,
with glowing black eyes and a dusky complexion, vivacious in manner,
intelligent and quick in repartee. She was, besides, a linguist. When
she was about twenty she married a Dutch naval officer of Scottish
extraction named Macleod, who divorced her. She was well known in
Paris, and until the outbreak of war she was believed to be earning
considerable sums of money by her professional engagements. She had a
reputation in Holland, where people were proud of her success and, so
cynics said, of her graceful carriage, which was rare in that country.
In July 1915 she was fulfilling a dancing engagement in Madrid, when
information reached England that she was consorting with members of
the German Secret Service, and might be expected before long to be on
her way back to Germany _via_ Holland. This actually happened early in
1916. The ship put into Falmouth, and she was brought ashore, together
with her very large professional wardrobe, and escorted to London. I
expected to see a lady who would bring the whole battery of her charms
to bear upon the officers who were to question her. There walked into
the room a severely practical person who was prepared to answer any
question with a kind of reserved courtesy, who felt so sure of herself
and of her innocence that all that remained in her was a desire to help
her interrogators. The only thing graceful about her was her walk and
the carriage of her head. She made no gestures and, to say truth, time
had a little dimmed the charms of which we had heard so much, for at
this time the lady must have been at least forty.
I have said she was openness itself. She was ready with an answer to
every question, and of all the people that I examined during the course
of the War she was the ‘quickest in the uptake.’ If I quoted to her
the name of some person in Spain with whom it was compromising to be
seen in conversation she was astounded. He a suspect? Surely we must be
mistaken.
‘I see how it is,’ she said at last, ‘you suspect me. Can I speak to
you alone?’ The room was cleared of all but one officer and myself.
She looked at him interrogatively.
‘I said “Alone.”’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘this gentleman and I may be regarded as one person.’
‘Very well,’ she said, ‘then I am going to make a confession to you. I
am a spy, but not, as you think, for the Germans, but for one of your
allies--the French.’
I do not know to this moment whether she thought we would believe
her, but she plunged then into a sea of reminiscence, telling us of
the adventures she had undergone in pursuit of the objects of her
employers. I wondered how many of them were true.
We had altogether two long interviews with Matahari, and I am sure that
she thought she had had the best of it. We were convinced now that she
was acting for the Germans, and that she was then on her way to Germany
with information which she had committed to memory. On the other hand,
she had no intention of landing on British soil or of committing any
act of espionage in British jurisdiction, and with nothing to support
our view we could not very well detain her in England; so at the end of
the second interview I said to her, ‘Madame’ (she spoke no English) ‘we
are going to send you back to Spain, and if you will take the advice of
some one nearly twice your age, give up what you have been doing.’ She
said, ‘Sir, I thank you from my heart. I shall not forget your advice.
What I have been doing I will do no more. You may trust me implicitly,’
and within a month of her return to Spain she was at it again.
This time she was captured on the French side of the frontier and, as
I heard at the time, with compromising documents upon her. I should
have thought that so astute a lady would have avoided documents at all
hazards. They carried her to Paris, put her on her trial, and on 25th
July 1916 condemned her to death, but there was, as there is usually in
such cases, an interminable delay, and it was not until 15th October
that she was taken from Saint Lazare Prison to Vincennes for execution.
A French officer who was present described to me what happened. She
was awakened at 5 o’clock in the morning, and she dressed herself in
a dark dress trimmed with fur, with a large felt hat and lavender kid
gloves. With an escort of two soldiers, her counsel and a padre, she
was driven to Vincennes. When she came into sight of the troops she
gently put aside the ministrations of the padre and waved a salute to
the soldiers. She refused to be blindfolded, and she was in the act of
smiling and greeting the firing-party when the volley sent her pagan
spirit on its journey.
Another lady who was taken off a ship in transit from Rotterdam to
Barcelona was the cause of diplomatic remonstrances. She was a German
named Lisa Blume, and she was accompanied by an aged German duenna who
had been a governess in her earlier years. Attention was first called
to Fraulein Blume by the enormous quantity of baggage she was carrying.
She had no fewer than seventeen trunks filled, for the most part, with
expensive clothes, which hardly seemed to fit in with her story that
she was housekeeper to a member of the German Embassy in Madrid. She
was most indignant at her treatment, and she refused to answer any
questions at all. Her duenna, however, was more communicative. Fraulein
Blume, she said, was the daughter of a railway official in Germany, and
though undoubtedly housekeeper, she was also in confidential relations
with the Counsellor of the Embassy. When we came to search her baggage
we discovered a ration of nine iron crosses, which she appeared to
be conveying to the personnel of the German Embassy. There was
reason to believe, moreover, that she was the bearer of messages
probably committed to memory, from the German Government to their
representatives. Under these circumstances we interned her and retained
the decorations, but the duenna was allowed to proceed upon her
journey. We thought it likely that the incident would not be allowed to
pass without comment, and in due course representations were received
from two neutral Powers who, when the true relations of Fraulein Blume
with her employer were explained, appear to have dropped the question
rather hurriedly.
[Illustration: MATAHARI, EXECUTED AT VINCENNES. ALBERT MEYER. ERNST
WALDEMAR MELIN.]
Towards the end of 1915 some very remarkable telegrams were handed
in at Malta. They were a meaningless jumble of words, and evidently
a code, and it was decided that the sender was a woman who called
herself Madame Marie Edvige de Popowitch, a Serb, who had come to
Malta for the state of her health. She looked astonishingly well for
an invalid. Her flow of eloquence was reported to be extraordinary.
Among her effects was found a Dutch dictionary in which certain words
were underscored, and some of these words occurred in the telegrams.
On probing the possibility of this dictionary providing a code, it was
found that the messages that were to have been dispatched to a certain
port in the Mediterranean detailed the sailing of steamers from Malta.
It was decided to send her to England to be dealt with, and she was
put on board H.M.S. _Terrible_, together with two canaries, from which
she refused to be separated. The voyage was stormy in more than one
sense, and the captain did his best to placate his prisoner, but it was
whispered that on one occasion when he went to listen to her complaints
about her rations she flung a beef-steak full in his face.
It was with this reputation that she came before us. On that occasion
three officers were present besides myself. The lady entered my room
calm but determined. She was one of the shortest women I have ever
seen, and certainly the broadest. Sitting in the low armchair, her
head scarcely reached to the top of the table, but it would have been
a mistake, I saw at once, to treat her as negligible in any other
respect. She spoke French. In the earlier stages of our interview I
was ‘ce Monsieur,’ at a later stage I was ‘ce maudit policeman.’ It
was my rather searching inquiry into her reasons for possessing an
ancient Dutch dictionary that provoked the change. The difficulty was
that when any question was put to her she never stopped talking even to
take breath. Her voice rose and rose until the very walls reverberated
with it. I do not know what a welkin is, but I am quite sure that if
we had had one over our heads that morning it would have been rung.
Her excitement rose with her voice and, finding herself at the usual
disadvantage in sitting in a low chair, she got up from it and came
nearer and nearer until her gesticulations began narrowly to miss our
faces. There was a point at which one of the officers with me began
unostentatiously to remove the paper-knives, pens, rulers, and other
lethal weapons that lay at my right hand, and to push them out of her
reach, but she became at last so violent, and her hands were so nearly
at the level of our faces that we rose too, and as she advanced upon
us, still talking, we gave way, until she was at the table and we
were half-way to the door. As nothing would stem the torrent of her
eloquence it was suggested in a whisper that we should all bow gravely
to her and leave the room, sending in the proper people to get her
into a taxi. I do not suppose that those silent and dignified vaulted
corridors have ever re-echoed such language as the lady used on her
way to the taxi. I was told afterwards that the storm would have been
far more severe if it had not occurred to the wily inspector who had to
deal with her to talk to her soothingly about her canaries.
Madame Popowitch was medically examined as to the state of her mind,
and we were advised that it would not be wise to try her on the capital
charge. It was therefore decided to keep her in internment until the
end of the War. She was removed to Aylesbury, where she bombarded the
authorities with a myriad complaints. Nobody seemed to have pleased her
except the captain of H.M.S. _Terrible_, who, she said, never failed to
inquire after the health of her canaries. All this time these canaries
were being looked after by the police, but at the suggestion of the
prison authorities they were sent to Aylesbury, where it was reported
they had a calming effect upon their mistress. In the end Madame
Popowitch was certified insane and removed to an asylum.
Eva de Bournonville was probably the most incompetent woman spy ever
recruited by the Germans. She was a Swede, of French extraction,
well-educated and a linguist. Life had not prospered with her. She had
been a governess in the Baltic Provinces, an actress (I should think
a very bad one), and a secretary and typist employed occasionally at
foreign Legations. In the autumn of 1915 she was out of work, when she
was approached by one of the spy-recruiting agents in Scandinavia. It
chanced that she had an acquaintance in Scotland whom she had met in
Sweden. To this lady she wrote that she was coming to England for the
sake of her health and proposed to pay her a visit. Provided with a
Swedish passport, she had no difficulty in entering the country: she
was, moreover, a lady by birth, and her manners were perfect.
On her arrival in London she put up at a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury,
and wrote to her friend in Dumbartonshire, saying that after a good
rest she proposed to apply for a post in the Censorship, for which her
friend might give her a recommendation. The Scottish lady sent her
the address of some acquaintances in Hackney, and advised her to call
upon them. She did so and, finding that they were not at home, she
left a card on which she had given the Danish Legation at Pont Street,
W., as her address, for it appears that she had made arrangements to
have remittances sent to her through the Danish Legation. On this she
received an invitation to Hackney where, however, she soon began to
excite uneasiness in the minds of her new acquaintances. With all her
education she was remarkably stupid at the business of espionage. She
called again and again, and went out walking with the family. There
were a good many Zeppelin raids in those days, and she was continually
plying her host with questions about the anti-aircraft defences.
Could she be taken to see the nearest gun? How many guns were there
in London? How far could they shoot up in the air? And once, when
she accompanied the family to Finsbury Park, she said, ‘Oh, this is
Finsbury Park. Where are the Zeppelin guns placed here?’ At last she
asked her host to recommend her to the Postal Censorship, and here he
put down his foot and said, ‘You see, if anything went wrong we should
get into serious trouble.’ On this she dropped the family in Hackney,
who remembered afterwards that she had said on one occasion, ‘The
Germans know everything that passes here. You cannot hide anything from
them.’
She failed in her application to join the Censorship, chiefly on
account of the lack of satisfactory English references. She told the
lady who interviewed her how her father had been a general in the
Danish Army, and her grandfather a music-teacher to Queen Alexandra,
while an aunt was still acting in that capacity to the Danish Royal
Family.
She left Bloomsbury for lodgings in South Kensington, and later for a
certain Ladies’ Club. Then she returned to Bloomsbury, and put up at a
private hotel in Upper Bedford Place, where army officers were wont to
spend their leave. She was unremitting in her questions to subalterns.
For some time letters, afterwards proved to be in her handwriting,
containing information that would not have been of much use to the
enemy had he received it, had been intercepted, but beyond the
handwriting there was nothing that would give the identity of the
writer. At last certain observations in one of the letters pointed to
a particular hotel in Upper Bedford Place, but in that hotel there
were more than thirty guests, and it was impossible to determine
which of them was the spy. A certain officer who was employed on
the case determined to test the matter in the simplest possible
way. He selected one or two of the most likely of the guests and
whispered to them incredible stories about secret engines of war
that were in preparation. The most incredible of all was told to Eva
de Bournonville, and on the following day a letter was intercepted
containing this very information which, if it had reached the German
spy agent, ought to have caused his remaining hairs to rise in their
places. De Bournonville was arrested on 15th November 1915. She
expressed great surprise, and made no admissions. In my room on the
following day she made a brave show of innocence until I produced her
letter and showed it to her, with the messages in secret ink between
the lines developed. She opened her eyes very wide and said, ‘Yes, it
is my handwriting, but how did _you_ get it?’ I told her that I had got
a good deal more. She then asked to be allowed to see me alone, and the
room was cleared of all but a military officer.
‘You may think it curious,’ she said, ‘but I always wanted to work for
you and not for the Germans. I am very fond of the English and the
Belgians, and I do not like the Germans at all. Never have I forgotten
their behaviour to Denmark in 1864. My idea was to make the Germans
believe I was working for them until I was fully in their confidence
and then offer my services to you. I only did this for adventure.’
It then appeared that the German military attaché in Sweden, acting
with an agent of the Secret Service, had induced this wretched woman to
imperil her life for £30 a month. A cheque for that amount was actually
found in her possession on her arrest, and she claimed to be allowed
to keep it. She was tried before Mr. Justice Darling at the Old Bailey
on 12th January 1916, and was sentenced to death by hanging. Following
our universal practice of not executing women, the King commuted the
sentence to one of penal servitude for life. She was sent to Aylesbury
to serve her sentence, and was repatriated in February 1922. It
transpired in the course of this case that the Germans were instructing
their spies to address their letters to non-existent Belgian prisoners
of war.
Towards the end of 1917 the Germans had ceased to employ agents in
England for obtaining naval and military information. What they were
then concerned about was the public morale, I suppose because their own
was giving premonitory symptoms of crumbling. We first became aware of
this through the letters written by a Mrs. Smith to her relations in
Germany. Mrs. Smith proved to be a working housekeeper. Originally
she had been a German nurse in Switzerland, where she had married one
of her patients, an English doctor, not long before his death. Having
thus acquired British nationality, she came to England, where she
found herself obliged to eke out the slender provision her husband had
made for her by taking work as a housekeeper. Her letters, written in
German, contained gems like the following:
‘Tell Uncle Franz that Fritz is perturbed at seeing so many of the
trout in his fish-pond eaten by the pike. If more pike get into the
pond there will soon be none of his trout left. It makes him very
angry and frightened.’
And in another letter she writes:
‘On Sunday I went out to see the place where the big birds roost. It
was full of birds, and some of them are very big indeed. It is said
that they will soon take longer flights. I do not think that the
great eagles that fly over us are frightening these birds; they only
make them angry.’
Mrs. Smith made a brave attempt to explain these letters away. She had,
she said, an uncle named Franz who bred trout in a fish-pond, and who
had written to her about the depredations of pike. And about the great
birds she ventured the suggestion that they were herons; but when we
put before her our own interpretation of this simple code she became
silent and resigned, and she retired into internment at Aylesbury with
a philosophic heart.
CHAPTER XVI
CURIOUS VISITORS
On 6th January 1916 a Dutch liner called in territorial waters at
Falmouth, and was boarded by naval officers. On the steamer were
Colonel von Papen and Captain Boy-ed, the German military and naval
attachés from Washington. The boarding officer was quite polite, but
he declared his intention of looking through their papers. On this
von Papen protested vigorously that his papers were covered by the
‘safe-conduct’ that had been given by the British Government. It was
pointed out to him that the ‘safe-conduct’ applied to his personal
liberty but not to his baggage or papers, and without further ado the
officer took possession of these and, among them, of all his used
cheques, cheque-books, and paying-in slips, which proved to be a mine
of information. There were payments to a man who was known in the
United States as a wrecker of bridges, and to others who were known to
have been guilty of sabotage. There were payments to Kuppferle, who
committed suicide in Brixton Prison, and to von der Goltz, as well as
to other suspects. It is said to be the fashion in Germany to lay much
of the blame for defeat upon the ineptitude of the German diplomatic
agents abroad, and certainly Colonel von Papen, either by bad luck or
bad management, had helped us not a little, for not long before this
date Bernstorff had made a solemn declaration that no member of the
Embassy had had anything to do with sabotage or with espionage.
Bernstorff was not the first to use the diplomatic machinery for
espionage. The foreign ambassadors at the Tudor and Stuart Courts
made considerable use of secret agents. In 1745 Monsieur Tiquet, the
French diplomatic agent at Brussels, obtained from Grieling, a Brussels
shopkeeper, plans of the fortresses of Nieuport and Dunkirk, in which,
following German methods in our own day, he had worked as a labourer.[1]
[1] _Campagnes de Maréchal Saxe_ (Colin), p. 257.
In the War of the Austrian Succession Count de Tilly, the French
Minister at Mannheim, got from an Italian named Pasetti, who was
actually serving as an officer in the Austrian army, information that
determined the choice between the Rhenish and Flemish theatres of war.
Belgium and Holland were then, as they have been in our own time,
hotbeds of espionage against England, but one may read between the
lines that even during the Seven Years’ War the British Intelligence
Service was more than a match for the French, and that Louis XV. spent
very large sums to little purpose. In those days the _agent double_
seems to have been as common as he is now.
Louis XV. had scruples that would have seemed curious to the German
General Staff in the late War. He would not listen to a scheme for
causing a run upon the Bank of England by means of forged notes, or to
employing Ivan Golofskin, the friend of the secretary to the Duke of
Cumberland, who was exceptionally placed for obtaining information,
but he was not above using duplicates of the Russian Ambassador’s
dispatches addressed to his own Government, or to arranging with the
Czarina Elizabeth to pay her new ambassador £100,000 a year to send to
the French Government information about military plans of the British,
and especially the plans of the projected invasion of the Low Countries.
Spies in those days were treated with remarkable leniency. Robinson,
a French spy arrested in London, was imprisoned for six months in the
Tower in 1757, and was then released. Dr. Hensey was arrested in London
in June 1758, and sentenced to be hanged, but it is not certain that
the sentence was carried out. This unusual severity was sufficient to
frighten the other agents of the business.[2]
[2] _Campagnes de Maréchal Saxe_ (Colin), pp. 257-259.
It must not be supposed that no German spies in England went
undetected. We learned of the operations of two or three after they had
left the country, and they were wise enough to attempt no second visit,
but if one may judge from the character of the information supplied
by those who were arrested the intelligence they gave to the Germans
cannot have been of great value. Probably the spy who brought them the
most useful information was a certain American journalist.
As the activities of German agents in America were gradually unfolded
the American Government began to take more drastic action. They opened
the safe of von Igel, and found there documents of extraordinary
interest. To me the most interesting was a letter from the German
Consul General at Shanghai to the Foreign Office in Berlin, in which he
deplored his ill-fortune, and gave an accurate account of the German
Secret Service activities in the Far East, for there was nothing in
the document that we did not know before; it might have served for
a _précis_ of German activities written in any British Intelligence
Office.
The Germans made great use of sabotage in America. Unquestionably,
they would have done the same in England if they could, but it would
not be safe to say that none of the accidents that took place during
the War was caused by sabotage. The difficulty was to know how much
was due to criminal carelessness, how much to fanatical pacifism among
our own people, and how much to German agents or to Sinn Fein. I
remember one case where matches were picked up in the mixing machine
of a high-explosive factory. If even one of them had gone down into
the mixer many hundreds of people would have lost their lives. The
man who found the matches brought them to the foreman and received
the thanks of the manager, but the police inspector who was sent down
to investigate was a sceptical kind of person, and insisted upon the
finder of the matches re-constituting the crime by placing matches in
the exact position in which he found them. The extreme uneasiness of
the workman confirmed the inspector’s suspicions, and after a prolonged
interview the man confessed that he had put the matches there himself
and had taken them to the foreman in order to win credit and promotion
from his employers.
From time to time bolts and hammer-heads were found in the crank
cases of aeroplane engines, where they had evidently been placed by
design. It is hard to believe that the man who put them there intended
deliberately to send an airman to his death; perhaps all he aimed at
was to wreck the machine during its bench test. The criminal in this
case may have been a discontented workman or a fanatical pacifist of
the ‘Stop the War’ Committee type.
It must certainly have been a man of this type who dropped a
hammer-head into the gearing of a new tunnelling machine which
was designed to bore tunnels 5 feet in diameter far underground.
Fortunately, the obstruction was found before it had time to do any
damage.
The propaganda carried on by the opponents to conscription during
1916 and 1917, particularly among the engineers and electricians, was
certainly disturbing. Some of the electricians in one of our filling
factories had been heard to enunciate violent revolutionary sentiments,
and their technical knowledge was such that they could at any time have
contrived an accident which, while destroying the factory, might have
caused no loss of life if it were so timed as to take place when the
hands were at home.
In October 1917 there was a fire and explosion at a large factory
in Lancashire which caused the death of ten people and enormous
devastation. Sabotage was suspected, particularly as the factory was
situated in a part of the country where Sinn Fein influences were
strong, but nothing was ever proved.
At five minutes to seven on the evening of 19th January 1917, I was at
a house in Kensington when the Silvertown explosion shook the house to
the foundations. Our first thought was that a bomb had fallen quite
near; our second that a gasometer had exploded. People in the street
suggested an explosion at Woolwich Arsenal. The telephone cables had
been cut by the explosion, and it was some time before we knew what
had happened. I visited Silvertown, the scene of the explosion, on
the following afternoon. The devastation was extraordinary. For quite
a mile before we reached the spot we drove through streets of broken
windows, and here the explosive had shown its usual caprice, for many
panes of glass much nearer to the scene were intact. The firemen
located the buried mains and coupled up their hose with wonderful
rapidity, and they soon had the fire under control. Meanwhile, the
Guards had carried out the very dangerous duty of searching for bodies.
Forty-five persons were known to have been in the works at the time of
the explosion, but practically no traces of them were to be found.
The fire had broken out in an upper storey, where a man and a woman
were employed in feeding tri-nitrotoluol (T.N.T.) into a hopper. Two
women on the ground floor called up to ask whether they had sufficient
explosive for the next twenty minutes, and on hearing that they had
they left the building for about a minute. As they came out the whole
floor burst into roaring flame.
Now, it is known that a piece of a certain chemical substance no larger
than a Brazil nut introduced into T.N.T. will lie in it innocuous
for months, but that on the application of heat it ignites the whole
mass. The T.N.T. was falling from the hopper into a temperature of 130
Centigrade: a small piece of the chemical would not have been noticed
by the people feeding the hopper. This particular batch of explosive
had been brought by train from the north of England, and at any stage
of its journey it would have been possible to introduce the chemical
into one of the bags. But while the facts were consistent with sabotage
there was no proof, and the case of Silvertown must remain among the
mysteries of the War. If it was sabotage surely eternal justice demands
that some special place of chastisement be reserved hereafter for the
fiend who caused it.
If the explosion at Arklow during the previous September, in which
a number of people lost their lives, was not due to sabotage, the
coincidence was remarkable, for threatening letters had been received
by the management, but in that case it is probable that the Germans
were not concerned.
There were many dramatic and a few amusing incidents during the
examinations of suspected persons. The Germans had been using as spies
people belonging to travelling circuses and shows, as being less
likely to invite suspicion than the pseudo-commercial travellers,
of whom we had taken a heavy toll. Consequently, a sharp look-out
had been kept for messages from such people. One day a telegram to
a world-famous American showman announced that the sender was ready
to book his passage to New York. He was invited to call, the stage
was set, the chair was ready--and there walked into the room a blue
man! His face was a sort of light indigo set off with a bristling red
moustache. He was a really terrifying spectacle. If we were surprised
we did not show it. All we dreaded was what would happen to the
stenographer when she would steal a glance at the object sitting beside
her. Then the moment came. She leaped a foot from her chair with a
little sob. He turned out to be an ex-cavalry sergeant who had turned
blue after his discharge, and now got his living honourably as a blue
man. The stenographer was accustomed to men of colour, but never to
that particular shade.
Among the curious persons who drifted into my room was a Dutch
Socialist Member of Parliament who had been admitted to the country on
19th May 1916, on condition that he gave an account of his intentions
at Scotland Yard. As it turned out, he had been sent over to study
food legislation in England, for the Dutch were in the uncomfortable
position of having to contend with high food prices without a
corresponding rise in wages, and the Government was attempting to
regulate the maximum retail prices for all commodities, without much
chance of success. He was astonished to hear that the only controlled
commodities in England were sugar and coal. He was very indignant with
the _Amsterdam Telegraaf_, in which Mr. Raemakers’ cartoons were being
published. He said that the paper was trying to force Holland into
war. ‘We are a tiny country crushed between two giants.’ He was very
contemptuous of the official Socialists in Germany, who he said did
not represent their Party. They were elected over and over again as a
matter of routine, and when the government squared them, as it always
did, the Party itself remained unaffected. In his opinion Liebknecht
had a very large following even in the army itself. He said that the
food riots reported from Germany were more serious than was generally
supposed.
A few days later a Dutch Socialist journalist came in. He was cheerful
but very dirty, and when I hinted that people were suspicious of him
he said that it proceeded from envy and lack of principle. As for
him, he lived by principle: he was an anti-smoker, an anti-drinker, a
vegetarian, and he wore no socks--all from principle. At this point
he pulled up the leg of his trousers to prove his case, much to the
scandal of the lady stenographer who was present. If I felt inclined to
ask whether he went unwashed from principle I restrained myself.
It was about the same time that a mysterious person calling himself
Colonel Dr. Krumm-Heller was taken off a Danish steamer at Kirkwall. He
must have expected that this would happen because he had been sending
anticipatory protests by wireless all the way over. He claimed to be
the Mexican military attaché in Berlin, and to be well known in Mexico
for his scientific, literary, and philosophical works. His mission, he
said, was to study schools in Scandinavia and not to become military
attaché until he entered Germany: his real mission, we felt sure, was
propaganda. When I told him that he might have to go back to Mexico he
began to cry and said that Carranza would most certainly dismiss him.
It became known to me a little later that he was carrying a letter from
Bernstorff to the German Government, but that when he found that he was
to leave the steamer he had passed it to a Russian for delivery. The
next day Colonel Dr. Krumm-Heller offered to make a bargain with me. If
I would not send him back he would reveal a new German plan and would
thus save the Allies thousands of lives. But when it came to the point
he had nothing at all to tell, and back he went. In due course a demand
was made upon the Government for £10,000, at which he assessed his
‘moral and intellectual’ damages.
All this time England was seething with excitement about the battle of
Jutland. The editor of a certain daily newspaper called on an officer
of the Admiralty and said, ‘We are not satisfied with Admirals Jellicoe
and Beatty.’
‘Who is “we”?’ asked the officer.
‘The public.’
‘Oh,’ said the naval officer, ‘then you are one of those people who,
if you had lived a hundred years ago, would have said, “Who’s that
one-eyed, one-armed beggar in charge of our Fleet? Have him out!” Now,
look here, supposing you and I had a row in this room, and you knocked
my teeth out, and I kicked you out of that door and you stood cursing
in the passage, not daring to come in, would you say you had won a
victory?’
The same officer, when questioned by a pressman as to why the German
Fleet had come out, replied, ‘They came out to get a mutton-chop for
the Kaiser. I believe there were some other reasons, but these I am not
at liberty to tell you.’
We were busy talking about the end of the War as early as October
1916, so busy that some satirist circulated the following rhyme:
‘Accurate evidence have I none,
But my aunt’s charwoman’s sister’s son
Heard a Policeman on his beat
Say to a nursemaid down our street
That he knew a man who had a friend
Who said _he_ knew when the war would end.’
One of the most romantic incidents in the War experience of Scotland
Yard was the arrival in England of an educated Jew who had, against
his own will, been closely associated with Djemal Pasha, the Commander
of the 9th Army in Palestine. According to his account, there had been
attempts on the lives of both Djemal Pasha and Enver. In one attempt
Djemal had received a bullet in the cheek. He gave a very curious
account of the relations between Enver and Djemal. According to rumour,
though they kiss one another on both cheeks and travel in the same car,
each man has his hand upon his revolver as they sit side by side. The
popular rumour at the time was that Enver had six hundred men specially
told off to protect his life, and in 1916, when a plot against him was
reported, he executed forty-two people merely on suspicion without any
trial.
This man was a native of Haifa, in Palestine, and was therefore a
Turkish subject, though his parents had come from Roumania. As a
young man he had taken to scientific research work in agriculture,
and had gone through a course in Berlin. He was director of the
Jewish Agricultural College. Djemal used to apply to him for advice
on agricultural and economic matters. He said that all the Jews and
Christians had been put into a labour battalion, where they were
employed in road-making, on very slender rations. In some places they
were under German direction, but in others under Turkish officers. In
1915 there had been a locust plague, and in 1916 they had the worst
harvest that had been known for thirty-five years, and the population
of Palestine was in dire straits. He believed it to be the policy of
the Turkish Government to allow them to starve, for Djemal Pasha did
not approve of open massacres, but preferred starvation as a means of
purging the population of what he regarded as its undesirable elements.
He said there was great friction between the German officers and the
Turkish, and it was common talk in the German mess that they were more
likely to fall from a bullet in the back than in the front. Very few of
the Turkish officers seemed to believe in success. They talked of this
campaign as their last fight and that they wanted to fall in it like
men.
He had for some time been trying to get out of the country. He must
have played his cards well, for in the end he obtained leave from
Djemal Pasha to go to Berlin _en route_ for Denmark for scientific
agricultural study, and from Copenhagen he succeeded in obtaining leave
to come to England.
I heard afterwards that this man had been out to Egypt and Palestine,
where he had put his local geological knowledge to good use. A
year later he came to see me, and he was convinced that from El
Arish northward there is a water zone where water can be tapped at
semi-artesian depths. This he had discovered when he was Agricultural
Adviser to the Zionists. Borings in this area produced water, which
rose to within thirty feet of the surface. He was a great reader,
and he told me that his attention had been first called to the water
question through reading Josephus, who describes Caesarea as being
surrounded by gardens for an eight hours’ walk in every direction,
whereas now it is a sandy desert right up to the walls through the
encroachment of the sand. He said that he had tried very hard to
persuade our engineers to try the experiment, but when at last they did
there was an abundant supply of water, and it was no longer necessary
to bring tanks by rail from Egypt. He was convinced that experimental
borings in the Sinai desert would produce water in the same way, and
thus the Mosaic miracle of striking the rock with a staff may be
performed again in the twentieth century.
After the Armistice I saw this man again in a new capacity. He was a
member of a deputation of Zionists to the Peace Conference. He had a
tragic end. He took aeroplane to fly to London on some urgent business;
the machine came to grief, and he and his companions plunged into the
Channel and were lost.
CHAPTER XVII
THE END OF RASPUTIN
Several accounts have been published of the assassination of Rasputin,
differing in detail. This event had so much to do with the collapse
of Russia that I took pains to collect evidence as to what actually
happened.
As every one knows, during the autumn of 1916 Rasputin had succeeded
in gaining complete ascendency over the Czar and Czarina. He was a
person who could have existed only among the Russians. He gloried
in being a peasant of the grossest and most common clay, but, just
as a filthy fakir in India can acquire a reputation for holiness by
his self-imposed penances, so a Russian moujik can do the same if he
has personality, cunning, and a smattering of ecclesiastical lore.
Rasputin had all these and he was, besides, a creature of immense
physical strength and physical temperament. His doctrine was that the
cure for all human ills was humility, and he set out to humble the
great ladies of the Court. He had some curious magnetic power which
he exercised more successfully over women than over men, but even men
felt it. His influence over the Royal Family was such that he was able
to persuade the Czar that the only medical attendant to whom he should
listen was the Tibetan herbalist, Batmaef, whom Rasputin described as a
doctor appointed by God. The story in Court circles was that Batmaef
administered herbal decoctions to the Czar himself and, by this means,
weakened his will-power.
In the late autumn there were rumours that Rasputin’s influence had
been bought by the Germans to persuade the Czar to make a separate
peace, and Youssoupov, one of the young nobles, determined to worm
himself into Rasputin’s confidence in order to ascertain the truth of
these rumours. After some weeks he succeeded in winning his confidence,
and at last, in an interview lasting for two hours, Rasputin revealed
the whole plan to him. A separate peace was to be proclaimed by the
Czar on 1st January 1917, and it was then the second week in December.
There was, therefore, no time to lose.
Rasputin was the most ‘protected’ person in Russia. He was said to
be watched over by two German detectives, a detective appointed by a
group of bankers, and an Imperial detective who was responsible for
his personal safety. The little group which was resolved upon his
death believed that they were under the direction of a Higher Power
because everything fitted in so perfectly and easily with their design.
Rasputin seemed positively to cultivate the society of Youssoupov, who
called upon him a day or two before Christmas and said that he was
about to leave for the Crimea to spend Christmas there, and that as
Rasputin had never set foot in his house, he had come to invite him
to drink tea with him that evening: he would consider it the greatest
honour. Rasputin did not demur at all. He said, laughingly, that he
would tell the detectives he was going to bed and that they were free
for the evening, and he invited Youssoupov to call for him in his car
at the back door in order to give the slip to any detective who might
remain on duty.
In Prince Youssoupov’s house there was a dining-room in the basement.
From this a winding staircase led to the first floor, with a landing
half-way giving into the hall. On this landing was a small room. On
arriving at the house Rasputin was conducted into this dining-room,
where bottles of madeira and port were set out. The conspirators
had previously obtained from a chemist a drug known in Russian as
‘cianistii kalii,’ which was said to have a very quick action on the
heart, and to be tasteless when taken in wine. It was in the form of
a white powder contained in glass tubes, and the quantity introduced
into the wine was believed to be sufficient to kill twenty men. During
the afternoon the potion had been tried upon one of the dogs in the
courtyard, and the effect was immediately fatal.
They sat down at the table, and Youssoupov plied Rasputin with the
wine. There was nothing in this, for Rasputin, like most Russian
peasants, had a strong head and was always ready for carousal. He was
quite unconscious that there was anything unusual in the taste of
what he was drinking, but as time went on and conversation flagged
Youssoupov began to realise that the poison would not act upon such a
man. He made an excuse for going upstairs to the little room on the
landing, where his friends were waiting. The Grand Duke Dmitri lent
him his revolver and he went down again, feeling, as he said, that he
was not acting of his own volition, but was under the direction of a
Higher Power. He found Rasputin leaning on his hands and breathing
loudly as if he was not feeling well. At the end of the dining-room was
a large ikon. Youssoupov went and knelt before it to pray for strength
to do what he had to do for the salvation of the country. Then Rasputin
got heavily to his feet, came over to the ikon, and stood beside
him. Youssoupov rose, put the pistol to Rasputin’s side, and fired.
Rasputin uttered a terrible cry and fell backwards on the floor, where
he lay motionless. There was a doctor in the little room upstairs,
and Youssoupov went to call him. All came down with the doctor; some
were in favour of firing another shot to make sure, but the doctor, on
examining the wound, declared that the bullet had entered the heart and
had pierced the liver, and that clearly the man was dead. Then they
went upstairs to consult about a motor-car in which the body was to be
removed. This took some time, and then Youssoupov, in whose mind the
idea had been working that Satanic power might have kept the man alive
in spite of his wound, went down alone into the dining-room to make
sure. The body was still lying in the same place. He felt the pulse:
it was not beating. He opened the monk’s robe to feel the heart. At
that moment Rasputin, with a terrible cry, sprang up and seized him
by the throat. He was throttling him. Then superhuman power came upon
Youssoupov, who flung him down on the floor: he lay without motion.
With the horror of this incident upon him Youssoupov ran upstairs.
The Grand Duke, the doctor, and another officer had gone away for the
car and only Poroskewitz, a member of the Duma, was left, and he had
a pistol with three cartridges left in it. To him Youssoupov poured
out his story. They came out on the landing with the intention of
descending the staircase and, looking down, they saw the bullet-head
of the monk coming up the staircase. He was on all fours like a bear.
They shrank back into the room, and saw him stagger to his feet on the
landing and go through into the hall. They followed. Rasputin fumbled
with the door leading to the courtyard, dragged it open, and went
through into the darkness. The two men ran to the door and saw him
against the snow as he was crossing the courtyard. Poroskewitz fired
three shots, but he still ran for several paces, and then fell close to
the gateway which led from the courtyard into the street. Youssoupov
had with him a rubber truncheon such as the police use and, finding him
still alive, put an end to him with that weapon. It was then seen that
one of the revolver bullets had hit him in the back of the skull and
still he had lived.
Poroskewitz returned to the house, and while Prince Youssoupov was
standing irresolute by the body there came a knocking on the gate. The
police had been alarmed by the revolver shots and had sent an agent to
make inquiries. It was a critical moment because the body was lying
only a few feet from the gate. Youssoupov opened the gate and admitted
the man, placing himself in front of the body. The policeman wanted to
know if anything was wrong. Youssoupov took a high tone with him; said
that the Grand Duke had been dining there and had just left in a car;
that he was slightly merry, and had fired his revolver at a dog in the
courtyard and had killed it: that was all. While he was speaking he
was edging the police agent towards the gate, and at the mention of
the Grand Duke the man seemed to be satisfied. It must be remembered,
too, that the high rank of the person he was questioning may have had
its effect. The report he brought to the police station, however, did
not satisfy his superiors. He was sent back to make further inquiries,
and this time he went to the front door, and was admitted without
Youssoupov’s knowledge while he was engaged in dragging the body across
the courtyard. When the Prince re-entered the house he heard voices
in the sitting-room upstairs. There he found that Poroskewitz, who
was a very excitable and nervous man, had blurted out the whole truth,
and said that they had killed Rasputin. It was a desperate moment.
Youssoupov quickly intervened, saying, ‘Look, he has gone clean off his
head. When the dog was shot he said, “What a pity it was not Rasputin,”
and now it has become an obsession with him, and he thinks that what
he wanted has really come to pass.’ After a good deal of talking he
succeeded in getting the policeman to go.
There was now no time to lose. Several things had to be done. A dog had
to be found and shot and laid exactly in the position of Rasputin’s
body in order that the blood marks on the snow might be taken for the
blood of the dog. Scarcely had this been done when the Grand Duke’s car
arrived. In Russia grand-ducal cars used to carry a flag on the bonnet
which exempted them from being stopped by the police. Together they
carried the body into the car, took it to the bridge, and dropped it
into the frozen Neva, where it was found some three days afterwards.
The next morning there was an interrogation at the police station,
but the same story was adhered to, and the police could make little
headway. It is said that the Czarina was pressing for extreme measures
against the assassins, but that the Czar, who was about to return to
the Front, refused his consent. People who were about him at the time
said that he had never seemed more cheerful than when he heard of
Rasputin’s death. The assassins were banished to the Caucasus and to
Persia.
When will the romance of escapes during the Great War be adequately
written? There were stories of Russian peasant prisoners escaping
from internment and wandering over the frontier into Switzerland not
knowing that they were in a neutral country, living in the woods
like wild animals, with hair and nails grown long, unwashed, unkempt,
half-naked, subsisting upon food taken from the farms at night and
eaten raw. There was one, better authenticated, of a Russian officer
who, after five days’ wandering, succeeded in crossing the frontier
into Holland with his pursuers behind. The Dutch had recently changed
their uniform into field-grey, the colour worn by the Germans, and,
seeing a platoon of grey-coated soldiers in front of him, the wretched
fugitive turned back and re-crossed the frontier in full view of the
German sentry, who shot him dead.
Who knew at that time that a necessary part of the equipment of an
escaping prisoner of war was pepper, because the German dogs would
scent him at night in his lair and raise the neighbourhood by their
barking? But if he scattered pepper about his resting-place the dogs
would sneeze and slink off home in silence.
Though there were escapes of British officers and men and civilians
from internment in Germany, I believe that only one German officer
succeeded in escaping from Donnington Hall and reaching Germany. This
was Gunther Plüschow, an aviation officer from Tsingtau, who escaped
in his machine when the fortress was captured by the Japanese, made
his way to Shanghai and thence to San Francisco and New York. Here he
obtained a false Swiss passport as a fitter under the name of Ernst
Suse, with which he embarked for Italy. But to his great indignation
our interpreter at Gibraltar spoke such fluent German that he was
betrayed into unguarded observations. He was arrested and sent to
England, where, after many vicissitudes, he proved his identity as an
officer and was interned at Donnington.
His escape from Donnington Hall was managed with great skill. On 4th
July 1915, he and an officer named Treffitz reported sick and remained
in bed. At roll-call the N.C.O. ticked them off. It was raining hard,
and they had no difficulty in slipping away to the outer enclosure and
hiding in the bushes. At 6 P.M. the doors between the inner and outer
enclosures were locked and they remained outside. Other officers were
occupying their beds when the roll was taken, and at 10.30 ‘Die Wacht
am Rhein’ was sung from the windows to inform them that they had not
been missed. They climbed the wire entanglements and made for Derby,
where they separated, each man finding his way independently to London.
In his book published in Dutch, _Adventures of the Tsingtau Flying
Man_, Plüschow gave an account of his proceedings while trying to
board the Dutch packet, which did more than justice to his courage
and endurance and less than justice to the truth. According to this
narrative he spent his nights in Hyde Park, suburban gardens, and in a
lair under a timber stack at Greenwich. Twice he was plunged into the
stinking mud at low water and nearly drowned while setting out in the
dark to swim to the mooring buoy. But, in fact, as we discovered too
late, he eluded the registration regulations by passing his nights with
different women, at whose rooms he was not called upon to register at
all, for he was amply provided with money, and he knew London well from
a former sojourn in 1913. He boarded the buoy to which the _Princess
Juliana_ was moored, climbed the cable, and hid himself in one of the
life-boats. Probably he stole a landing-card from a sea-sick passenger,
or he may, as he says, have walked ashore without one, unchallenged. At
any rate, he landed at Rotterdam, and was accorded an ovation by the
German colony at a public luncheon arranged by the German Consul.
In May 1916, when the last batch of German officers was received at
Donnington Hall, it was reported that the prisoners were plunged into
deep depression by the news from the German Front.
CHAPTER XVIII
RECRUITS FOR THE ENEMY
I suppose that some day or other one of the assistant provost-marshals
who served in France will be moved to publish some of his experiences.
Most of his work was dull and uneventful, but every now and then there
flared up one of those sordid little tragedies which human nature,
under the stress of war, is apt to give out. One summer day in 1916 the
A.P.M. at Boulogne received from an Australian escort a grimy envelope
on which nothing was written but, ‘The A.P.M., Boulogne. Herewith Jim
Perry.’ (Perry was not the name.) He asked why he should receive Jim
Perry, and what Jim Perry had done. About this the escort knew nothing
at all. All he had to do was to deliver Jim Perry and bring back a
receipt for his body. For the rest, the A.P.M. had better ask Jim Perry
himself. Perry, when produced, turned out to be a well-educated young
man born in South Africa, with the marks about him of having undergone
a rather strenuous experience, but in this there was nothing unusual as
far as the clients of an A.P.M. were concerned.
Jim Perry’s story deserves to live. As soon as he heard that war had
been declared he left South Africa in order to join up in England. He
was drafted to the Officers’ Training Corps, but finding the corps
uncongenial, he deserted and walked off to a certain Australian
battalion which was then training in England for the Front. There
was a free and easy way about the Australians that pleased a
fellow-colonial. They welcomed their new recruit, and did not think it
necessary to report his arrival to the officers. The privates collected
some kind of a kit for him from among themselves, and as a roll-call
never seems to have been taken in this particular battalion, Perry was
able to serve with them over two months in England, and afterwards to
accompany them to France. He was five weeks with them in Abbeville,
and then they were moved up to the front line. Here he was with them
for five weeks more, and he might have continued to be an Australian
soldier until the Armistice but for a mishap. One day the battalion
came out of action with a good many casualties and the younger officers
organised a spy hunt. The first step was to do what they had never done
before--to call the roll, and during this unwonted ceremony it was
discovered that they had with them one man more than they ought to have
had. Here, obviously, was the spy. Jim Perry was put under arrest, and
the subalterns held a consultation. The remedy was obvious. Jim Perry
should be shot at sight. They were about to carry out the decision of
the meeting when one of them said that he remembered reading somewhere
that you never shot a man without reporting first to the colonel, so
this formality was complied with, and the colonel, who saw nothing in
the verdict of which he disapproved, remembered to have read somewhere
that you never shot a man without first reporting to the Brigadier.
This was a great disappointment to the subalterns, who were all for
action stern and swift.
Now the Brigadier happened to know something about military law, and he
pointed out that as no court-martial had been convened and no evidence
had been called, whatever else was done no shooting could take place.
This annoyed the battalion excessively. The decision came just at a
time when they were leaving their rest camp, and they had no intention
of taking with them into action an unmasked spy. Perry could not be
shot, but he could be left behind, so they took him into a barn,
handcuffed his hands and feet round the post which supported the roof,
locked the door, and went away. There Perry remained in this extremely
uncomfortable position for two whole days, and then the South African
angel which watched over him ordained that another Australian battalion
should march into the village and require the barn, should break down
the door and find Jim Perry. He seemed to want food and water very
much, so they fed and watered him, and made a pet of him, and when
their turn came to return to the trenches they wanted to take him
with them, but here the colonel intervened. To him there seemed to be
something irregular about taking a man whom you have found chained to a
post into action with your battalion even as a mascot. He reported the
occurrence and asked for instructions, and these were that Perry should
be sent to the base. It was under these circumstances that an escort of
the Good Samaritans had brought him to Boulogne with the grimy envelope.
Even an A.P.M. has a heart, and this one decided to send Perry to
England to begin again at the beginning--in other words, to enlist in
any regiment that came handy and draw a veil over his past, and as
Perry had no money he pulled out of his pocket a £1 note. Perry looked
at it dubiously, and said, ‘Money? That’s no use to me, sir. I have
plenty of money of my own. What I want is my cheque-book.’ And this
turned out to be perfectly true. Perry’s father was a wealthy man, and
the son had a banking account.
Later in the War a large number of German army reservists in Spain
and South America, and a certain number of German prisoners of war
taken on the Russian Front who had escaped from Siberia began to cross
from America in the hope of reaching Holland without being recognised
at the English port as enemies. It was a regular business with the
German Consulate to furnish them with forged passports. They were
Swedes, South Americans, and Dutchmen, according to their papers,
and they assumed the nationality of the language which they happened
to be able to speak. Sometimes we knew when particular persons were
coming; at others the naval officers at the ports had to use their own
intelligence, and very well they did it. There was one rather pathetic
case in which I almost wished that they had been less successful. It
was reported from Kirkwall that two of the stokers on a Swedish ship
were men of above the ordinary education of stokers, and that they were
on their way down to London. I examined them separately. The first gave
in rather quickly. He was the last kind of person who could have hoped
to pass muster as a stoker. He had not even succeeded in making his
hands rough. He was a Viennese reserve captain of artillery, who had
relations in Paris, and had been called up straight from the bank in
which he was employed. He took his internment as a prisoner of war with
perfect philosophy. It was one of the ordinary accidents of war, and
he would rather be interned in a British camp than under the appalling
conditions that prevailed in Siberia, but it did seem hard to have been
taken prisoner twice in the same war after walking some thousands of
miles across Asia. I sometimes hear from him still. When I first saw
the other man I thought that our boarding officer had made a mistake.
He was a sooty, smiling, alert little person, and he slouched into the
room with the regular stoker’s lurch. He answered all my questions,
and picked out on the map the little village in Sweden where he was
born. He talked Swedish with apparent fluency, and his hands were as
dirty as any one could expect from a stoker. Nevertheless, we sent
him to Cannon Row for further inquiry. Cannon Row was his undoing. He
had guessed that his companion in adversity must be in a cell not far
from his, and as the place seemed very quiet he thought it safe to
call him up in German through the ventilator. He did not know that a
German-speaking police officer was in hearing. His companion replied,
and the flood-gates of our friend’s eloquence were opened. ‘They got
nothing out of me,’ he shouted. ‘They really believe that I am a
Swedish stoker. How did _you_ get on?’ (No reply.) ‘The proper way is
to bluff them, and if you do it well they will swallow anything.’
When he came before me next morning I told him that he had played his
part very well indeed; in fact, that if he ever cared to try his luck
upon the stage I was sure that he would make a fortune. He grinned a
little uneasily, I thought. ‘And now,’ I said, ‘since the game is up
you might wash your face and hands, put on a collar, and write a letter
to your friends in Vienna, asking them to send your military uniform
in order that we may treat you in internment as an officer.’ His whole
manner changed. Instinctively he pulled himself to attention, gave me
the name of his regiment and the address of his friends, and before he
left the room he clicked his heels, and walked out of it like a trained
soldier. To this day he does not know where my information came from.
From Falmouth they sent me one day a curly-headed and rotund young
gentleman from Chile. He spoke Spanish like a native, and he was bound
for Rotterdam to buy cheap cigars for his firm in Valparaiso. Also he
spoke English, which he professed to have learned in New York during
the course of his business travels. Unfortunately for him, there had
been on the steamer an Austrian woman with whom he had spent much of
his time, and just before he was called to go ashore he had been seen
to slip into her hand a folded piece of paper. She retired to the cabin
to open and read this note, but one of the boarding officers followed
her and recovered it. It was a German letter written in pencil, and
it said, ‘Whatever you do, you must not reveal the fact that I speak
German.’ This note was on my table when he came in for examination, and
with me was sitting as Admiralty representative the late Lord Abinger
who spoke German fluently. He kept his knowledge in reserve.
The young man was quite charming. He answered all my questions without
hesitation; he thought that some generations ago one of his ancestors
might have been a German, but he was not well enough versed in the
family history to give me full details about this. Many Chileans, he
said, had fair curly hair like his and a fresh complexion, because
the Chilean sun does not burn the skin as it does in Peru. Yes, he
spoke English fluently but not German. It was one of the regrets of
his life that he had never learned that language. We gave him writing
materials, and set the lamp as he liked it, and then I said, ‘Draw up
your chair, and this gentleman will set you a piece of dictation.’
Then Lord Abinger cleared his throat, and dictated the Spanish text of
his passport. The handwriting, as I could see, was the same as that
of the note. While he was still writing I handed his German note to
Lord Abinger who, without break or pause, followed on with the German
text. The curly head was not raised. All I could see was a deep flush
creeping over the cheek. The hand stopped writing. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you
do not seem to be getting on.’
‘The gentleman is dictating in a language I do not know.’
‘He is reading from a letter written by yourself.’
There was a long silence, during which the pencil dropped on the
floor, and at last the young man rose wearily from the armchair and
said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with me? You have me in your
power.’ He was quite ready then to answer questions, and I believed him
when he said that his only object in coming over was to do his duty,
because he could not bear to have it thrown in his teeth afterwards
that he had taken no part in the Great War. He added, philosophically,
that he supposed that they could not reproach him if he was interned
in an enemy country, and I, looking at his fat hands and his ample
proportions, added the comfortable reflection that he would find
internment far safer than service in the trenches.
In January 1917, an American boasting the name of Jelks Leroy Thrasher
was found on board the Dutch passenger steamer _Zeelandia_ when she
put into Falmouth on her way to Holland. Mr. Thrasher was a young,
clean-shaven man who had something about him of military courtesy,
which scarcely accorded with the account that he was prepared to give
of himself. For this reason he was asked to land, and sent to me for
an interview. He had quite a marked American accent, and yet there
was something about it that did not quite carry conviction. After the
usual caution he became even more communicative than before, and was
ready to tell me every detail of his past life from his very earliest
years. There was something quite uncanny about his memory. He could
describe the colour of people’s hair whom he could have known only
when he was just out of the perambulator. He was never at a loss for a
name, and his elaborate description of Quitman, Georgia, where he said
he had passed his early life, would have astonished the residents of
that little-known centre. There were, of course, a few discrepancies,
and as the examination proceeded he began to show uneasiness. I said
at last, ‘Do you know, you are not telling your story very well.’ He
looked concerned and bowed--from the waist. I said, ‘Your accent is not
quite American, though it is a very good imitation.’ He again bowed,
as before, from the waist. What I wanted was a name to put to him,
and so we adjourned for luncheon to consider what Germans were at the
moment loose upon the world on unlawful pursuits. It happened that
about this time the German Government had had occasion to send a direct
messenger to New York in connection with the negotiations for landing
arms in Ireland, and it was intended, no doubt, that the messenger
should afterwards proceed to Holland in the guise of an American. The
officer’s name was known to be Captain Hans Boehm. There were several
other Germans wandering about, but as this man seemed the most likely I
thought I would try him first.
After luncheon Mr. Thrasher resumed his seat, and I again referred
unkindly to his American accent, which I pointed out to him was too
laboured for an American. At last I said, ‘You are not doing this well,
Captain Boehm.’ He looked surprised, but said nothing. ‘No, Captain
Boehm, you are not doing it well.’ He smiled and again bowed from the
waist. I said, ‘Take, for example, your bow. No American bows like
that.’ He laughed and bowed again, and, as he made no objection to
being called Captain Boehm, I said, ‘Perhaps I am not quite fair.
You had a very difficult part to play, and you played it better than
any German officer who has yet sat in that chair.’ That pleased him,
and after a little pressing he told me most of his story. He was the
son of an official in Alsace, was well-educated, and had spent a good
deal of his life in America. During 1916 he was commanding a battery
of artillery near Wytschaete, in Flanders, and, on account of his
reputation as an American, he had been taken out of the line to be
employed upon a special mission. He was now on his way back. He would
tell me nothing about the nature of his employment--that we knew from
another source--but he did admit that he had met Roger Casement while
in Germany. It afterwards appeared that there had been a man of the
name of Jelks Leroy Thrasher in Quitman, Georgia, but he was dead.
Probably the passport was one of those that had been retained by the
German Government on the pretence that it had been lost at the Foreign
Office when sent thither for a _visa_. Captain Boehm was treated as
a military prisoner, and told that as soon as his uniform arrived he
would be treated as an interned officer. He wrote to his friends from
Brixton on 17th January 1917 saying:
‘I wish to emphasise that the treatment meted out to me right
throughout has been _very good_. From Admiral to seamen, all were
_very kind_ to me, and the comprehension of the situation was
_superior_. The Admiral said to me, “We have no interest to make
difficulties for an enemy who can do us no more harm.” Please bring
these lines to the knowledge of my superiors in the General Staff. If
you can do a friendly action to an English prisoner _do it_.’
A great many neutrals used to come in about this time after their
journeys in the enemy countries. One of them had had a talk with von
Tirpitz. He had called to give the family news of their son, who was
a prisoner of war, and while they were at tea von Tirpitz himself
came in. He described him as looking like a very untidy old farmer,
with socks hanging down over his boots, and chalk marks all over his
trousers, but his expression exhaled benevolence quite out of keeping
with the fire-eating advice he was giving to the German Government on
the subject of submarines. He complained bitterly of the conduct of the
Americans in making munitions for the Allies. My friend pointed out
that if the Germans would send ships to fetch munitions, as the Allies
did, they could be supplied too, and remarked, ‘If you had command of
the sea, would you not obtain them from us?’ ‘Of course we would,’ said
von Tirpitz.
I have said little about that admirably managed department, the Postal
Censorship, because much of its work was necessarily confidential, but
there was nothing new about its functions. At the time of the Great
Fire the General Post Office was situated in Cloak Lane off Dowgate
Hill. There was no Postmaster-General; the service was farmed out,
and the lessee at that time was Katharine, Countess of Chesterfield,
acting through her agent, Sir Philip Frowde. Under him was the actual
postmaster, one James Hickes, whose claim to fame was that he kept the
office open throughout the Great Plague, and saved most of the letters
on the night of the Great Fire. There was at that time an inventor,
Sir Samuel Morland, who, among other inventions, had devised the
capstan and the speaking trumpet, and we are told that an apparatus
for the opening and rapid copying of letters was among the property
that perished in the Great Fire of London. What the machine was that
kept Charles II. three hours ‘seeing with admiration and very great
satisfaction’ the various operations, that copied a letter in little
more than one minute before photography was invented, will never be
known because Morland omitted to invite Samuel Pepys to a demonstration
and allowed his secret to die with him.[3]
[3] _Unknown London_ by Walter Bell, F.R.A.S. (London: John Lane, 1920.)
All sorts of queer people came to light through the censorship of
letters. One would have thought that during the agonies of war there
would have been no time for the innocent forms of internationalism, but
it is a fact that in nearly every country in the world one could find
international chess-players so detached from public affairs that they
were actually conducting games by post in 1917. The Censor stopped a
postcard in a foreign handwriting addressed to Spain with the usual
chess formulae on its back. The card was tested in every possible way
for secret writing, and it seemed so incredible that any one should
be playing chess with a foreign antagonist at such a moment that we
concluded that a new form of spy communication by means of chess
formulae had been adopted by the enemy. After some search we found the
writer. He proved to be a young Spaniard, little more than a boy, who
lived in a squalid room near Tottenham Court Road with practically no
personal effects except a chess-board. He was genuinely astonished at
being haled before the authorities. During the day-time he was a waiter
at a restaurant, but in his spare moments--and there could not have
been many of them--he was conducting twenty-four games of chess by post
with antagonists in foreign countries whom he had never seen. He had
heard that ‘there was a war on,’ but apparently as long as it did not
interfere with his games it was no concern of his.
It was clear that the British Navy was doing its work well. A letter
found concealed in a parcel addressed to a German prisoner which was
intercepted in January 1917 gave us some very useful information. The
writer had been recently repatriated from Wakefield _via_ Stratford,
and he gives the following account of what he imagines he saw:
‘We left Stratford in the omnibus on Sunday evening, driving to
Charing Cross through London’s dark streets, which are fearfully
depressing. We saw a few houses destroyed by the Zeppelins, but it
was only here (in Germany) that I got some photographs which show
that the whole corner from the Haymarket, Piccadilly, the complete
block of residences over the Piccadilly Tube Station had been clean
swept away.’
He went on to give minute instructions, based upon his own experience,
how gold and other prohibited articles could be smuggled out of the
country without interference from the military and the police--a part
of his letter which caused us to stop a number of leaks. In the early
days of the War a good deal of gold was successfully smuggled out. One
German woman had gone to the expense of having a false bottom made to
her handbag, which proved on examination to be floored with sovereigns.
Its weight was its undoing.
This verbose correspondent was guarded when he wrote about the state
in which he found Germany. ‘I will only tell you one thing,’ he wrote:
‘that times are serious; much, much more serious than any one has ever
thought. So, for instance, it is in my opinion a direct active meanness
if anybody in the camp has had sent to him eatables of any sort, even
in the smallest quantities.’
CHAPTER XIX
THE DECLINE OF MORALE
In June 1916 the Germans adopted a new policy. They began to send
distinguished neutrals, generally Swedes, who entered the country as
ardently pro-British, and told us that a recent visit to Berlin had
convinced them that the economic situation in Germany was far stronger
than in England, and that England was faced with the certainty of
defeat unless she agreed with her enemy quickly. In one case the Swede
proposed that our Government should select six business men and send
them to Holland to meet six Germans and thus convince themselves of
the truth of what he said! He was surprised and pained when he heard
that his invitation had been refused. I wish I had seen him after the
Armistice to remind him of his passionate assurances that the Germans
whom he professed to dislike so much were about to triumph.
There were many other indications that the Germans were becoming
anxious about their morale. It was common talk among the interned
officers in Donnington Hall in September 1917 that they could not
expect to win the War, but they still hoped to be able to hold out long
enough to secure a ‘draw.’
The peace feelers of the Austrians led to a very curious incident. In
March 1916 two distinguished Spanish gentlemen were ushered into my
room. One, who bore an ancient title, was the proprietor of a Madrid
newspaper; the other, who spoke English fluently and was married to
an American, was vouched for as a person of wealth and position. He
explained that he had a scheme for obtaining for the Allies the use
of all the Austrian ships interned in Spain, and the titled gentleman
bowed and smiled as an endorsement, though it was doubtful whether
he understood enough English to know what was said. Señor P---- had
with him all the impedimenta of a wealthy traveller--wife, children,
governess, secretary, servants, and baggage, and he had engaged a suite
of rooms. He had interviews with various distinguished people, but
there was something rather nebulous about his proposals, and he did not
produce any written guarantee of his good faith. It happened that on
the staff of a certain daily newspaper there was a gentleman who knew
Spanish. Upon him Señor P---- seized, for he could bring him into touch
with the newspaper world, and so mobilise public opinion in favour of
taking over the Austrian ships. Just before Easter Señor P---- informed
me that he intended to go to Holland and there meet certain Austrian
shipping magnates with whom he hoped to negotiate the transfer. On
Good Friday I was rung up by the newspaper man, who asked my advice.
Señor P---- had begged him to accompany him to Holland. Was there any
objection? Knowing that he was to be trusted and that he might keep
an eye upon the Spaniard’s movements and let me know what it was all
about, I helped him with his passport, and the two went off together.
Two days later I received a telegram from Rotterdam, begging me to
meet the pressman in my office on Easter Sunday as he had something
important to communicate. The poor man had been travelling all night,
and was in a state of nervous tension. He told me the following story:
On the way down the river Señor P---- had remarked, ‘I ought to tell
you without delay that all this about the Austrian ships is a blind.
What we are really going to do is to negotiate a peace between Austria
and the Allies.’ With that, he pulled out of his pocket a telegram
which read as follows:
‘I appoint Señor P---- and Mr. H---- to be my Plenipotentiaries for
making peace.
LORD ROBERT CECIL.’
Mr. H---- pointed out that this was a forgery; that Lord Robert
Cecil would not have sent or signed a telegram in this way, nor
would he have thought of appointing either Señor P---- or himself as
plenipotentiaries. Señor P---- burst out laughing. ‘Never mind,’ he
said, ‘these little artifices are necessary when great events hang in
the balance. I shall show this telegram to the Austrians and they will
believe it.’
On arriving at Rotterdam Mr. H---- found that three Austrian gentlemen
had actually arrived, and he was taken into a conference in a hotel.
Señor P---- did most of the talking, and was particularly eloquent on
the financial question. You could not, he said, have peace without
paying for it, and peace in this case was worth a million sterling to
Austria if it was worth a crown. They haggled for some time over the
deal, and Señor P---- left the room for a moment to find a document,
whereupon the Austrians asked Mr. H---- what he knew of his Spanish
friend. They had made inquiries about him in Berlin, and what they had
learnt was not very much in his favour. ‘But,’ they said, ‘whether we
care to negotiate with him or not, we do welcome the opportunity of
meeting face to face the proprietor of a great London daily newspaper.’
‘I am not the proprietor,’ said Mr. H---- in amazement, ‘I am merely a
humble employé.’
They waved this politely aside. Great men often travel incognito.
He was, of course, Lord ---- in disguise. He continued to disclaim
the compliment, and they said, ‘Well, whoever you are, you are in a
position to convey to the proper quarter our views regarding a peace
between Austria and the Allies,’ With that, they handed him the
following paper:
‘M. Emil Karpeles and Mr. H----, respectively an Austrian and a
British subject, having been brought together at Amsterdam by Mr.
de P----, starting from the idea of their two countries being in a
position to initiate preliminaries for peace, and to become for a
long period trustees for peace in Europe, undertake to submit to
their respective governments the ten clauses named below in order
to obtain from them a declaration of their agreeing to them in
principle. By giving such declarations the two governments accept
these ten clauses as the basis of a preliminary conference to be
held as soon as possible within four weeks from to-day in Holland
or Switzerland. The conference is to be composed of the same number
of delegates from the two parties, and two delegates appointed by
His Majesty the King of Spain. This preliminary conference will also
arrange conditions and regulations for the exchange of goods between
the two countries for the time of an armistice if such be proclaimed.
‘_Clause_ 1. The re-establishment of the Kingdom of Serbia, with
limits as before the Treaty of London, the King to be chosen by Great
Britain and Austria-Hungary, the province of Negotin to come to
Austria-Hungary.
‘2. The re-establishment of the Kingdom of Montenegro. Lovcen and the
coast to go to Austria-Hungary against territorial compensation on
the east frontier.
‘3. Albania. Sovereign to be chosen by Great Britain and
Austria-Hungary.
‘4. Limits as after the first Balkan war, inclusive Macedonia
(exchange Kavalla against Valona with Greece?).
‘5. Greece. See clause 4.
‘6. Italy to abandon influence on east coast of the Adriatic.
A rectification of the Austro-Italian frontier if desired by
Austria-Hungary to be agreed to by Italy. No war contribution.
‘7. Turkey. _Status quo ante._ Signatory powers guarantee integrity
of the Turkish Empire.
‘8. Belgium. Re-establishment against return German colonies to
Germany.
‘9. France. _Status quo ante._
‘10. Russia. Kingdom of Poland to be created as in existence between
1772-1793. The King to be chosen by Great Britain out of three
presented by Austria-Hungary. The Crown lands within the limits of
the future kingdom of Poland to serve as security for the interest
and principal of a loan of 25 thousand million marks in favour of
Austria-Hungary. Great Britain will raise the full amount of the
loan, _i.e._ 25 thousand million marks on behalf of Austria-Hungary,
to whom the money is to be paid, and who will settle all the expenses
incurred in the arrangement for the preliminary conference mentioned
in the first paragraph.
‘AMSTERDAM, _27th April 1916_.
‘In the event of His Majesty the King of Spain declining two
delegates as mentioned in the first paragraph the two governments
will consider any further suggestion for the holding of the
preliminary conference.
‘AMSTERDAM, _27th April_.’
In the course of conversation he gathered that the Austrians were not
officials but directors of important shipping concerns who may have had
some quiet official sanction for their errand. No money passed between
them and Señor P----, but when Mr. H---- pointed out that he had
come over on the understanding that he was not to be put to personal
expense, they did give him a hundred pounds to cover his journey, which
seemed to show that they thought his intervention was worth at least
that amount.
It is to be feared that poor Señor P---- did not enjoy his reception on
his return to this country. His stay was extremely short, and part of
it was passed in a room without any of the amenities that he had been
accustomed to in his suite at a first-class hotel. Since the Armistice
he has again appeared as a man who can make fortunes. His fluent
tongue, his moist eye, and his extremely well-fed appearance were not
given him for nothing.
Among the many queer people who graced my room was a certain Jugo-Slav
lawyer-journalist who came I do not quite know why, and left I do not
quite know whither. He talked unceasingly about nothing in particular.
He assured me that he was a frequent visitor to the Foreign Office,
and that he was a person to be reckoned with. I consulted a friend who
knew him well, and when I remarked that he did not quite seem to know
what he wanted and that his discourse was sometimes incoherent, my
friend assured me that all Jugo-Slav journalists are like that and that
everything reasonable should be done to encourage him. And so when he
called again and again I did not attempt to interrupt him: my time was
a sacrifice laid on the altar of our international relations.
One day the awful news was received that the Jugo-Slav journalist was
under arrest in Northumberland. In defiance of every prescription,
human and divine, he had taken the train for Newcastle without
complying with any of the police requirements, and had gone straight
off to the residence of Lord Grey of Fallodon. Lord Grey was away, and
his housekeeper, naturally disturbed, communicated with the police,
when it was found that my Jugo-Slav friend had neglected to register
his arrival. He was then contemplating a journey to Glasgow, Inverness,
and Edinburgh, but he was remitted under escort to London, where again
he appeared before me. On this occasion incoherence would be a grave
under-statement of the nature of his discourse. I gathered that he had
been grossly insulted, and that all Jugo-Slavia would rise as one man
when they came to know of it. It was useless to point out that the
law was no respecter of persons, and that even the most distinguished
foreigner was liable to indignities if he broke it, because my friend
had no time for listening. He wanted to talk, and talk he did. Still,
he was no exception to the unbroken rule that no one who came into my
room should leave it without thanking me, and we patched up some kind
of arrangement. I was shocked some few weeks later at learning that the
poor man had died of general paralysis of the insane.
Among the detentions made at this period was that of an ex-naval
officer, Commander von Rintelen. After leaving the German Navy he had
embarked on international trade, chiefly in Mexico, and had become
a power in Central America. He had done many things that would have
brought him within reach of the law in the United States. For some time
he denied his identity, but the interrogation by the naval officers
was conducted with remarkable skill, and in the end he confessed. At
subsequent interviews he became quite communicative, while of course
he gave nothing away that would have injured his Government. He was
interned as an officer at Donnington Hall.
The Americans would have been very glad to have him within their
jurisdiction, but it was, of course, impossible to transfer a prisoner
of war to the custody of a neutral. On the day when America entered the
War on the side of the Allies the position changed. There seemed to
be nothing to prevent a prisoner of war interned in one of the allied
countries from being interned in another, and it was decided to send
von Rintelen over to America in British custody. A curious light is
thrown upon the German mentality by an incident that took place just
before he embarked. He stopped to make a solemn protest as a prisoner
of war against his life being placed in jeopardy from German submarines
if he were embarked upon a merchant vessel. His escort listened quite
gravely to his protest, and asked him to move on.
A good deal of latitude is allowed to prisoners on board steamers,
and one day von Rintelen found himself in company with a young South
American who spoke German fluently. When he heard that he was going
to South America he asked him to call upon the German Minister in
Venezuela and say to him the two words ‘_Rintelen Meldet_’ (Rintelen
has arrived). That, he explained, would set certain machinery to work.
He hinted darkly that there would be reprisals upon Colonel Napier,
who was interned as a prisoner of war in Austria, and he declared
his intention of getting President Carranza to seize three prominent
Americans in Mexico and make reprisals on them. His passion for
reprisals knew no bounds. Some months later, while he was awaiting
his trial in New York, he told this young man when he came to see him
that he need not trouble further about delivering the message because
Admiral von Hintze had passed through New York on his way from China,
and would see that the necessary steps were taken. I was glad to learn
a little later that the British officer in question had been released
and sent to England.
One early morning some fishermen who were walking under the cliff
between Robin Hood’s Bay and Filey saw two men wandering along the
beach. They stopped them and, believing them to be Germans, took them
to the nearest constable. Nothing very much could be got out of them
except that they were German sailors, and that they had buried some of
their belongings in the sand. These were recovered, and among them
was a cheap watch which was still going. On the way to London they
declared that they had swum ashore from a submarine in Robin Hood’s
Bay. It seemed impossible that a watch which had been immersed in sea
water for perhaps twenty minutes should still be going, and it was
thought that they might have been landed intentionally. They proved to
be a very interesting couple. The younger man was barely twenty-one.
He had passed his examination for an officer’s commission. The older
man was a quarter-master of past forty. He could look for no further
promotion. Both had been on night-watch on a German submarine lying in
Robin Hood’s Bay. The older man had suddenly shouted, ‘Motor-boat!’
(Submarines were particularly nervous about our fast motor-boats at
that time.) At the same moment he clapped down the hatch, which was
secured from inside, and the submarine began to submerge. There was no
escape for either man except by swimming. It was pretty obvious that
the older man had had enough of cruising and intended to desert, for
there had been ample time for both men to have passed through the hatch
before it was secured.
And now they were marooned in the enemy country with nothing before
them but internment as prisoners of war. I did not cover myself with
glory during their examination. I asked the older man whether he would
mind if I immersed his watch in a tumblerful of water during the
interview. He made no objection, and there that watch stayed under
three inches of water for a full half-hour. When I took it out it was
still going. If it had stopped, as any respectable watch would under
such treatment, their story about swimming ashore would have been
upset. It remained only to ask him where such a watch was made. He had
bought it in Stettin for 5 marks!
During the last month in 1916 the Commissioner of Police was asked to
furnish 800 trained police to serve in France, partly to regulate the
traffic on the French roads behind the line. They were converted into
military police for the purpose. I saw a few of them afterwards on this
duty, and very well they did it. There is a story, perhaps mythical,
that during the retreat of the Fifth Army in March 1918 a London
policeman was seen standing at a corner where two roads converged.
Down one was marching a body of British troops, down the other a body
of Germans, and he put out one arm mechanically to stop the Germans,
and with the other waved to the British to proceed as if, for all the
world, he was controlling the traffic at Hyde Park Corner. With their
innate obedience to authority, it is said that the Germans marked
time. The story did not go on to say what became of the policeman, but
there are not a few of my acquaintance whose calmness in moments of
excitement would be quite equal to such an occasion.
One drawback to the submarine campaign against shipping was that
we could no longer compel neutral ships to come in to Falmouth and
Kirkwall for examination, since both these ports were in the danger
zone: consequently the examinations were made in Halifax, Jamaica, and
Sierra Leone, and no more suspicious travellers came to Scotland Yard.
In February 1917 drafts of civilian prisoners of war from the Isle
of Man in exchange for an equal number of British from Ruhleben
were shipped to Holland in the _Rjndam_. The representative of the
Holland-America Line called at the American Embassy to demand their
passage money in advance. On being asked to collect it from the German
Government he replied that this was out of the question: they knew the
German Government too well.
It has always been a matter for wonder what led the Germans to adopt
the suicidal policy of torpedoing hospital ships. The case is not made
better by the reason given by themselves, namely, that an Austrian
named Adalbert Messany had made a declaration that when he was
repatriated in the ‘hospital ship’ _Britannic_ there were 2500 armed
troops on board. A concert singer of that name, aged twenty-four, and
suffering from tuberculosis, had been deported from Egypt to Mudros
in November 1916, and at Mudros he was embarked on the transport
_Britannic_ for repatriation. On such evidence as this the Germans
sought to justify crimes as stupid as they were dastardly.
The long sojourn of the British Army in Northern France was said to
be causing uneasiness to some of the French, who viewed the erection
of semi-permanent buildings as an indication that the British might
delay demobilisation for years and be in virtual possession of all the
Channel ports. One of them is said to have approached a certain eminent
English official and to have asked how long he thought it would take
the British to evacuate Calais at the end of the War. This Englishman,
who is a cynic with a love for equivocal speech, replied, ‘Well, I
don’t know. Last time it took them two hundred years.’
CHAPTER XX
THE BOGUS PRINCESS
During the War bogus royalties and princesses sprang up like
toadstools. Any young woman with a turn for private theatricals and
a vivid imagination could burst forth as a high-born refugee and get
some one to believe in her and, incidentally, to finance her until she
found a husband from among the officers in one or other of the camps.
The first I remember was a Russian princess who, while staying with a
very influential lady in the Midlands, had become engaged to a certain
temporary officer of large expectations. She was described to me as
beautiful, with a peculiarly Russian type of loveliness, emotional,
as all Russians are, with blue eyes that became easily suffused with
tears, and with a charming flow of broken English. I think it was
the broken English that was her undoing, for she had the ill-fortune
to come into contact with an Englishwoman who prided herself on her
Russian, and would insist upon showing it off to every Russian she met.
Curious to relate, the princess had entirely forgotten her Russian,
and for some reason her parents had neglected to have her taught
French, which is in the ordinary curriculum of well-born Russians.
She accounted for this by vague allusions to the misfortunes of her
family, who had had so troublous an existence that they appeared to
have forgotten to teach her anything but English, and this only broken
English.
It was in the height of the spy mania, and, not unnaturally, the
Russian-speaking Englishwoman jumped to the conclusion that she had to
deal with a German spy and, worse, a German spy who had got herself
engaged to a British officer, and so she came to me. I found that the
princess’s hostess was still ready to go bail for her and could not
bear that her protegée should undergo the humiliation of being called
to Scotland Yard, but I was adamant. Come the lady must. All I could
promise was that she should not be dealt with harshly even if she
proved to be a spy.
There walked into my room a beautifully dressed young woman with a full
outfit of furs, because, I suppose, a Russian princess would not be
Russian without them. Her broken English was certainly not the broken
English of a Russian nor of a Frenchwoman nor of a German nor, indeed,
of any nation that I had yet encountered. It was the broken English of
the English stage; and when I came to look at the lady I was quite sure
that whatever knowledge she had acquired of life had been acquired in
the lower ranks of the profession.
I said:
‘English does not come very easily to you. Shall we talk French?’
‘I not speak French, sir.’
‘But you are a Russian?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And your parents are now in Russia?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And yet you do not speak Russian?’
‘No, sir. Russia I leave many years ago.’
‘Can you describe to me your Russian home?’
‘I leave, sir, when quite a leetle child.’
‘Now,’ I said, ‘I want you to give me the address of your English
mother. You see, in this room one has to drop all play-acting and tell
the truth.’
Her blue eyes filled with tears, but at last, quite faintly, she gave
me an address in London and retired to await the arrival of her mother.
There was no play-acting about this good lady when she arrived. She
was a buxom woman of fifty, who earned her living as a housekeeper and
had two daughters, one in a good situation and the other a young woman
who had become stage-struck at eighteen, and would from time to time
fill the breasts of her mother and sister with silent indignation by
flouncing in upon them in expensive clothes and attempting to patronise
them. ‘I always told her that she’d get herself into trouble if she
went on as she did, and now she has. You just let me see her for five
minutes and talk to her.’ I asked whether she had ever heard that her
daughter was posing as a Russian. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I remember that
one Christmas she got a part as a Russian princess in a pantomime and
had to talk broken English.’
In fact, the war had broken out just in time to give this young lady
an opportunity of continuing her part off the stage. She had had a
glorious time. I was not present at the interview between mother and
daughter, but at the end of it the mother informed me that she had
promised to be a good girl and make a clean breast of it all to her
patroness, and also to the man whom she was about to marry, and I heard
that he, good fellow that he was, married her all the same.
Another young woman who appeared in 1915 aimed higher, and, being
better educated, played her part with more distinction. She was no
less, according to the accounts that first came to me, than a daughter
of Marie Vetsera, the heroine of the mysterious tragedy in which Prince
Rudolf of Austria met his death, and of course I need hardly say that
Prince Rudolf was her father. She arrived from America, and almost
immediately became engaged to a British officer. She was invited to
Scotland Yard for an interview. She did not talk broken English, but
her accent was neither American nor English, and, unlike the Russian
princess, she was possessed of some means. Her story was full of
mysteries and reticences. She could only tell me, she said, what she
had herself been told. Her earliest recollections were of the convent
in America in which she had been brought up. The Sisters would only
tell her that a foreign-looking stranger had brought her there as a
baby, and that her parentage was very distinguished indeed. She must
not ask too many questions. He had invested for her a large sum of
money which she was to enjoy when she came of age. It had been placed
in trust with a firm of lawyers who were under an obligation not to
tell her whence it came. As the years went on there were hints about
the Austrian Royal Family. Prince Rudolf had been mentioned, and then
one day the Mother Superior put her arm round her, and whispered that
her mother had been very unhappy, that the whole thing was very tragic
and, again, that she must not ask too many questions. From this she
inferred the rest--that she was the daughter of Marie Vetsera, born
some time before the tragedy.
‘I am sorry to interrupt you,’ I said, ‘but Marie Vetsera never had a
daughter. The whole of her history is well known.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she, replied that she could only tell
me what she had been told. When she left the convent the lawyer had
hinted at the same thing, and had paid over to her the money that had
been placed in trust.
‘The lawyer’s name?’
‘Alas, sir, he is dead, and the firm no longer exists.’
She then asked for advice as to how she should manage about her boy,
then a child of about six. As far as I could gather, she had for some
time been living on her capital, which must in due course come to an
end. Asked what she would do when the inevitable happened, she shook
her head and hinted that she would put an end to herself.
It transpired in the course of the interview that she could speak
French and Polish fairly fluently, and this may have accounted for the
peculiarity of her accent. She had been taught these languages, she
said, in the convent. She would not give the name of the convent, and
therefore all this part of the story may have been invented like the
rest, but it was clear from inquiries that were subsequently made that
by nationality she was American, and that she was certainly not engaged
in espionage.
But the most amazing of all the claimants was a certain _soi-disant_
princess of a royal house who had succeeded in convincing a very large
number of people that she was genuine. She was not in need of funds,
nor had she any object in view except to gain the prestige which
a royal parentage would confer upon her. It was therefore a quite
harmless amusement, and she must have got a great deal of fun out of
it. Unfortunately for her, when she had first laid claim to her rank
there was nothing to show that we were soon to be at war with the
sovereign whom she claimed for father, and when the spy mania was at
its height he came, not unnaturally, under suspicion. It was still more
unfortunate that her own brother was living in this country.
She had worked out the details of her claim with remarkable skill. Her
mother was still living, as well as her two brothers and a sister. It
was impossible to ignore them altogether, and so she told a story of
how she had been confided to the care of her own mother by an Imperial
lady who, for some unexplained reason, wished to keep her birth a
secret. I commend this kind of story to any future claimant of royal
parentage, because when sceptics begin to throw details of your early
life in your face you can say, ‘Quite so, all that happened, only you
were never told the secret of my birth, which is known only to me and
to one or two other people, who are dead.’ All she had to do, in fact,
was to read up all the movements of the Court during the years of her
infancy and childhood, and retail them as a privileged eye-witness.
There sailed into my room one morning the most Imperial-looking person
I have ever seen. Even when sitting in my low armchair there was a calm
and condescending dignity about her that would have impressed anybody.
She had a husband who was on the way to make a fortune, and who was in
attendance to confirm everything she said, and no one was ever more
ready than she to help me over any difficult points, only I must tell
her what they were. My first point was that her reputed mother did not
and could not have had a child at the particular date when she said she
was born. She smiled rather pityingly, and said that no doubt I was not
aware that her mother had spent some months alone at a watering-place
in France at that time, and that it was evident that I did not know how
eccentric she was. As a matter of fact I did, but I also knew a good
deal about the movements of the Imperial lady immediately after the
supposed birth, and they did not at all tally with my visitor’s story.
I took her through her various statements, and as I had no documentary
evidence on the other side to confront her with she left with the
honours of war, but she left me also quite unconvinced.
A few days later I discovered her brother, a composer of considerable
ability and a very striking-looking man with a strong family likeness
to his sister. He was in a state of great indignation against her,
chiefly, I think, on account of the disparagement of his mother which
was entailed by her story. He came fully armed with most convincing
documents--family photographs from the time when they were all children
together, letters written by the lady herself to her family, and
letters from his mother in Switzerland. Among the letters was one
written when the claimant was a girl of seventeen. She and her sister
were at a watering-place, and she retails, with satisfaction, a remark
she overheard about them, that they were _Kaiserlich mädchen_. This
chance remark overheard in a hotel probably put the entire idea into
her head. In appearance she was _Kaiserlich_ to the finger-tips, and
it must have been balm to her soul to extend them to be kissed and to
see the world curtsy to her. She was the daughter of a Jewish bank
manager in a good position. She had been well-educated, and she knew a
number of people who could tell her the gossip of the Court. She could
not have imposed on any one in her own country, but once abroad she
began to expand, and the story had given four or five years of intense
pleasure.
Having satisfied myself that, whatever else the lady might be, she
was not dangerous to the cause of the Allies, I dropped the case,
thinking that if any exposure became necessary the brother would
bring it about; but one day, to my great surprise, a friend who has a
profound knowledge of Austria, told me that he was satisfied that she
was genuine, and thought it a great pity that she had been subjected
to the indignity of interrogation. I made him a sporting offer. I said
that the lady was probably expecting another interview, that I had
documentary proofs in my possession, and that if he liked I would
invite her to see me again in his presence. He agreed, and asked only
that he might bring with him a personage who has since become very
prominent in Europe.
The interview took place. The lady sailed in as imperially as before.
My companions were presented to her, and she acknowledged their bows
with the slightest nod.
‘Sit down, madam. Since I saw you last some very interesting documents
have reached me, and I want to put them to you. The first are some
family photographs.’
I thought she flushed slightly.
‘Oh, I can see what has happened. You have been in communication with
Mr. K----, who claims to be my brother. Poor man, it has become an
obsession with him.’
I do not think that she was prepared for the family photographs, for
at first she would not admit that the girl of fourteen in one of the
groups was herself. A little later she seemed to think that this was
a false move, for she said, ‘I suppose that is my photograph, but you
see at that time we should have been photographed together because I
had been consigned to the care of Madame K----.’ When she came to her
own letters she was for the first time embarrassed and inclined to be
angry, for she had at short notice to make up her mind whether she
would deny the authorship altogether, or admit it and readjust her
story. I was on pretty sure ground, because it happened that a relation
of mine had been staying in the same house as her Imperial ‘mother’
on an occasion when she claimed to have been present, and that when
her photograph was shown to this lady, she declared that the girl she
saw there was quite a different-looking person. For the first time
her imperial calm broke down. She became very pale and very angry. It
was difficult to say whether fear or anger was the stronger of her
emotions. She admitted the authorship of the letters, and to all our
further questions she would only reply that she was suffering for the
malice of her brother.
For a time I think she dropped her royal pretensions. At any rate, she
dropped the idea of writing a book, which was said to be nearly ready
for publication.
Another case of impersonation was that of the man who called himself
Count de Borch. He was a Polish Jew, well-educated and well dressed,
and he seems to have had a curious fascination for persons with whom
he came in contact. Any mysterious Pole was at that time an object of
suspicion. This man had obtained employment carrying a small weekly
wage with a firm of furniture dealers in London, and yet he was able
to cut a dash at London tea-tables and expensive restaurants. He had a
large circle of hostesses from whom he would have been in a position
to acquire a good deal of information useful to the enemy if he had
tried to do so. He was brought down to Scotland Yard some weeks before
the tragedy which brought his name before the public. The title of ‘de
Borch’ was old and highly esteemed in Poland, and I had been assured
that whatever this man might be he was certainly not in any way
connected with the family. He made a very bad impression upon me. He
fell back upon the usual ruse of bogus claimants. He said that he knew
nothing about his ancestry except what he had been told, that there
had always been a mystery about his parentage because, owing to family
differences, his father was anxious that his existence should be kept
secret until the day when he could come into his own, and so he had
been supporting himself honourably with a firm in London until Poland
was free. It was like a great many other cases at that time. Until some
evidence was forthcoming that a man was engaged in espionage, he had to
be left at liberty under _surveillance_. He was believed to be drawing
sums of money from some of his hostesses to eke out his slender wages,
and it was his social side that was his undoing.
The tragedy in which he met his death was very fully reported at the
time. Captain Malcolm had returned from the Front to find that this
over-dressed and scented person had been trying to break up his home.
He came to Scotland Yard to ascertain his address, but as it is not the
custom to give addresses to callers no information was given. He found
it out in another way, bought a horsewhip, with which to thrash the
man, and gained admittance to his room. In the scuffle that followed
the use of the horsewhip, de Borch was shot dead, but as a loaded
pistol was found in an opened drawer close to the bed it was held that
de Borch intended to use it upon his unwelcome visitor, and Captain
Malcolm was acquitted.
CHAPTER XXI
FOOTNOTES TO THE PEACE CONFERENCE
Three days before the Armistice was signed I went to Paris with
representatives of the Office of Works and the Foreign Office to
secure premises for the British Delegation in the Peace Negotiations.
I believe that Brussels and Geneva were both considered as
meeting-places, but for reasons, chiefly of lack of accommodation, were
dismissed as unsuitable. The Majestic and the Astoria Hotels, the one
for housing the people and the other for office accommodation, both
near the Arc de Triomphe, seemed to be the only possible buildings
available, and in due course the British Ambassador called on Monsieur
Clemenceau to ask that they should be commandeered. He asked how
many people had to be housed, and was told that the number would be
approximately four hundred, on which followed the quick comment, ‘Ah,
then the demobilisation of the British Army has already begun!’
We spent Sunday afternoon, 10th November, driving about Paris with M.
Clemenceau’s A.D.C. to inspect premises for the accommodation of the
Foreign Office printing staff. I noticed late in the afternoon that
the Champs Elysée was full of a holiday crowd carrying flags rolled
tightly round the stick. All Paris was waiting for the news that the
Germans had signed the Armistice. I had not seen the terms, but knowing
that they were hard, I asked the French officer whether he thought
that the Germans would accept them. He replied, ‘Oui, les conditions
sont dures, mais ils signeront.’ I was in Boulogne by 11 A.M. on
Armistice morning, and I had the news of the Armistice when I reached
my daughter’s hospital at Wimereux. The news had not then reached the
French. At the entrance to the hospital I had to stand aside to let
a party of German prisoner orderlies pass. They were laughing and
singing, though the news had not actually reached the hospital by
telephone at that time. No doubt they were banking upon the rumours of
revolution in Germany. When our steamer sailed two hours later every
whistle and siren was in full blast; the quays were lined with waving
and cheering crowds; the sleepy old town was awake for once.
When the delegation was installed at the Hôtel Majestic and the two
subsidiary hotels, if one could believe the newspapers, the members
spent their time in eating and drinking, in music, theatricals, and
dancing. But one could not believe the newspapers. No doubt in the
early days of those protracted negotiations the staff was too big for
the work, and in the later stages the work was too big for the staff,
but considering the enormous number of experts who had to be consulted
on the whole range of human endeavour, political, naval, military,
geographical, racial, and industrial, it cannot be said that the staff
was too numerous or that it did less than a day’s work. Its recreations
were certainly not excessive, seeing that for many dancing was the only
possible exercise. It may well be asked what a police officer had to
do with peace negotiations. He had nothing whatever to do with them.
As Chief Security Officer, my function was to prevent if possible the
leakages of information that took place during the Peace Conference
in Vienna, and for this purpose I took over with me a body of Special
Branch officers to control the doors, and see that no unauthorised
person obtained access to the buildings. If occasionally they wounded
susceptible feelings, they were of great use to visitors in the matter
of passports and travelling facilities. There were arduous moments in
their service. On one occasion I was asked to furnish the escort for a
furniture van which was to be packed with papers of so secret a nature
that the escort must remain with it night and day until it arrived in
Paris. The van was packed and sealed in London, and a very zealous
young police officer left with it for Havre _via_ Southampton. At Havre
the French railway officials positively refused to attach the truck on
which it was loaded to the express: it must proceed by the slow train.
The escort telephoned this news quite cheerfully, though the rain was
coming down in torrents. We made frequent inquiries at the Gare St.
Lazare, receiving conflicting accounts of the progress of the truck,
until at last late on a Saturday afternoon we heard that it had arrived
some hours before, and had been shunted into a goods shed, where it
would remain until the following Monday. Feeling sure that our zealous
policeman had not deserted it, we sent the senior inspector to the
station-master. He was adamant; the rules must be observed; even if an
English policeman starved, the van must stay where it was till Monday.
But the inspector was a man of resource: he was a Freemason and so,
as it now appeared, was the station-master. So potent was this appeal
that the shed was opened, and there was our man wet through, stiff and
faint for want of food. We took him and his van to the hotel, and under
restoratives and a hot bath he soon recovered. So far I can vouch for
the story. The sequel may be less authenticated. The seals were broken;
the van was opened, and lo! so the story ran, it contained nothing but
the ninth edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. In London some one
had blundered.
My principal duties being in London, I made flying visits of inspection
to Paris at intervals of about a fortnight--flying in the literal
sense occasionally--and it was curious to see how the amenities of
the Hôtel Majestic were modified as time went on. In the early days
there was a full staff of House of Commons waiters and waitresses,
who found so much to grumble at that they were soon sent home. Apart
from the inevitable epidemic of influenza, the sick ward was always
filled: at least two broken legs were being mended, besides minor
accidents. Gradually the scale of entertainment became more Spartan,
the edges began to wear off tempers, the spirit of criticism to rear
its head, and in my last visit the glory of the great Peace Conference
had departed. Curious folk of every colour came as deputations from
nearly every race under the sun to have their grievances redressed.
They vanished as unobtrusively as they came, elated or disappointed
according to their reception.
The Americans had established an excellent system of intelligence
throughout Europe, and, as we had been closely associated before,
we agreed to pool our information. At that time there was not much
happening in the underworld of Europe and America that we did not know.
How admirably the Americans had profited by their experience probably
few know so well as I.
It was very interesting to note the decline and fall of President
Wilson’s prestige among the French. At first he was expected to remedy
all the evils from which Paris was suffering: he was to lower prices
and raise the exchange; the maidservant thought that he would raise her
wages. Week followed week, and he did nothing sensational to justify
these great expectations. When he announced the establishment of the
League of Nations it was too late; his star was in eclipse, and nothing
he could say or do would ever bring him back to public favour. It is
the fate of all mortals from whom too much is expected. I confess that
his speech at the League of Nations plenary session disappointed me
both in substance and delivery. When I said so to two of my American
colleagues that evening one of them said: ‘There are only two men at
the Peace Conference who could have carried it off--Mr. Balfour and
Lord Reading.’
One of my friends, in whose cranium the bump of Veneration has been
atrophied, wrote the following witty lines:--
HÔTEL MAJESTIC! Gaze in reverent awe
Upon the Fane of Peace--above whose door
It’s clear to me the legend should appear
‘Abandon Peace, all ye who enter here.’
Pass the gyrating door and, once within,
Detectives, hall-marked by their diamond pin,
Will put you through a strict interrogation--
Your birthmarks, age, religion, and vocation:
Remembering that there’s nothing like the truth
To rouse suspicion in your super-sleuth,
Answer at random--and they’ll pass you through.
Proceed, and Paradise is yours to view.
A stately hall, replete with every sign
Of true refinement (viz. Bosche-Argentine):
Luxurious straight-backed chairs: two spreading shrubs,
Two metres tall, in tasty Teuton tubs:
While the mere waving of some magic wand,
Either of Selfridge or, it may be, Mond,
Has given the final touch we else should lack,
That classic harmony, the UNION JACK.
Here’s where the Foreign Office wage their war,
And though the hours are, strictly, ten to four,
Even at five amid the tea-cups’ clatter
Sit men who count discussing things that matter.
Birth, brains, and beauty throng the crowded tables:
The typists, clad in silver fox and sables;
Second Division clerks, too proud by far
To go to work except by motor-car
(And Balham’s happiness is incomplete
Without a bathroom and a first-floor suite):
Colonial Premiers, Rajahs, Plenipotentiaries,
True Britons, who have not been Jews for centuries,
Generals (but since they helped to _win_ the War
No one can guess what _they_’ve been brought here for,
Unless some kindly soul leapt at the chance
Of letting soldiers sample life in France,
And for the Navy thought it only fair
To give them ninety minutes’ _mal de mer_):
Immaculate æsthetes, clad in perfect taste--
Unruffled voice and hair, and _such_ a waist
(The spelling’s optional: I don’t suggest
Any alternative--but you’ll judge best);
Taking from tortoise spectacles and speed
(Who’s seen them run--except, of course, to seed?);
Epitomising Foreign Office lore
In three short words--Ignore--Deplore--Encore.
At last the Peace Treaty was signed at Versailles. We know what
contemporaries think of it; we can only guess at the verdict of
posterity. We see through a glass darkly that a rearrangement of
frontiers which includes a corridor, a reduction of Austria to such
proportions that she cannot feed herself, will not stand. The epigram
ascribed to Herr Rathenau that the Treaty of Versailles set out to
Europeanise the Balkans and has succeeded only in Balkanising Europe
will gather truth with every month we live.
CHAPTER XXII
THE ROYAL UNEMPLOYED
A German subject once irreverently described the Kaiser Wilhelm II. as
being half journalist, half actor-manager. Another German, even more
irreverently, said he was a fool. Immediately after the Armistice we
described him as a criminal who ought to be tried for his life. And
thirty years ago the _Spectator_, when classifying the great men of
the day, put him in a class by himself as the only genius of the first
rank. Which out of all these is the real man?
A good deal of daylight has been let in during the last few months. It
is now known that while the Kaiser most certainly did encourage the
Austrians to send the ultimatum to Serbia, and did approve of sending
an ultimatum to Russia, he had not thought it possible for England
to intervene in the War, and he was not in favour of infringing the
neutrality of Belgium. In fact, the Kaiser had not nearly so much
actual power as he was supposed to have.
It is now known that it was the General Staff who decided upon invading
Belgium; that for two whole days the Kaiser refused his approval, and
that at last, when the advance had already begun, von Moltke insisted
upon an interview at two in the morning, and in the Kaiser’s bedroom
told him plainly that the destiny of the German Empire was at stake,
and that if he, the Kaiser, stood in the way, the General Staff must
take the responsibility. In other words, that he might either sign or
abdicate. From that moment, as I believe, the Kaiser was allowed to
play only a very secondary rôle. He was not consulted by the General
Staff except when, for political reasons, they thought it prudent to
be able to quote him. They kept him near them, and pretended to obtain
his sanction to important steps upon which they were already resolved,
and they found him useful as a sort of gramophone record that could
make speeches in the hearing of reporters to stiffen the waning German
morale. His life at Charleroi under these humiliating circumstances
must have been hard to bear.
They tell a story of a painter who was commissioned to paint a portrait
of the Kaiser in all his best clothes, mounted on his favourite horse,
surrounded by hounds, and crowned with a sort of Viking silver-plated
casque mounted with gold. The Kaiser asked him to paint in the corner
of the picture two little angels carrying the Imperial Crown, after the
manner of a famous classic Spanish painter.
‘But, Your Majesty, I have never seen the Imperial Crown. I do not know
what it looks like. May I see it?’
On this the Kaiser became nettled, and said, ‘You ought to know. The
Imperial Crown is in Vienna. It ought to have come to Berlin in 1866.’
To a man with this kind of mind the dream of world empire must have
come very easily. He had a sort of superficial interest in everything
on which the German sun shone. He would talk not unintelligently to
bankers about international finance, to motor-car manufacturers about
the relative merits of new fuels, to painters about art, to writers
about literature. All his opinions were strong, and many of them were
shallow or wrong-headed.
Undoubtedly he had a cult for England; a longing to be treated as
an equal in the craft by English yachtsmen. English country life,
with its accompaniments of hunting and shooting, was his ideal; the
English tailor was superior to every tailor in the Fatherland. To him,
therefore, it was a tragedy when he broke with England. And then how
he hated us! He decorated Lissauer for writing the ‘Hymn of Hate,’ and
on this subject I remember a German telling me that the ‘Hymn of Hate’
was all a matter of policy. It was because the Germans were found not
to be hating the British sufficiently that the Government decided to
mobilise its hate in order to strengthen the ‘will to war.’ But the
Kaiser’s hate was perfectly genuine because it was strongly mixed with
fear. Some prescience must have told him that the fortunes of the
Hohenzollerns hung in the balance, and that their scale might kick the
beam.
Probably no man, however well balanced, could pass through the fire
of adulation, such as was the Kaiser’s daily fare, and come out
unscathed. When one year he was at Cowes he paid a visit with his staff
to a country house in the neighbourhood without notice. His hostess
invited him to sit down. He sat astride of a chair, and proceeded to
address her as if she was a public meeting, with his staff grouped in
a semicircle behind him. He said, apropos of the public health, that
whenever he drove through Germany he would stop at the school, have
all the scholars paraded before him, and make them blow their noses,
because he was convinced that the public health largely depended upon
the blowing of noses--and much more in the same strain, and at every
remark uttered with intense seriousness, however foolish, the staff
would gravely nod approval. If we all had to go through life with a
_claque_ to applaud every silly thing we said, the best of us would go
under.
To such a mind as the Kaiser’s the idea that Germany was being hemmed
in came quite naturally. It was nothing to him that Germans were to be
found working side by side with Englishmen in every part of the world,
that her shipping and her international banking was gradually turning
the world into a German possession in a way that actual possession by
the hoisting of the German flag could never have achieved. What he
wanted was the outward semblance of Empire, and for this there were
no waste places left. Gradually all the most unlovely features of
the Teuton character began to blossom. Poisonous toadstools sprang
up everywhere. Germany, that had been a sane, sober, thrifty, and
domestic country, became loud, vulgar, self-assertive, intolerant, and
altogether hateful to the world, and even to its own citizens, and the
Kaiser made himself the embodiment of this spirit.
As Traill said of James II., ‘Kings who fail in business undoubtedly
owe it to their historical reputation to perish on the scaffold or
the battlefield.’ History demanded that the Kaiser should have gone
forth at the head of his troops and been killed in battle. Then some
heroic niche would have been found for him. He would have been a
tragic embodiment of Frederick the Great, and his past would have been
forgotten. But he committed the one crime that can never be forgiven
by Germans: he abandoned his people in their extremity and fled the
country. But in sober fact this is what actually happened. During the
last few days before the Armistice von Ludendorff had practically
broken down, and the direction of affairs had passed into the hands
of von Grünow. There came a day when it was necessary to tell plain
truths to the Kaiser. Von Grünow entered the room alone, and told him
that the War was irrevocably lost. The news did not appear to touch
him very deeply. Probably he had realised it already. Then von Grünow
said, ‘I have other bad news. A rebellion has broken out in Berlin.’
The Kaiser started to his feet and said, ‘Then I will lead the troops
to Berlin in person. Please to give the necessary orders,’ and on this
von Grünow said, ‘Sir, it is my duty to tell you that your life would
not be safe with your own soldiers.’ The Kaiser turned to the colour
of ashes and fell back into his chair. Suddenly he had become a very
old man without any power of decision or movement. The shock had been
too much for him. After a hasty consultation it was decided that, with
the growing spirit of rebellion that prevailed even among the troops
connected with the General Staff, the Kaiser must be got into a place
of safety at all hazards. A motor-car was brought to the door, and von
Grünow himself helped him out of his chair and conducted him to the
vehicle. The Kaiser was like a little child in his hands. The car then
drove off, and took him safely to Count Bentinck’s house in Holland. It
is a curious fact that the car was held up over three hours by a Dutch
sentry. Just before this date the Dutch had decided to clothe their
soldiers in the German field-grey, and the sentry on the frontier was
taken at first by the occupants of the car to be a German soldier in
revolt. Probably no more unwelcome visitor ever applied for admission
to Holland, but the asylum was granted, and it was maintained. To do
the Kaiser justice, he has never given the Dutch authorities any cause
for complaint.
A still more unwelcome visitor was the Crown Prince, who followed
his father. This young man was a joke even among his fellow German
royalties as well as German commoners. One prince used to say to the
Crown Princess, ‘Why don’t you get your husband to dress properly?’
‘Why, what is wrong with his clothes?’ she asked rather tartly.
‘Well, his hat’s wrong, his tunic’s wrong, and his boots are wrong.’
The Crown Prince was very vain about his clothes. He tried to lead the
fashion by adopting a military cap made with a ridiculously wide crown,
which he wore at the back of his head like a halo; a tunic absurdly
tight at the waist and full in the skirts, and boots tapered and
pointed beyond all reason. He had one quality in common with Frederick
the Great--an envy of French lightness and wit, and a desire to be
accepted by the French as a kindred spirit. In pretending to conduct
the siege of Verdun he was certainly dissembling his love, but he tried
to make up for it at Charleroi by clumsy civilities to the French
residents, and a real love-affair with a French girl, to the scandal
of Germans and Frenchmen alike. If the Kaiser’s life was not safe with
his own soldiers still less was the Crown Prince’s, and if the young
gentleman has not been credited with respect for the serious things in
life, no one has yet affirmed that he lacks respect for his own skin.
So he, too, fled for Holland, and thereby he forfeited any slender
chance he may have had to ascend the throne of the Hohenzollerns. He
has one redeeming virtue--his love of approbation and his craving
for affection, and so within the narrow limits of his island home in
Holland he goes about with pockets full of chocolates, and a troop of
village children at his heels. He knows the family history of every
villager, and loves nothing better than to take part in every village
fête, showering favours on all alike. His popularity in this narrow
circle has given him more pleasure than he ever had as Heir-Apparent to
the German Empire. Perhaps the bumptious qualities that were remarked
when he visited England are now a little toned down.
Another exiled sovereign seems to have disappeared altogether from
the newspapers. Ferdinand of Bulgaria has an intellect. He is a fine
musician, a noted ornithologist, a considerable engineer. Politically,
he is cunning, unscrupulous, and incurably frivolous, but no doubt
he took care to make ample financial provision for himself outside
Bulgaria before the crash came. He crept out of obscurity to ascend the
throne, and now the darkness has swallowed him up again. He had no lust
for power, no illusions about the risks run by Balkan sovereigns, but
he had made a special study of the art of making oneself comfortable,
and at the moment a throne--even a Balkan one--seemed to be the best
thing that offered.
But Providence had denied him one gift--personal courage--and his
life was poisoned by the fear of assassination. How he contrived to
escape it for so many years speaks volumes for the qualities that
earned him his nickname of ‘The Fox.’ For, as he used himself to say,
assassination is so easy, especially in the Balkans. The assassin
who means business has only to aim from a window or take a sporting
shot at you from the thickest of the crowd and the trick is done. And
it comes naturally from a Bulgarian. Just before Bulgaria entered
the War a Bulgarian diplomat came to take leave of a certain British
Under-Secretary. ‘Mind,’ he said, ‘I have nothing to say against this
plan of yours to assassinate King Ferdinand, but unless I’m much
mistaken you will find Ferdinand far more useful to you alive than he
can ever be when dead!’
When Ferdinand came to take leave of Sir Arthur Nicholson, our
ambassador in Russia, in reply to an earnest expression of hope that
he would use all his influence to prevent disturbances in the Balkans,
he waved a fat forefinger in the ambassador’s face and said, ‘Have
no fear at all. I will be like a leetle lamb.’ Within two months he
had the whole place by the ears. He had learned the wrong part in the
tragi-comedy: instead of the ‘leetle lamb’ he had cast himself for the
part of the ravening wolf.
There is no form of unemployment so deadly as that of the continental
monarch who has ‘lost his job.’ It is the last post on earth that
any man of sense would care to take in these days, because there is
no privacy and no retiring age; moreover, it is hard and distasteful
work nearly all the time. But the daily life of a king in exile is
so ghastly that I blame none of them for trying to get back again.
As a rule they are poor, and they have to support a number of Court
functionaries as poor as themselves. And with the daily struggle to
make both ends meet goes the uneasy feeling that they are neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl. Some of their acquaintances treat them as royal,
others do not. There are continual difficulties with the authorities
of the country of their exile. If only they could begin life afresh on
a lower plane they could, like the rest of us, scratch up a living in
honest trade. As it is, they see stretching out interminably before
them a life devoted to attending concerts and opening charity bazaars,
to which only death will bring surcease, unless, indeed, some endless
chain of dreary functions is reserved for them in the place of torment.
The ex-Emperor Karl was a gallant gentleman who refused to sit down
tamely under these conditions, but was ready to dare everything
to regain a throne. He was not endowed with brains, but the most
successful kings have often been those who have their thinking done
for them by other people. He had what is far more useful--a good
presence, amiability, and a very clever wife. She was a Bourbon, and
it has always been believed that her brother, Prince Sixte, who lives
in Paris, was cognisant of the two attempts at restoration to the
throne of Hungary which miscarried. Prince Sixte was said at the time
to have sent a message to his brother-in-law from Paris to the effect
that unless he did something to recover his throne his opportunity
might never come again; but that once let his reinstatement become an
accomplished fact, and he would have, perforce, to be recognised by the
Allies. How near the second attempt came to being successful few people
know. The majority of the Hungarians were ready to welcome him, and,
but for the fatal delay of twenty-four hours while conferences were
being held, and dinners were being cooked and eaten, he might have been
proclaimed in Buda-Pesth instead of being an exile in that land of bad
hotels, Madeira. It is said that when one of his followers produced a
priceless tapestry which he had cut down from the walls of one of the
Imperial palaces and suggested that it should be sold in order that
the ex-Emperor should live upon the proceeds, Karl sent it back to the
Republican Government.
There can be little doubt that some of these dethroned monarchs will
return. The greater part of Bavaria is royalist at heart, and any day
within the next two years we may open our morning paper to find that
Prince Rupprecht is king. Baden may not impossibly follow suit. Europe
may even come round to the belief that a hereditary president, which is
the real position in a limited monarchy, is cheaper than the American
form of elected autocrat. Russia herself is awake to the fact that the
Red Czar, whom she did not even elect, is a worse form of autocracy
than any they knew under the White.
CHAPTER XXIII
UNREST AT HOME
In order to understand the revolutionary movement in England it is
necessary shortly to review the movements of the past ten years.
Apart from the Independent Labour Party, which was formed in 1893 by
the late Mr. Keir Hardie to introduce Socialists into the Trade Unions
and to procure their nomination for the House of Commons, it may be
said that there were no formidable extremist bodies in Great Britain
before 1911; for the British section of the Industrial Workers of the
World, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and the Socialist Labour
Party were insignificant in numbers and in influence. In the summer of
1911 there was a great wave of industrial unrest, involving strikes of
dockers and transport workers in Manchester, Liverpool, and London,
followed by a railway strike in August. In three days, with one or two
exceptions, most of the lines ceased working, and troops were called
upon to guard the railways and vital points. The men’s grievances were
submitted to a Royal Commission, and in the debate in the House of
Commons initiated by the Labour Members, for the first time political
action began to attract Trade Union leaders. The Trade Union Act passed
in 1913 gave the Unions power to add political action to the objects
covered by their rules.
In 1912 the coal-miners came into the field with a strike for a minimum
wage, and the Government conceded some of their demands in the Coal
Mines Minimum Wage Act. In South Wales the coal strike was attended
with disorders that called for measures of protection by the military.
In 1913 the Dublin Transport Workers went on strike, and the solidarity
achieved by this body during the strike made the rebellion of 1916
possible.
In April 1914 the Miners, Transport Workers and Railwaymen appointed a
committee to work out a scheme for a Triple Alliance which was to brood
over the community as a threat of paralysis whenever one section of the
Alliance formulated demands which the employers were not disposed to
concede. It was never more than a threat foredoomed to be ineffective,
because the component parts were so unwieldy, and their interests were
so diverse, that they could never be got to work as parts of a single
machine. But as a threat it was held _in terrorem_ over the nation
for seven years. It was believed that the new Alliance would try its
strength in support of the railwaymen, who were said to be meditating
another strike, but however that may have been, the War, that great
composer of petty disputes, intervened to prevent it.
There were two cross-currents in this rapid development of the Labour
movement: on the one side a tendency towards the amalgamation of
unions, as in the case of the National Transport Workers’ Federation
and the Triple Alliance, and on the other, the tendency of the rank and
file in the unions to break away from their leaders.
The declaration of war shattered all the hopes of the International at
a blow. Its promoters had forgotten human nature. In 1907 the Second
International had passed a resolution binding the workers of all
countries to compel their Governments to make peace even if war were
declared, and as late as 1st August 1914 Messrs. Arthur Henderson and
Keir Hardie issued a ‘Manifesto to the British people’ in the sense
of the resolution of 1907. On 2nd August there was a demonstration
in Trafalgar Square to support it. So little knew the leaders the
temper of the people they had been chosen to represent! On 6th August
the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee was formed, and within
three weeks the great mass of Labour was taking part in the recruiting
campaign. In September the Trade Union Congress endorsed their
patriotic attitude.
There followed an industrial truce; strikes were abandoned, and the
railwaymen dropped their national programme; the Triple Alliance was
suspended. This situation might have lasted throughout the War but
for the rise in the cost of living and certain flagrant examples of
profiteering. Conscription gave a great impetus to the revolutionary
Pacifists, and the Workers’ Committees, under the name of the Shop
Stewards’ Movement, seized upon their opportunity.
The International was, in fact, trampled to death by the rapid march
of events. On 31st July 1914 Jean Jaurès had been assassinated in
Paris, and the French Socialists had lost their most trusted leader.
This was rapidly followed by the invasion of Belgium and by the voting
of the war credits by German Socialists. What was now to become of
the doctrine, ‘Should War break out it is the duty of Socialists to
intervene to bring it promptly to an end ... to rouse the populace, and
hasten the fall of the Capitalist domination’?
The conversion of British Labour leaders was very rapid. On 7th
August Messrs. W. C. Anderson and Arthur Henderson, for the Executive
Committee of the Labour Party, stated that while the party condemned
the diplomacy which had made war possible, it advised all its members
to relieve the destitution and suffering which must inevitably ensue,
but on that very day the Labour Party allowed the vote of credit to
pass, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald resigned in consequence. The Left Wing,
which followed Mr. Macdonald, issued a manifesto on 13th August, in
which it sent ‘Sympathy and Greeting to German Socialists across
the roar of the guns.... They are no enemies of ours, but faithful
friends,’ but on 20th August the Labour Party definitely joined in
the campaign to strengthen the British Army, and even Mr. Keir Hardie
wrote, ‘Any War of oppression against the rights and liberties of my
country I will persist against to the last drop of my blood.’
We are inclined now to imagine that open violence began only at the
beginning of the War. We have forgotten the part played by foreign
anarchists three or four years before--the Houndsditch murders, the
siege of Sydney Street, the outrages of Tottenham. There has been
nothing like these since the Armistice.
We date most of our social troubles from August 1914, as if politically
England was Utopia before the War. I was reminded by a friend the other
day that during the summer of 1913, in a conversation about Labour
unrest, I had said that unless there were a European War to divert the
current, we were heading for something very like revolution. That was
before the railway strike of 1913. I suppose that the dock strike, the
growth of bodies like the Anarchists and the Industrial Workers of the
World, and the unrest that had set in even among disciplined bodies
like the police and prison warders, in all civilised countries, had
induced this unwonted pessimism. Yet there was a section among our own
people who talked glibly about European war producing revolution, and
therefore one cannot blame the Germans for counting us out of the War.
Even during the War itself I can remember several periods when the
outlook among our own people was darker than it is now.
With the Independent Labour Party stood the Union of Democratic
Control, and Pacifist Societies, such as the No-Conscription
Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the National Council
for Civil Liberties, began to spring up like toadstools. Internal
dissensions increased to such an extent that at last the loyal Labour
and Socialist group formed themselves, in April 1915, into a body known
as the Socialist Nationalist Defence Committee, to defend themselves
from internal persecution. This committee contributed largely to the
patriotic reception of the Conscription Act. As the time went on the
committee became the British Workers’ League, and by July 1918, the
League had over two hundred and twenty branches. Patriotic Labour
leaders suffered acutely at this time. Through pressure exerted by his
Trade Union one after another was forced to resign from the League.
There is a rapid evolution in political unrest. Subversive societies
are like the geysers in a volcanic field. After preliminary gurgling
they spout forth masses of boiling mud and then subside, while another
chasm forms at a distance and becomes suddenly active. I have described
how the Militant Suffragettes subsided on the day war was declared.
The country was so much preoccupied with the War during 1915 that no
new geyser had a chance of boiling up. It was not until 1916 that the
Pacifist became active.
The Union of Democratic Control was founded in the early days of the
War by a small group, of which Mr. E. D. Morel, Mr. Charles Trevelyan,
Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, and Mr. Ralph Norman
Angell Lane, generally known as Norman Angell, were the most prominent.
Its four cardinal points of policy were that no province should be
transferred without the consent of the population, that Parliament
should control all Treaties, that our foreign policy should be
directed towards the setting up of a League of Nations, then called an
International Council, and that England should propose a reduction of
armaments. The public mind was to be permeated with the idea that war
was a criminal absurdity, and of course the Union had strong things
to say about the Foreign Office. The Diplomatic Service was to be
completely reformed, Treaties were to be periodically submitted to a
Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, and a ‘real European
partnership’ was to be substituted for ‘groupings and alliances and a
precarious equipoise.’ In 1916 the Union of Democratic Control added
to the articles of its programme, ‘to prevent the humiliation of the
defeated Nation,’ from which it may be inferred that the members of the
Executive already felt confident that the Allies would win the War.
It will be seen that the main points for which the Union stood are in
process of realisation.
The Union of Democratic Control grew rapidly, and within less than a
year it had founded sixty-one branches. A branch was also in process
of being formed in Paris. Naturally, the Union became the rallying
point for most of the Pacifists in the country, and though the Union
itself disclaimed any desire to hinder the prosecution of the War,
it could not be said to have done anything to support it. One rather
prominent member set himself to palliate the German disregard for
treaties and international usages. But while the Union included people
whose attitude is always pro-anybody except pro-British, there were
others who would have deeply resented any imputation of a lack of
patriotism. Its speakers encountered a good deal of opposition by
bodies such as the No-Conscription Fellowship and the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. The Union of Democratic Control was an academic body:
the No-Conscription Fellowship speedily came within the reach of the
law. Compulsory service was bound to provoke resistance and, as all
those who have sat on tribunals are aware, the Conscientious Objectors
included men of very different character. Perhaps the smallest class
had real conscientious scruples. Many of the others mistook for
conscience a natural bent for resisting any kind of compulsion, and
there was, besides, the class of young man whose personal vanity
was hypertrophied, and who courted martyrdom for the sake of its
advertisement. One would have said he was peculiar to England if the
same type had not appeared in Holland and America. Looking back on
this period, I am very doubtful whether conscription could have been
safely introduced at an earlier date. The country had been drained of
its best men, and the pity of it was that the finest material for the
officers who were so badly needed later in the war was sacrificed in
the trenches. But it was this very sacrifice that prepared men’s minds
for conscription and neutralised the strong opposition to compulsion.
As seemed to be inevitable, the Germans were our best friends in this
matter. By the outrages in Belgium, by the callousness of submarine
commanders, by the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and hospital ships, the
Germans kept up our own war spirit and themselves neutralised the
danger of Pacifism.
The Pacifist societies had marshalled quite a respectable little army
of conscientious objectors. These, while they gave great trouble to
government officials, from the tribunals down to the prison warders,
were really of very little importance while such tremendous events
were proceeding. Public opinion ran strongly against them, and even in
Princetown, Dartmoor, where the population had been accustomed to see
nothing but the worst class of felon, murmurs were heard that it was
time to send back the old convicts who knew how to behave themselves
instead of the dreadful people with long hair and curious clothing who
infested the single street.
All through 1916 the Ministry of Munitions had a separate little branch
for keeping themselves informed about labour unrest that was likely to
interfere with the output of munitions. In December 1916 they came to
the conclusion that the work would be more efficiently and more cheaply
done by professionals, and I was called upon to take over the service
with my own trained men. Pacifism, anti-Conscription, and Revolution
were now inseparably mixed. The same individuals took part in all three
movements. The real object of most of these people, though it may have
been sub-conscious, appeared to be the ruin of their own country. This
is no new thing in English history. There were pro-Bonapartists in the
Waterloo time, and pro-Boers eighty-five years later, and though this
modern brand were not perhaps strictly pro-enemy in sentiment, they
acted as if they were. Does not Maitland record how, when Napoleon
Bonaparte was leaving Plymouth on his last voyage to St. Helena, an
attempt was made by his friends in London to serve a subpœna on him in
the hope of delaying his departure?
The Unofficial Reform movement was first heard of in South Wales
in 1911, where it opposed the policy of conciliation of the South
Wales Miners’ Federation. Probably it resulted from Mr. Tom Mann’s
Syndicalist campaign in 1910. _The Miners’ Next Step_, published in
1912, set forth its programme, which was the first attempt on the
part of declared revolutionaries to attack Trade Unionism. This book
demanded one union to cover all mines and quarries in order to be in a
position to call a simultaneous strike throughout the country.
Out of this grew the Rank and File Movement, which covered that extreme
body, the Clyde Workers’ Committee, and, in common with the British
Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour Party, it had sympathetic
relations with the Industrial Workers of the World. It had a definite
policy of the Russian Bolshevik type, arrived at quite independently,
which was, through the Workers’ Committee, to overthrow Trade Unions
and reorganise all workers in a single union with a committee vested
with full power to seize all workshops and factories, and thus bring
about the Social Revolution. There were special reasons in 1916 why
the Rank and File Movement should become popular. The industrial truce
of the Trade Unions, arrived at for the successful prosecution of
the War, had weakened the influence of the Executives. Most of the
agitators were strong Pacifists, and it was easy for them to represent
the Trade Union leaders as having betrayed the cause of the workers by
abandoning their hard-won rights in order to support a Capitalist war.
Any improvement in working conditions which tended to allay discontent
was opposed by the Workers’ Committees because it set back the day when
any ill-feeling between Capital and Labour would make it impossible for
employers to carry on their business. A better understanding between
employers and employed was to them a propping up of the Capitalist
system of society. While the Rank and File Movement was not identical
with the Shop Stewards’ Movement, the revolutionary element secured so
many posts as Shop Stewards that the two became confused. Gradually
the Shop Stewards developed into a useful institution. As the elected
representatives of labour in our factories they could make the views of
the workmen clear to the foreman and the employer, and so save a great
deal of friction. Unfortunately, at first, the movement had fallen into
the hands of persons with revolutionary views, who decided to use the
Shop Stewards as a means of ousting the regular Trade Union leaders. It
was to be a ‘Rank and File’ Movement, and the power to call a strike,
vested nominally in the rank and file, was really to be exercised by
an Association of Shop Stewards, all of revolutionary views. What
they wanted was an excuse for sudden action, and the excuse came with
dilution and with conscription.
On 5th May 1917 began the most serious strike of the War. It broke
out at Rochdale on a pottery dispute in which the employer was in the
wrong. He had applied the dilution scheme to civilian work that had
nothing to do with the War. The Shop Stewards among the engineers at
once held a secret meeting at Manchester, and determined to call a
national strike. Two days later the Rochdale men went back to work,
but by that time the engineers were out at Manchester, Coventry, and
Sheffield, and within a week a ’bus strike was preventing munition
workers from getting to Woolwich. The excuse given was the proposal to
‘comb out’ the young unskilled men, and it was curious to find South
Wales, the Clyde, and Leeds standing firm at a moment when a national
strike was in the air. On 16th May the strike spread to Southampton,
Ipswich, and Chelmsford. Important work on large howitzer shells
and range-finders, all urgently needed, was held up, and the country
was faced with the gravest danger that it had had to meet since the
beginning of the War. We knew all the men who had brought about the
strike, and the only question was whether they should be prosecuted.
There was, of course, the risk that their arrest might precipitate a
general strike, but as that seemed likely to come in any case, the risk
seemed worth while taking. I felt pretty sure that as soon as a few
arrests were made the strike would collapse.
The Government had always said that it was ready to meet the strikers
with their official executive, but the official leaders hitherto
had declined to deal with men who had flouted their authority. They
consented only after several arrests had been made, and on 19th May
the strike was called off on condition that there should be no more
arrests but that the prosecution of the men already arrested should
be proceeded with. The ’bus strike had collapsed on the previous day.
Nine men appeared at Bow Street and gave an undertaking that they would
not again do anything to obstruct the output of munitions, and as the
strike was at an end they were released.
It must not be judged from the extent of the Labour disturbances of
1916 that the Workers’ Committees of Shop Stewards had really captured
the body of Labour. It must be remembered that the people at home, as
well as the soldiers in the trenches, were suffering from war-strain.
Probably at no time have men ever so much needed a holiday. This
was shown by the behaviour of those who went on strike. So far from
collecting at street corners and listening to Pacifist harangues, the
Lancashire men took advantage of the fine weather at Blackpool, or
were found quietly working in their allotments.
All the cherished Trade Union principles had been surrendered one by
one. The men had submitted to dilution, and even to dilution with
women, to an increase in hours of labour and in output, and to the
exposure of their pet fallacy that engineering is so highly skilled a
trade that an apprenticeship of several years is necessary before even
a moderate efficiency is acquired.
The damage caused by industrial disturbances to our national prosperity
was enormous. In 1918 there were 1252 strikes, involving a loss of
6,237,000 working days. In 1919 there were 1413 strikes, involving a
loss of 34,483,000 working days, and the persons involved in these
disputes numbered 2,581,000.
I suppose that England has always been divided between the unreasoning
optimists and the unreasoning pessimists, and that public opinion
oscillates between the two. In 1919 the word ‘revolution’ was on every
lip, as it was in 1793, 1830, and 1848: in 1922 you will hear that
the British working man is too staid and sensible a person ever to
think of revolution except through the ballot-box. And in a few months
the pendulum will have swung the other way and people will again be
in a flutter. The optimists of 1922 are right, but they forget what
determined minorities can do with an irresolute mass. A single fox
will clear out a hen-roost while it is cackling its indignation to the
skies. If Louis XVI. had mounted his horse and charged the mob there
might have been no Thermidor: if Louis Philippe had spoken two words
to his soldiers there would have been no 1830. In Paris a street riot
became a revolution, and street riots unchecked were formidable affairs
in those days. Who now remembers what happened in London in 1780? Yet
William Beckford writes from Antwerp on Midsummer Day, 1780:
‘This characteristic stillness was the more pleasing when I looked
back upon those scenes of outcry and horror which filled London but
a week or two ago when danger haunted our streets at midday. Here I
could wander--without beholding a sky red and portentous with the
light of houses on fire, or hearing the confusion of shouts and
groans mingled with the reports of artillery.’
Until six months after the Armistice there were several independent
organisations for furnishing information. Every new Ministry created
during the War almost inevitably formed an ‘Intelligence Section.’ It
is true that nearly all these co-operated closely with one another,
but there was overlapping and waste of energy, to say nothing of the
inevitable waste of money. Moreover, it was nobody’s business to act
upon the information with reasonable despatch. By the time it reached
a particular Minister it was generally too late for action. This
applied particularly to Civil Intelligence at a time when the Russian
Government was financing subversive organisations in this country. It
was decided, therefore, to co-ordinate all this kind of information
under a single head who would be responsible to a Minister for any
action that ought to be taken.
On 1st May 1919 this new arrangement came into force. A most admirable
and efficient little staff was organised at a very low cost to the
country. The revolutionary press tried to spread the belief among its
readers that enormous sums were being lavished, that I went about with
bulging pockets corrupting honest working men; whereas, in fact, all
the most useful and trustworthy information was furnished gratuitously
and the corruption was all on the other side. Many of the Communist
leaders and organisers were receiving salaries from Russia, and, as a
Communist said feelingly a few months ago, ‘These men are all out for
money, and they would sell their own grandmothers.’ I have a shocking
confession to make: I numbered among my friends Communists who, while
quite honestly entertaining Communist views, disapproved very strongly
of the manner in which the movement was being exploited.
There are a number of virtuous people who think it highly improper for
a Government to keep itself quietly informed of what is going on in its
own and other countries. They forget that they themselves, in the lobby
of the House of Commons, in their clubs, and at their dinner-tables
are collecting and dispensing intelligence all the time. That is how
public opinion is formed. The duties of an Intelligence officer are
very like those of a journalist, the difference being that in the case
of the Intelligence officer he tries to sift out the truth, and to give
it all to his superiors, whereas the journalist has first to consider
what it is good for the public to know, and what will contribute to the
popularity of his newspaper. I have tried hard to put myself into the
mental attitude of the good people who think intelligence ‘immoral,’
and I cannot help feeling that their real objection is that it is
inconvenient.
However this may be, it was certainly the case in 1920 and 1921 that
while our expenditure had decreased there was not much of subversive
activity in any part of the world that was unknown to us, and whether
we liked it or not, we were forced into the position of becoming a sort
of clearing-house for foreign countries. The great art of acquiring
information is to have friends in every grade of society in as many
countries as possible.
During the first three months of 1919 unrest touched its high-water
mark. I do not think that at any time in history since the Bristol
Riots we have been so near revolution. The Workers’ Committees had
acquired the chief power in London, Sheffield, Coventry, Wales, and on
the Clyde, and the cry for shorter hours was seized upon eagerly by
the revolutionaries. On 27th January there were extensive strikes on
the Clyde of a revolutionary rather than an economic character. There
was great restlessness also among the electrical engineers, and a
general strike at the power stations had been fixed for 5th February.
This was stopped by a new regulation which made strikes at power
stations and similar vital undertakings illegal. The authorities had
made arrangements for taking over the service if the strike occurred,
and no doubt some rumours about the arrangements had leaked out among
the electricians. I remember waiting at the telephone at 11 P.M. one
night. If the strike had taken place the leaders would probably have
been brought to trial. I counted on a certain number of men coming
out without the strike becoming general, and in this event we should
not have taken any action. The messages began to come in. No one had
answered the call to strike except in one power station, where twelve
men walked out into the street. Consequently, no action was taken.
Late in January the ‘Hands off Russia’ Movement had been started,
and at a meeting at the Albert Hall on 8th February every section
of the revolutionary movement was represented on the platform. The
speeches were probably the most startling that had ever been made in
that somnolent and respectable edifice. The workers were urged to arm
themselves, and people who had not been following the movement were
in a flutter. To one whose business it is to know individuals and to
watch the formation of subversive bodies this inflammatory oratory
does not quicken the pulse by a single beat. It is all as hollow as
the declamation of a tragedian in a stage rehearsal. One knows so well
that if the drum did beat these fiery orators would take good care not
to be among the first casualties. A retrospect is very instructive,
for one sees how a movement which creates public consternation for a
few weeks boils up, cools, and evaporates. It was so with the People’s
Russian Information Bureau, to which no fewer than a hundred societies
affiliated themselves; it was so with the Sailors’, Soldiers’, and
Airmen’s Union and, later, with the Councils of Action, and it will be
so with the ‘Hands Off Russia’ Movement, with the Union of Democratic
Control, and with many other more sinister movements that will
shake the nerve of future generations. All, all will pass into the
lumber-room, where the dust is already accumulating over the Union of
Democratic Control, and its sisters, the Pacifist Societies.
In April 1919 we learned that a conspiracy was on foot to induce
serving soldiers who enlisted under the Derby Scheme and under
Conscription to ‘demobilise themselves’ on 11th May on the ground
that they enlisted for the period of the War and six months after.
They were to strip off their badges and march out of barracks, not
only in Kempton Park, Winchester, Salisbury, and Oswestry, but in
Rouen, Havre, Boulogne, and Calais. In a speech delivered on May
Day a member of this league who, during 1917, was employed in the
Adjutant-General’s Department, War Office, urged a general strike to
enforce demobilisation on 11th May, and about the same time a leaflet
headed ‘To British Sailors’ incited naval ratings to seize the ports
and invite soldiers and policemen to join them. The _Daily Herald_
of 7th and 8th May published paragraphs supporting the view that the
men were entitled to leave the colours on 11th May. The unrest among
serving soldiers, especially the technical services, such as mechanics,
motor-drivers, and other trades, many of whom were members of Trade
Unions, and had or thought they had jobs waiting for them which might
be snapped up by others, was such that very serious disturbances might
have resulted from this insidious form of incitement. But the Army
Council issued a statement explaining the conditions of enlistment,
which appealed to the good sense of the men, and 11th May passed off
without disturbance.
CHAPTER XXIV
OUR COMMUNISTS
Kerensky’s Revolution did not take the official world by surprise: it
was, in fact, inevitable. The Revolution was hailed by uninstructed
public opinion in England as a fulfilment of long-deferred hope, and
some statesmen who ought to have had more prescience joined in the
acclamation. The worst of revolutions is that they never know where to
stop, and when in the middle of a war they befall one of the Allies
upon whom the rest are counting, they are a disaster of the first
magnitude. Kerensky was not fashioned by nature to ride the whirlwind:
a mountain-top, whence he could indulge his gift of impassioned
oratory, would have been a safer steed for him. His nerveless fingers
never gripped the reins: he could not even bring himself to execute
mutineers and deserters in the field. It was inevitable that a stronger
hand should thrust him aside. Strange that we should ever have talked
of Russia as the ‘Steam Roller!’ All that is left of it now is the red
flag.
Of all the stupidities committed by the Germans during the War I think
that the locked train was the most inexcusable because, as Ludendorff
has since admitted, it was fraught with grave danger primarily for
Germany herself. There had congregated in Switzerland a little band of
revolutionaries who had fled after the disturbances of 1905. There,
year in and year out, they frequented cafés, and smoked and talked as
only Russians can talk until the whole world became unreal and danced
before them through a haze of cigarette smoke. For them revolution
meant no half measures. They had drunk in the fatuities of Karl Marx
until there was no room left in their minds for sober reasoning, and
here in their own country was their opportunity. In Russia a torch was
to be put to dry thatch, and presently the Red conflagration should
spread until it consumed the world. The workers with sickle and hammer
should unite over the whole world to wipe out the _bourgeoisie_. That
was the measure of their intelligence.
All this the Germans knew. They would not have such inflammatory
material loose in their own country, but as a means of paralysing the
army of their ancient Muscovite enemy it should be used at once, for
Kerensky was reported to be preparing a new offensive. It is not quite
clear from whom the proposal first came; whether the Bolsheviks asked
for a ‘safe-conduct’ across Germany, or whether some German diplomatic
agent invited the request; but it is known that the exiles packed
themselves into a train which was sealed at the German frontier, and
kept so until it crossed into Russia. Had Kerensky and his advisers
been wise and strong they would have hitched a locomotive to the
other end of the train and sent it back, but they were neither wise
nor strong. It is said that when Ulianov, otherwise Lenin, was making
inflammatory speeches Kerensky was implored to take action against him,
and that he said, ‘Let him talk: he will talk himself out.’
I remember speaking about this time to a diplomatist with a knowledge
of Russia, and asking him whether he thought that the Czar, who was
then a prisoner in his own palace under Kerensky, was in any personal
danger. He shook his head, and said that he doubted whether the Czar
would come out of the welter alive.
With the second Revolution in November 1917, the Bolsheviks came
into power. They included Nihilists, Anarchists, and extreme Social
Revolutionaries, who were all soon to be enrolled in a single body as
Communists and followers of Karl Marx. Lenin has never swerved from
his plan of making Russia merely the seed-bed for a general revolution
in Europe on a class basis. He hoped for it in Germany, Austria, and
Italy; he was certain of it in the Ukraine and Poland, but he admitted
that his chances of success in England and America were small because
in England he held the working-class to be too ignorant, and in America
there had been no preparation. For the moment the Bolsheviks showed
a frenzied energy in striking terror into their political opponents.
There were mass executions, and the horrors attending some of them,
especially at Kronstadt, were not exaggerated. Even Tchitcherin,
usually the mildest of men, wrote on 11th September 1918 to the head of
the American Red Cross:
‘Our adversaries are not executed, as you affirm, for holding other
political views than ours, but for taking part in the most terrible
battles, in which no weapon is left untouched, against us, no crime
is left aside and no atrocities are considered too great when the
power belongs to them.... 300 have been selected already (for
execution) as belonging to the vanguard of the counter-revolutionary
movement. In the passionate struggle tearing our whole people do you
not see the sufferings, untold during generations, of all the unknown
millions who were dumb during centuries, whose concentrated despair
and rage have at last burst into the passionate longing for a new
life, for the sake of which they have the whole existing fabric to
remove?
‘In the great battles of mankind, hatred and fury are unavoidable as
in every battle and in every struggle.’
If he had said simply that they were executing their opponents in order
to save their own skins he would have been nearer the truth, for fear
is always more fertile in violent outrage than the spirit of revenge.
There was something providential in the sequence of events. The
Bolshevik Revolution came at a time when the entire people in England
except a few Defeatists and Pacifists had gritted its teeth, and was
determined to see the War through. If it had come eighteen months
later, when demobilisation was in the air and people were looking for a
new world, it might have gone hardly with us. As it was, the ordinary
Englishman felt that he had been ‘let down’ by the Russian Bolsheviks,
and he resented the treachery.
The second Russian Revolution turned the heads of the Pacifists and
Defeatists in England. They had failed in every enterprise: the country
had declined to endorse their scheme for obtaining peace by negotiation
with the Germans, and here at last was a great people ready to put
the doctrines of Karl Marx into practice. They had a great deal to
explain away: it was impossible altogether to deny the atrocities of
the Bolsheviks, but they could attack their own Government on the score
of the Allied intervention, which they represented as an attempt on
the part of the Capitalists to strangle an infant Socialist State at
birth and to excuse the excesses of the torch-bearers of revolutionary
Socialism. This, they thought, would be a more popular cry than ‘Peace
by Negotiation.’
On 3rd June 1917 they called a National Conference at Leeds, which was
attended by over 1900 people. It was said at the time to have cost
£5000, and to have been held at the expense of the Union of Democratic
Control. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald described this conference as the most
active gathering he had ever attended; Mr. Sexton as ‘the most bogus,
the most dishonest, and the most corrupt conference ever created by
the mind of man.’ It was resolved to divide Great Britain into Soviets
to the ominous number of thirteen, with headquarters in Duke Street,
Adelphi. These Soviets existed for a few weeks, and then expired.
At Tunbridge Wells some attempt was made among soldiers awaiting
demobilisation to organise support for a local Soviet among the troops,
but there was little response. The Provisional Council, nominated
presumably with their own consent, were also to be thirteen--a number
which seemed to exercise a fascination on the Conference. They included
Messrs. Robert Smillie, Philip Snowden, Ramsay Macdonald, Robert
Williams, George Lansbury, and Joseph Fineberg, the Russian-Jewish
secretary to Litvinoff. It is believed that this council never met,
though manifestoes were issued by Mr. Albert Inkpin in its name.
The Russian Revolution dug Karl Marx out of the grave in which he had
been lying uneasily since 1883. Karl Marx was a Prussian Jew born in
1818. He was driven successively from Prussia and from France, and he
found an asylum in London. He was not a working man, nor had he any
business experience, and his theories about Capital and Labour were
purely academic. His philosophy was really an attempt to reconcile the
doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man, expounded by Rousseau, to modern
economic conditions. In his time Rousseau’s theories were a little
fly-blown. Marx attempted to rehabilitate them by pointing out that
the industrial revolution had lowered the status of the workmen while
immensely increasing their economic value; that it had deprived them
of all real interest in their expanding industry, and had converted
them into ‘wage-slaves.’ He called upon them to take arms in the
Class war throughout the industrial world. His manifesto, used by the
Russian Bolsheviks and the British extreme Socialists, was, ‘Workers
of all lands, Unite! You have a world to win; you have nothing to lose
but your chains,’ and in another passage, ‘We make war against all the
prevailing ideals of the State, of country, of patriotism.’ As Burke
once said of the Jacobins:
‘This sort of people are so taken up by their theories of the rights
of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.’
Between 1848 and 1860 the idea of international solidarity of
classes was popular, but after 1860 the lines of cleavage tended to
become vertical rather than horizontal, for from that date Europe
became increasingly Nationalist. Moreover, Marx himself, owing to
his long residence in England, had begun to waver in his opinion.
The mid-Victorian Trade Unionist believed in constitutional action.
Marx, who had formed a Communist League in London in 1847, had seen
it collapse in 1852. It had been reformed in 1862 as a result of the
cosmopolitan feeling created by the Great Exhibition, but after a few
meetings, generally held in Switzerland, it languished and died. The
only power that seemed to be growing was that of the constitutional
Trade Unionist, and before his death Marx was himself inclining in that
direction.
Some months before the Bolsheviks came into power a curious document
which has since received much attention in England was brought to the
notice of the State Department in Washington. _The Protocols of the
Wise Men of Zion_, first published in Russian in 1897 by a Russian
named Nilus, purported to set forth the details of a secret Jewish
conspiracy for the domination of the world. A committee of Americans
were preparing a report upon the document, and I was asked unofficially
to give my opinion upon its authenticity. Besides the internal evidence
there was very little to go upon, but I reported that the ‘protocols’
were almost certainly fabricated by some anti-Semitic organisation, and
I heard afterwards that the American Committee had reported in the same
sense.
It was quite natural that when the Bolsheviks came into power and
it was seen that nearly all the people’s commissaries were Jews, so
obvious a fulfilment of the _Protocols_ should not pass unnoticed. It
was useless to point out that, ‘protocols or no protocols,’ it was
inevitable in a country like Russia, when the dregs of the population
had boiled up to the top, a preponderance of Jews would be found among
the scum: people would have it that the first part of this sinister
programme had been realised, and that worse was still to come. No
doubt, the famous _Protocols_ did faithfully reflect the kind of
talk that has been current among fanatically Nationalist Jews among
themselves for more than a century.
How the Russians themselves regard their Jewish masters is shown by a
popular story now current in Russia. At a Soviet meeting the list of
elected delegates was read over. The secretary came to the name ‘Ivan
Ivanowitch Petroff.’
‘But what’s his real name?’ asked a delegate.
‘Ivan Ivanowitch Petroff. He has no other name.’
‘Bah!’ said the Jewish delegate; ‘these Russians will push in
everywhere.’
In Bela Kun’s régime in Hungary, as well as in Russia, nearly all the
commissaries, and especially those who were guilty of atrocious acts of
cruelty, were Jews.
There is one and one only virtue in the Russian Bolshevik--that he
knows what he wants and allows no weak scruples or respect for public
opinion to prevent him from getting it. Fancy a Government of this
country that knew its own mind and had no scruples and cared nothing
for public opinion! It is conceivable that it might really bring about
‘a country fit for heroes to live in’ instead of a country in which
only heroes can live.
At this time even the professional moulders of our opinions failed
us. I remember saying to a great newspaper owner in 1917 that he
might devote his papers to a denunciation of Bolshevism, and he
replied, ‘Who’s afraid of Bolshevism? I tell you there will be so much
employment in England after the War, and the people will be earning
such high wages, that they will have no time to think of Bolshevism.’
Well, the truth, as usual, lies midway. We had the fever mildly, and
now our temperature is a little below normal, and so the world will go
on in impulse and reaction to the end, always making a little progress
in the long run unless the great catastrophe that has overtaken
civilisation in Russia should overtake the civilisation of the globe.
There have been Nineveh, Babylon, Egypt, Carthage, and Rome, and the
fate that overtook those great empires may overtake empires again, on
so slender a thread hangs all human stability.
The Soviet ideal never got beyond its paper stage in England. Perhaps
the nearest approach to it was the Rank and File Movement, which Lenin
afterwards declared to be the nucleus of an organisation which embodies
his ideas; but by the time the Russians were ready to subsidise the
Rank and File Movement, workmen had realised the advantage of electing
moderate men and women to represent them, and the Rank and File
Movement was dead.
One revolutionary paper, _The Call_, printed an article, ‘Learn to
speak Russian!’ and said that the working-class must ‘assert its will
in Russian accents.... It would be anti-Parliament, as the great
Chartist Conventions were. Then we shall soon see how easily Russian
can be spoken even in these islands without the knowledge of grammar
or vocabulary’; but _The Call_ had few readers at that time, and there
was a general distrust of any one who held up Russian institutions for
imitation.
For some months we were concerned with the antics of Maxim Litvinoff,
whom the Bolsheviks had appointed their representative in England. On
18th February 1918 he addressed a meeting in Westminster at which the
late Mr. Anderson, M.P., presided; two thousand tickets were issued.
Litvinoff’s reception on this occasion seems to have turned his head.
He had taken an office in Victoria Street, at which he received visits
from Russians serving in the British army, from the crews of Russian
ships-of-war lying in British harbours, and from a vast number of
persons of Bolshevik sympathy. Indeed, the number and the quality of
the visitors became so embarrassing to the other tenants that the
landlord evicted him. He had already appointed Mr. John M’Lean, of the
British Socialist Party, to be Bolshevik Consul in Glasgow, and he
himself called at the Russian Embassy and demanded that it should be
handed over to him.
Litvinoff is said to be a native of Baisk, a town in the Baltic
Provinces. Both his parents were Jewish, and his father’s name was
Mordecai Finkelstein, a shopkeeper who used to give private lessons in
Russian and Hebrew. Having associated himself with the revolutionary
movement he left Russia, and after some vicissitudes he came to
London and obtained work at a stationer’s shop under the name of
David Finkelstein. Later he changed his name to Harrison, and became
secretary to a Russian group of political refugees. He married a lady
of Jewish descent, a British subject, though of foreign extraction.
When the Russian Government Committee was formed for the purchase
of war supplies he obtained work in the Agricultural Department,
and he kept his post for some months after the second Revolution,
and left it only in July 1917. He took this post under the name of
Maxim Maximovitch Litvinoff. While Kerensky was in power he showed no
Bolshevik leanings, but these appeared very soon after the subsidy
from the Russian Provisional Government was stopped. He then left the
committee and joined the Russian Delegates Committee with Tchitcherin
at Finsbury House.
Soon after his appointment as Bolshevik representative he began to
associate with English Pacifists. He wrote and circulated a manifesto
which appeared in the _Woolwich Pioneer_, and he was accused of urging
the soldiers who visited his offices to engage in propaganda in their
regiments. As soon as the deputation from the Russian patrol vessel
_Poryv_ returned from seeing him a mutiny broke out on that vessel and
on her sister ship, the _Razsvet_, both lying in Liverpool, and voices
were heard crying, ‘Shoot the Officers!’ A British naval officer came
on board and saved their lives. The crews were taken on shore to the
police cells, and some of them made statements affecting Litvinoff.
Deportation orders were made against them, and they were sent back to
Russia.
Litvinoff’s cup was full. It was decided, none too soon, that he should
leave the country and not return to it. For a man of so humble a
position and so lofty an ambition it was a severe blow. No doubt he had
lain awake at nights dreaming of himself in uniform and decorations
among the Corps Diplomatique at St. James’s, and it was not surprising
that his disappointment should vent itself in bitter antagonism to this
country. We had not quite done with him. The Russians had taken many
British prisoners of war, and they nominated Litvinoff to represent
them in the negotiations for their release.
The high cost of living had provoked an outcry against profiteering,
and was causing very serious unrest. The London docks were choked with
frozen meat that nobody wanted, but flour and other food-stuffs were
deficient. A number of ill-informed people believed that there were
large stores of corn in the granaries of South Russia, and that if the
cost of living was to be reduced in England this corn ought to be got
out even at the cost of entering into quasi-diplomatic relations with
the oligarchy in power in Moscow. An officer of the Ministry of Food
made himself a laughing-stock by writing a grave essay to that effect,
but it was no laughing matter, for there ensued from it the phrase,
‘The bulging corn-bins,’ though it was well known at the time that
if the corn-bins bulged it was because there was nothing in them to
support the walls.
At the beginning of 1920 the Soviet Government was holding a number
of British officers and soldiers as prisoners of war, although we
were not at war with Russia, nor at the time were there any military
preparations against her.
The pressing need was to rescue these prisoners, and Mr. O’Grady, M.P.,
was sent to Reval to confer with Litvinoff, as representative of the
Soviet Government. Now Litvinoff had never concealed his strong desire
to return to England in any capacity which might result eventually in
his recognition as Russian Ambassador. These negotiations were dilatory
and ambiguous, being designed to bring the maximum of pressure to bear
on the British Government through the unfortunate prisoners.
Out of this conference, which did at last result in the release of
the prisoners, grew the Russian Trade Agreement with England. The
trade that has resulted is negligible. We have sold the Russians very
little, we have got from them practically nothing that we wanted, but
a great deal that we did not want at all. In May 1920 MM. Kameneff and
Krassin arrived in London to arrange the Agreement. A Jewish journalist
of ability and experience named Theodore Rothstein at once attached
himself to their delegation. During the War he had been employed in
the Press section of one of the Government Departments, where his
known Communist sympathies were thought unlikely to be dangerous to
the country. He had never lost his Russian nationality, though his
son, who shared his father’s views, having been born in England, was
a British subject. Mr. Rothstein immediately threw all his energies
into a campaign in favour of Communism in this country. He was the
intermediary for subsidies to revolutionary organisations, and his
secret activities were far-reaching. Fortunately, in August 1920,
he was selected to accompany Monsieur Miliutin to Russia, and from
that country he was not allowed to return. A year later he became the
Bolshevik representative in Teheran.
This was not Kameneff’s first visit to England. Not very long after
the Armistice he arrived in this country with another Communist on his
way to Paris and Berne, where they were respectively to become the
permanent Bolshevik representatives. They brought with them a cheque
for a large sum of money and a mass of propaganda literature in leather
trunks, rove with steel chains, which they said had been used by the
Imperial Russian couriers for conveying documents of a specially secret
nature: they chuckled over the manifest impossibility of the British
police examining the contents without leaving their mark behind them.
It was tempting Providence! As it was clear that the French Government
would not admit them and that they could not stay in this country they
were both sent back to Russia with all their luggage, and the cheque
was handed to them on embarkation. There was a good deal of difficulty
in inducing them to go, for one of them declined to get out of bed,
and a gigantic Cossack in physical charge of the party could speak no
language but his own. But a display of tactful firmness by the Special
Branch inspectors got them to King’s Cross just in time to catch the
boat-train.
Under these circumstances it was scarcely to be expected that Kameneff
would be friendly to this country, and he soon began to show his hand.
There were several counts against him. He had deliberately falsified a
despatch on the question of the Polish War at a time when the Councils
of Action were ready to swallow any false information if it came from a
Russian source, and he had been foremost in arranging a Russian subsidy
for the Revolutionary Press in England. He was plainly informed that
the British Government was aware what he had done, and that they did
not regard him as a proper representative of the Russian Government. He
departed to Moscow on the understanding that he would not return.
He was succeeded by Krassin as the head of the present Russian Trade
Delegation. Every member of it gave an undertaking in writing not to
interfere in the internal affairs of this country, or to be interviewed
by representatives of the press: Monsieur Krassin gave a verbal
undertaking to the same effect. While he tried loyally to carry out
this undertaking and to confine himself to the non-political business
for which he was admitted to this country, it was not so with many
members of his staff, and, as propaganda is considered to be the first
duty of every Communist, it was scarcely to be expected that they would
keep any such promise. They had private conferences with members of the
Council of Action, and they supplied the _Daily Herald_ regularly with
‘news’ from Russia.
Bolshevism has been described as an infectious disease rather than
a political creed--a disease which spreads like a cancer, eating
away the tissue of society until the whole mass disintegrates and
falls into corruption. It has other attributes of disease. Captain
McCullough has given an excellent description of its first febrile
stage, when a young Russian bluejacket named Mekarov, who was certified
to be Bolshevik-proof, returned from a Bolshevik meeting mad drunk on
Bolshevik oratory and bad alcohol, and went roaring up and down the
corridor with a revolver threatening to murder the British officers.[4]
It is not recorded whether the same symptoms were observed in Paris
during the Terror, but a German who had been through the recent
revolution in Germany told me that he had noticed the eyes lighted by
dull fire from within. I noticed the same symptoms in a young policeman
who was shouting, ‘Let’s have a revolution!’ during the police strike.
The Russians, the most amiable and the most docile of people, took the
malady in its severest form; but while there were outbursts unknown to
Western Europe all over the country, the propagandist was displaying
almost superhuman industry in Petrograd and Moscow. Leaflets were
poured out from the press by the ton, and the Russian revolutionaries
living in foreign countries were at once mobilised to preach the Red
doctrine.
[4] _A Prisoner of the Reds_, by Francis McCullough, p. 25.
In July 1918 Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who had long been working on
revolutionary lines in opposition to the rest of her family, joined
with Mr. W. F. Watson, of the Rank and File Movement, to found the
People’s Russian Information Bureau on funds provided by the Russians
for the dissemination of Bolshevik literature and the preaching of
revolution.
On 30th August the Police Strike filled the extremists with renewed
hope. For the Londoner the bottom seemed to have fallen out of the
world. That a body so trusted and so patriotic should refuse duty
in the last stages of a war in which so many of their comrades were
fighting, implied that there was none of our settled institutions in
which one could trust any more. There was no real cause for anxiety:
the strike was economic, not revolutionary. For many months an
agitation fostered by an ex-inspector who had left the Metropolitan
Police with a grievance had been carried on, and a Police and Prison
Officers’ Union had secretly been formed. It had gained few adherents
until the rise in the cost of living without a corresponding rise in
pay swelled the membership to several hundreds. The Commissioner, Sir
Edward Henry, was fully alive to this just grievance, and had put
forward proposals which had been approved. If the approval had been
made public perhaps there would have been no strike, but unfortunately
part of the scheme was an endowment for the widows of policemen,
and the actuarial calculations that were involved were holding up
the whole scheme. For some days before the strike there had been a
vigorous campaign of recruiting for the Union, and word had secretly
been passed round that all members were to be ready. The great mass
of the older men knew nothing of these plans. When they came on duty
on the morning of 30th August a strong picket ordered them back, and
as they encountered the picket singly most of them obeyed. A number,
however, refused to be intimidated, and some of these were made
afterwards to pay for their loyalty. Sir Edward Henry was on leave;
Scotland Yard was filled with excited demonstrators in plain clothes.
There were marches to Tower Hill, where the extremist members of the
London Trades Council addressed the men. Special Constables were
hustled and abused, but as might have been expected of the London
driver, the traffic managed itself with surprisingly few accidents.
As soon as their grievances were remedied the great body of the men
returned to duty. Sir Edward Henry retired, receiving a baronetcy
for his services, and Sir Nevil Macready, the Adjutant-General, was
appointed in his place. The Police Union, with the support of many
Labour leaders, was now pressing for recognition, and as a Union
in a disciplined force would have been unworkable, representative
boards forming a direct channel from the men to the Commissioner were
instituted and accepted by the Force. All this was skilfully managed by
Sir Nevil Macready.
The officials of the Police Union, encouraged by revolutionary Labour,
now began to organise a second Police Strike for the ‘full and frank
recognition’ of the Police Union. The authorities were aware of
their plans, and were also aware that the higher pay granted on the
recommendation of Lord Desborough’s Committee had satisfied the
great majority of the men. In August 1919 when the strike was called,
barely one thousand men responded in London. At Liverpool the number
was much larger, and many of the warders at Wormwood Scrubs Prison
also came out. All were dismissed. Among them, no doubt, were many
thoughtless men who had done good service in the War, but had lacked
the backbone to stand out against the revolutionary agitator. Their
places were filled by demobilised soldiers, among whom were a few
demobilised officers. Many of the police-strikers joined the extremists
in a campaign for reinstatement, but on this point the Government has
remained firm.
At this time the great body of Englishmen had only one
preoccupation--the last phases of the War. There were distractions
abroad as well as at home. In Finland the Red Terror had broken out,
and the Finnish Right, for self-defence as they said, called in German
troops for their protection. Many of the outrages during the Red
Terror were committed not by Finns but by the Russian Bolsheviks who
had poured into the country. There followed a reaction, which Finnish
Socialists describe as a White Terror, though in fact it seems to have
been greatly exaggerated.
While the whole world was watching Marshal Foch’s counter-strokes with
bated breath it had no time to think of revolution, and even now it
is not generally known that revolutions on the Russian plan actually
broke out on Armistice Day, 1918, in Switzerland and Holland. They
failed because the Swiss and the Dutch are not Russians. Immediately,
the stable populations of these countries determined to take no further
risk. In Switzerland military motor-lorries drove up to the door of
the Soviet representatives, and the whole gang, men and women, with
their belongings were packed into the vehicles and conducted to the
frontier under a military escort. In Holland the orderly people formed
a Burgerwacht, a sort of volunteer special constabulary recruited
from all classes down to the humblest workman, and for the moment the
revolutionary movement was stifled. In Hungary Bela Kun, acting under
the orders of Lenin, produced a revolution on the Russian model, and
that unspeakable ruffian, Szamueli, who ‘committed suicide’ and so
escaped the penalty for his crimes, ravaged the country for five months
and brought it to ruin.
Our first troubles in England arose out of demobilisation. As long
as hostilities continued no soldier minded going back to France, but
men did not at all see the necessity of going back when there was no
more fighting to do. On 10th January 1919 there were military riots at
Folkestone, and shortly afterwards at Calais, and there was a feeling
throughout the army that the system of demobilisation in liberating
first the key industry men, irrespective of their length of service,
was an injustice.
During the first month of 1919 there were minor disturbances at several
of the camps, chiefly among the technical services, in which a large
proportion of the men belonged to Trade Unions.
In the months following the Armistice some of the societies of
ex-servicemen began to give anxiety. The most dangerous at the moment
seemed to be the Sailors’, Soldiers’, and Airmen’s Union, which had
whole-heartedly accepted the Soviet idea and was in touch with the
police-strikers who had been dismissed, with the more revolutionary
members of the London Trades Councils, and with the Herald League. The
‘Comrades of the Great War’ never gave any cause for anxiety, nor, on
the whole, did the National Federation of Ex-Servicemen, though some
of its branches were swayed by a few of the more extreme members.
During February 1919 a young Russian Bolshevik violinist was touring
the country and drawing large audiences of working men and women not
so much to listen to his playing as to the revolutionary speeches with
which he interspersed his performances. His was a typical case of the
epidemic in its febrile stage, a stage from which the British appear
to be immune. In the disturbed state of the public mind it was decided
that Soermus would be better in his own country, and his triumphant
tour was interrupted in order that he might be put on board a boat
which was about to sail for Norway. This happened to be fixed for the
day before the ‘Hands off Russia’ meeting at the Albert Hall, at which
every section of the revolutionary movement was represented on the
platform. Soermus was to have been on the platform at this meeting.
There was a large strike on the Clyde at the moment, and many of the
speakers really believed that it was the beginning of the General
Strike which was to merge into Revolution. At that moment we were
probably nearer to very serious disturbances than we have been at any
time since the Bristol Riots of 1831. A few days later the reaction
began. On 12th February the Clyde strikers resumed work, and on the
27th the National Industrial Conference met.
In March the storm centre moved from the engineering industries to
the Triple Alliance, and there were signs of co-operation between
ex-servicemen and the extreme Labour organisations. The Sailors’,
Soldiers’, and Airmen’s Union exacted a pledge from its members that
they would take no part against strikers, and certain branches of the
National Federation of Ex-Servicemen were for supporting the miners on
strike in South Wales. This attitude was perfectly natural. The men
had been led by public speeches to imagine that they were coming home
to find things much easier for them than they had been before the War:
they found a shortage not only of houses but of many other comforts,
such as beer. But there were hopeful signs: the Workers’ Committees
were losing power; the propaganda in favour of shorter hours had
failed; the ballot of the Electrical Trade Union on the question of
striking to secure a forty-four-hour week had left the extremists in
the minority, and the report of the Joint Committee on the Industrial
Conference was a step towards a better understanding between Capital
and Labour. All this illustrated a fact too little realised in
England--namely, that the great body of Labour opinion is not and never
has been in favour of violence. Unfortunately, the older men prefer
the quiet of their homes in the evening to attending stormy branch
meetings at which a number of hot-headed youths make speeches about the
class-war without knowing about the interests of their trade, and howl
down any moderate speaker who talks common sense. Consequently, the
extremists have things entirely their own way. They pass resolutions
which are sent to headquarters as representing the real views of the
branch, and it is not until the time comes for a ballot that the real
weakness of their position is made evident.
During April there was a wide extension of craft Unionism.
Agricultural labourers, shop assistants, policemen, and actors became
Trade Unionists. Ex-servicemen had become persuaded that employers
were attempting to re-engage men on pre-war rates, and there were
frequent demonstrations. As long as the international movement was
concerned only with the general interests of Labour it was a more or
less academic matter, but now for the first time we had in Europe
a revolutionary Government amply supplied with funds, which was
prepared to finance and instruct the revolutionary agitators in every
civilised country in the hope of producing a World Revolution, without
which its own tenure of office was recognised to be precarious.
For the first time in history, the revolutionary agitator need not
be a fanatic, for his profession had now become lucrative, and a
loud voice and a glib tongue became worth anything from £6 to £10
a week. The Soviet Government, or rather, the Council of the Third
International, under which it chose to screen its activities, had been
told by its representative in England that a revolution was certain
within six months. In France and Italy it was to come even sooner,
and in Germany the pressure of the extreme Left would soon force the
majority Socialists out of power. Then the effigy of Karl Marx would be
worshipped in every capital, and the world would have entered into the
Millennium.
One result of all this was to augment the little band of intellectual
revolutionaries who have always bloomed among us modest and unseen.
Most of these are men who see in a future Labour Government a short cut
to power. They think that it is easy to be a Triton among minnows. Not
a few of them are ex-officers in the navy and army; and even among the
undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge, and in one or two of the public
schools, there are little cliques of ‘Parlour Bolsheviks.’
At the Municipal Elections in November 1919 the Labour candidates had
a sweeping victory. Many had declared themselves revolutionary, and
were determined to convert the municipal organisations into municipal
Soviets, but responsibility soon began to dim these fiery spirits, and
it was maliciously reported that many of them were more concerned with
the social status of their wives and with the question of payment for
their municipal work than they were with revolution.
Then began the great propaganda campaign for nationalisation of the
mines. More than a million leaflets were printed, countless speeches
were delivered, and for a moment it seemed as if a passion for
nationalisation was to sweep the country. Soon, however, it became
evident that nobody quite knew what nationalisation meant. Many miners
thought they were to own the mines themselves and work the number
of hours that happened to suit them at a scale of pay laid down by
themselves. When these were told that the Government was to own the
mines and that they were to have civil servants as their bosses they
became grave. The moulders’ strike was gradually paralysing many
industries and swelling the ranks of the unemployed. In December there
were rumours of lightning strikes among the dockers, as well as the
railwaymen, and the abolition of the unemployment donation was causing
widespread discontent. Ex-soldiers began to claim that the National
Relief and the Canteen Funds should be used for their benefit. The
year 1919 closed with the uneasy feeling that, though we might be
readjusting ourselves more smoothly than any other nation, we must be
prepared for serious disturbances.
Forecasts in political matters are proverbially wrong. By the end
of the year the great question of nationalisation was in a state of
suspended animation, scarcely to be distinguished from dissolution.
The Councils of Action which in August had almost threatened to become
Soviets were now derisively termed in Labour circles ‘Councils of
Inaction,’ and little more was to be heard of them. Of the really great
menace to civilisation that was so soon to fall upon the world nobody
seemed to be thinking at all.
About this time I remember having a long conversation with the late Dr.
Rathenau before he accepted office in Germany. He said: ‘Hitherto we
have always considered the consumer as a constant factor, and concerned
ourselves with over and under-production. Before the War we never
thought that the consumer could cease to consume. That is the real
cause of the trade depression and unemployment.’
The trade depression, dark as it is, has had a sobering effect on the
wilder spirits in revolutionary labour. Trade Unions had blundered
into the political field, and had tried to coerce the Government on
matters of foreign policy which they did not understand. Many working
men were under the delusion that the Councils of Action had prevented
the Government from going to war with Russia, and they were considering
what they should do about the Irish, the Japanese, and the Indian
questions. The effect of all this had been temporarily to impair the
influence of Parliament, but the British working man never really takes
much interest in foreign affairs, and this insular tendency has been
the great stumbling-block of revolutionary agitation.
It was possible about this time to make an estimate of the number of
class-conscious Communists who would be prepared to lay down their
lives for their ideals. The membership of the Communist parties was
then put at 20,000, but after a close study of individuals, extended
over many months, I was inclined to put the number of would be martyrs
at well under twenty. The Communists were quite aware that, though
minorities could make revolutions, when one embarks upon revolution
by bloodshed it is well to have the support of numbers. Otherwise,
martyrdom may loom a little too near. It was all very well for Mr. Tom
Mann to boast that in Russia 60,000 Communists were in control of more
than 80,000,000 Russians, but where would 20,000 British Communists,
largely diluted with aliens and Jews, be when they tried to hold down
45,000,000 in this country? The Russians had devised a recruiting
system of their own. In every Union a ‘cell’ was to be established
which would grow unseen, as in the incipient stage of cancer, until the
heart of the Union was eaten out. They counted upon the behaviour of
some of the leaders of British Trade Unionism, who seemed to favour the
dictatorship of the Proletariat, not knowing that the more sober had
been driven into the Councils of Action by the fear of being left out
in the cold.
CHAPTER XXV
THE RETURN TO SANITY
As I have said, publicity has been the best weapon of defence against
the forces of disorder. The fact is that there is little love lost
between revolutionary leaders, and an atmosphere of cold suspicion
broods over their conspiracies. At one period German Communism was rent
in twain by excessive subsidies from Moscow, because those who did not
get what they held to be their fair share turned upon their leaders.
I suppose that few men in England have had to read so many
revolutionary speeches and revolutionary pamphlets and leaflets as
I have. All display the same ignorance of elementary economics--an
ignorance so childish that it cannot be assumed. They seemed to think
that capital was gold kept in a box, perhaps under the capitalist’s
bed, perhaps in the vaults of a bank, and that when the ‘proletariat’
became dictators they had only to dip into the box to get all the
capital they needed for running a Communist State. If the capital ran
short they could always raise money by taxation. It had never dawned
upon them that there is comparatively very little gold; that under
the Communist State there will be nobody to tax, and that as soon as
private credit is destroyed capital goes up in smoke, as the Marxists
in Russia have found out for themselves.
Another of their fallacies is the belief, quite honestly entertained,
that the proletariat is 90 per cent. of the population, whereas, in
fact, the people who work with their hands, and their families, form,
in a country with a large middle class such as England, actually
little more than half the population, and that the other half would not
sit down tamely under the forcible rule of the least educated moiety of
the community. Under the stress of unemployment they are beginning to
understand that these islands cannot support a population of 45,000,000
except by foreign trade, but they do not even now know how much capital
the people of this country have invested in undertakings abroad.[5]
[5] The _Statist_ gives the value of our foreign investments as
follows:--
£ India and Colonies 481,529,927 Argentine 118,339,585 Brazil
88,227,036 Chile 27,563,340 Cuba 14,563,385 Mexico 33,822,322 Peru
6,988,691 United States 164,201,850 Rest of America 11,128,188 Austria
6,247,896 Bulgaria 3,819,499 Denmark 6,844,600 Egypt 6,427,577 Finland
3,441,450 Greece 3,301,644 Hungary 2,077,240 Norway 4,833,250 Roumania
4,429,875 Russia 46,214,906 Siberia 994,993 Sweden 4,556,000 Turkey
4,745,869 Other European countries 9,280,176 China 27,805,737 Dutch
Colonies 12,236,971 Japan 22,447,240 Persia 2,706,250 Philippines
2,238,283 Siam 1,102,500 Rest of Asia 175,000 Africa 2,702,603 Others
2,436,146 -------------- Total £1,127,431,129 --------------
It has never been explained why the political phenomena in one country
appear simultaneously in practically all civilised countries. The
general wave of unrest among Labour in 1912 was not a local phenomenon;
it was like the wave that ran through Europe in 1848, though of course
it was less marked. From Norway to Italy, from Siberia to Portugal, the
same phenomenon was to be noticed.
As I said in an earlier chapter, on Armistice Day there were
simultaneous attempts at revolution in Switzerland and Holland,
countries which had suffered severely from the War though they took no
part in it. Italy and Spain were unstable, and in the United States and
Canada the spread of Bolshevik ideas had begun to cause serious alarm.
The Americans and the Canadians had passed legislation making it a
penal offence to advocate a change in the form of government by force
or violence, or even to carry the Red Flag in processions. In America
they proceeded to apply the new law so drastically that there was some
reaction. As long as the much abused ‘Dora,’ by which the Defence of
the Realm Act had come popularly to be known, was in force, there was
no need for fresh legislation in England, but when the Act lapsed on
1st September 1921, the defects in the English laws against sedition
began acutely to be felt. There was, it is true, an Act which gave
power to the Government to declare a state of emergency, when certain
powers made under the Emergency Powers Act would come into force, but
until a state of emergency is declared the authorities have to rely
upon the old Sedition Laws, which entail indictment for seditious
libel or seditious conspiracy, or for incitement to injure persons or
property.
Now procedure by indictment is a slow process, and generally out
of proportion to the offence: the offender is given what he most
desires--an exaggerated importance and advertisement. If there happens
to be on the jury one person who sympathises with his views or is
terrorised by an Anarchist society, he will escape altogether, and even
if he is convicted and sentenced he must be treated as a first-class
misdemeanant with privileges which, to persons of his stamp, reduces
imprisonment to the level of a rather amusing experience. Moreover,
the delay between the offence and the conviction deprives the sentence
of its value as a deterrent. In the provinces a seditious speaker
may have to wait four or five months for his trial. By that time the
emergency which made it necessary for the Government to proceed against
him has gone, and the prosecution is then accused of vindictiveness in
continuing the proceedings when the need for a warning has lapsed.
What is wanted is summary procedure, where the offender can receive a
short deterrent sentence. It is true that he may now be summoned to be
bound over to be of good behaviour, but this penalty is ludicrously
inadequate. As it stands, the law punishes a subordinate who does some
violent act at the instigation of another, and leaves practically
untouched the organiser of a campaign of violence and outrage. After
the lapse of D.O.R.A. there was a very marked recrudescence of
incitement to violence. It is quite true that most of the inflammatory
speeches and writings of irresponsible agitators may be treated with
contempt, but from time to time cases do occur in which such incitement
cannot safely be left unchecked. It has always been noticed that a
timely prosecution and conviction of one or two persons has a very
sobering effect on the rest, and that when an agitator is sent to
prison for two or three months he never regains his old ascendency.
At present it is not an offence to introduce money or valuables from
abroad for the purpose of inciting people to violent revolution in this
country. Any Bill prepared for the House of Commons should make it an
offence to import any document of which the publication would be an
offence in the United Kingdom, except for purposes of study, and any
money or valuables brought in with the above-mentioned object.
It is curious now to look back upon our purblind extravagance during
the two years following the war. We were far more alive in the early
part of 1918 to the need for rigid economy after the War than we were
in those boisterous days of rejoicing. The banks were full of money.
There were strikes, but every one felt that as soon as the moulders’
strike was liquidated there would be a boom in all industries. We
continued feasting and dancing for many months. As far as unemployment
is concerned, if people had been as careful about expenditure as they
are now, they would have money free for purchasing what they need.
Disastrous as it was economically, the coal strike which began on 18th
August 1920 let light into many dark corners. It was the last chance of
the Triple Alliance. It must be confessed that the coal-owners might
have smoothed away many difficulties if they had issued at an earlier
stage a statement of their case in simple terms and plain figures. As
it was, not only the miners but the public failed to understand what
their offer really was. Many of the steadier miners abstained from
voting in the ballot, and the extremists had things all their own way.
There was an overwhelming majority for rejecting the owners’ terms.
This brought matters to a head, and there were few people who did
not think that we were in for what amounted to a general strike.
Knowing that if the other Unions called out their men a minority
only would respond, I felt certain that some pretext would be found
at the eleventh hour for withdrawing from the false position. At the
historic meeting in one of the committee rooms at the House of Commons,
when certain members sought enlightenment, it cannot be said that
the spokesman for the owners made matters much clearer, whereas Mr.
Frank Hodges conducted his case with the greatest ability. It was by
accident that he happened to be in the lobby at all, but many crises
are resolved by accident. He spoke the absolute truth when he said that
the miners were less concerned about the National Pool than they were
about their wages. Comparatively few miners understood what a National
Pool really was; they did understand what a cut in wages meant, and
there were many wild stories about cuts of 9s. a week. The surrender
of the National Pool was the turning-point. The strike had been called
for midnight on 15th April, and still I felt sure that the hard facts,
which must be known to the railway and transport leaders, would prevail.
The Government was right in taking no chances. The organisation for
feeding the large cities was even better than it was in the railway
strike of 1919, and as a means of coercing the public the strike must
have failed in any case. Everything turned upon the meeting of the
other two Unions. It was a stormy meeting, and the leaders were glad to
have the excuse of the surrender of the National Pool for calling the
strike off.
When the dust and the shouting had died down, and the great captains
were denouncing one another in private, it was possible to see what
15th April, ‘Black Friday,’ which the _Daily Herald_ hoped to be
able to refer to as ‘Red Friday,’ really meant. ‘Yesterday,’ said
its Editorial, ‘was the heaviest defeat that has befallen the Labour
movement within the memory of man.’ If for ‘Labour movement’ the writer
had said ‘Communist movement,’ the statement would have been accurate.
Men were becoming weary of the incessant patter about class
consciousness, and were beginning to understand that in the economic
crisis which has involved the entire world only the nations who can
pull together can hope to weather the storm.
The coal strike was economic and not revolutionary until the Communists
tried to exploit it as a ‘Jumping-Off Place’ for ‘The Day.’
But the _Herald_ should have worn a black border for the Triple
Alliance. Like other Alliances known to history, it was all right
as long as it was never asked to function. In fact, it lay in the
sky like a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. Every now and then it
blew itself out portentously and obscured the sun. The clouds were
big with thunder, and men trembled, and then, as sometimes happens
in the firmament, they dispersed without a storm. It had been so
in the railway strike. We went about with bowed heads for quite a
week. The day was fixed when we were to wear out our shoe-leather by
tramping about our business, because the streets were to be silent
and grass-grown, and the rails of the Underground were to rust
in their chairs, but at the ninth or tenth hour there appeared a
Conciliation Committee, consisting of the two component bodies of the
Triple Alliance who had not come out and wanted to hold back by the
coat-tails those who had. It was not, let it be understood, out of pure
philanthropy, but for that very cogent reason that if they did call a
strike among their own men the strike would be abortive because a very
large percentage of them would stay at work.
This time it was not the tenth but the eleventh hour. It was not the
Government preparations, the trains of lorries, the gathering Reserves,
the stirring recruiting of the Defence Force, but the fact, which was
borne in upon the delegates at their secret meeting late on Friday
afternoon, that they might call a strike at 10 P.M. but that nobody
would be a penny the worse, that all the essential services would be
maintained, not by volunteers but by the professionals themselves,
and--and this was the most important point--that the leaders would be
left out in the cold and might very well lose their jobs.
It would not be right to say that the Triple Alliance is dead and lies
upon its bier unwept, but rather that it never existed, except as a
figment of the brain, and that it never can exist where so many diverse
interests are concerned and as long as human nature, the one immutable
thing in this world of ours, remains unchanged.
Towards the middle of 1921 it became known that the supply of
gold in Moscow was running short. This was borne out by a growing
disinclination on the part of the Third International to subsidise
revolutionary movements abroad; but at the same time the Third
International awoke to the possibilities of turning the great masses
of unemployed in all countries to account. A document that had been
circulated in Norway showed how this was to be done. The unemployed
were to organise themselves into bodies with a Central Executive
Committee. They were to go down to the relieving officer and demand
a rate of relief equal to the Trade Union rate of wages. The local
authority would then be compelled to draw upon the National Exchequer,
and in a short time the country would be involved in bankruptcy. As
the Third International put it, ‘By uniting the unemployed with the
proletarian vanguards in the struggle for the social revolution,
the Communist Party will restrain the most rebellious and impatient
elements among the unemployed from individual desperate acts,
and enable the entire mass actively to support under favourable
circumstances the struggle of the proletariat.... In a word, this
entire mass, from a reserve army of industry will be transferred
into an active army of the Revolution’; and in another place, ‘As
Municipalities are more likely to yield to demands, the first attacks
of this kind should be made upon Municipalities, and made in such a way
as to exclude any possibility of tracing them back to a general scheme.
The demands should appear to be local, having no apparent connection
with similar attempts in the same country.’
These instructions were acted upon in London and other places. Most of
the agitators among the unemployed were Communists with headquarters
at the International Socialist Club, which had received a subsidy of
£1000. It is unnecessary to add that they were drawing salaries.
The Unemployed leaders did not find the Guardians as pliable as they
had hoped. Even when they engaged in a system of bullying individuals,
as in the case of a certain chairman of a London Board who was a
beneficed clergyman, and whose church was visited with the express
intention of disturbing the service, they could not extort grants
approaching what they demanded, and the Boards which were controlled by
Labour members had no balance in their banks, and could not obtain an
over-draft without the consent of the Ministry of Health, which, of
course, laid down a reasonable scale beyond which they could not go.
I do not know that the fear of being surcharged personally would have
deterred them, for most of these gentlemen, having few possessions,
would welcome the advertisement of an attempt at distraint upon their
goods, but the impossibility of getting money from the bank was a
difficulty not to be got over. The real unemployed took no part in
these demonstrations. They were orderly and reasonable folk who had
begun to realise that unemployment was a condition far beyond the
control of the Government of a single country, but a world-phenomenon
which had to be lived through as patiently as possible, and
consequently the revolutionary agitators failed again.
The famine in Russia brought a new factor into the situation. Russia
is so huge a country that there have been always periodical famines in
one part of it or another. As long as there was an efficient Central
Government it was possible to relieve the want in one province by the
superfluities in another, but under the Communists the entire railway
system had broken down, and it was no longer possible to carry supplies
to the Volga. So the Communists began to appeal to foreign countries.
They represented the famine as having been caused by the intervention
of Capitalist States, and when this argument was found unconvincing
they accused first Denikin and Kolchak, and then the weather. The
Central Government did not seem to care how many of the wretched
peasants perished, but they did want to convince the distant provinces
that it was only to the Communists that they could look for relief.
Their great dread was that some one else would take the credit from
them.
Strange stories reached us from time to time. In some provinces the
Bolsheviks had made a clean sweep of the priests and churches, and in
many of the villages there had been no religious teaching for four
years. In a few of these it was alleged that people had reverted to
paganism, and had hoisted the head of a bull into a tree and made
offerings to it. These stories were never confirmed, but they are
consistent with the religious aspect of the Russian peasant character.
About the middle of 1921 the Communists realised that it was impossible
longer to maintain the pretence that Communism was an economic success.
They had spent their gold reserve lavishly, and they had got very
little in return for it, and now they saw the day approaching when
there would be nothing left. Faced with these prospects, there was
nothing for it but to agree with their enemies, the Capitalists,
quickly. True, they could continue to hold the reins of power because
they had been careful to disarm all the Red Army except a few trusted
battalions, but inevitably a Government which cannot pay its way, is
bankrupt as a concern, and has made it impossible for its subjects to
pay any taxes, must fall, and so the Lenin Party announced publicly
that it intended to veer to the Right. This announcement was hailed by
all the people who wanted to begin trading with Russia as a genuine
conversion. It was bitterly opposed in Russia by the ‘die-hard’
Communists, who argued quite reasonably that the admission of the
foreign capitalist or, indeed, of any foreigner at all, would sound the
death-knell of the Soviet. And then M. Krassin took upon himself to
explain what the Moderates really meant by reversion to capitalistic
principles. They would die sooner than surrender the railways or big
industries, or land or mines, to private ownership: all they intended
was to grant leases to concessionaires, who would be permitted to
work their concessions under Soviet control, giving a share of their
profits to the Soviet Government, who would provide them with the
necessary labour. The Communists would not listen to a suggestion that
they should recognise their debts to foreigners until the foreign
Governments had agreed fully to recognise them as a Sovereign State.
He seemed to have a child-like belief that political recognition would
immediately result in financial advances to the Russian Government.
He, too, appeared to believe that the British Government keeps vast
hoards of gold in its vaults, and that all it has to do when it makes
an advance is to scoop up so many millions and hand them over to M.
Krassin himself. After all, his own Government, as long as it had
gold to play with, financed people in just this way. But credits are
provided ultimately by the man in the street, who has outlets for his
savings in nearly every part of the world among honest men who pay
their debts, and why should he, therefore, adventure his money among
people who make a boast of their contempt for monetary obligations, and
who have proved that even when they had money they lacked the ordinary
business ability for turning it to account?
All those who have had to do with Russia realise that it is useless
to talk of reconstructing the country until the Communist power has
become as it did in Hungary--a nightmare of the past. All this talk of
conferences extending from Prinkipo to Genoa is merely putting off that
inevitable day.
The fixed idea that without exports from Russia prices cannot fall in
England is a very curious obsession not only of Labour but of some of
those who have access to the Trade Returns. In 1900 Russia exported
very little to foreign countries at all, and the world got on. In the
next decade the exports gradually increased until in the record year,
1913, they amounted to £28,000,000, but this was a small proportion
of the £600,000,000 of our foreign imports. In that year we exported
£17,000,000 to Russia. The bulk of the Russian exports was cereals,
of which nearly all was produced by the large landowners, who have
ceased to exist. The peasants, who then had manure from their beasts,
exported very little: their surplus went to the large towns. But now
the beasts, like the landowners, are gone. On the Soviet figures, the
horses have been reduced from 28,000,000 to 3,000,000, of which only
half are fit for agricultural work. Think what this means in a country
like Russia, where every pood of produce has to be taken an average
of thirty miles to the nearest railway, and where ploughing is the
first essential! What the Soviet Government thinks of it is shown by a
curious little incident. Early in the year M. Krassin sent to a firm
of agricultural machine-makers the working drawings of a human tractor
which had been prepared in Moscow by a Russian engineer. It was to
be made on the principle of the trolleys used by platelayers on the
railway. It was to have two levers, each operated by three men--forced
labour, of course--and the seventh man was to steer. A plough was to
be attached to it. The firm refused the order for the twofold reason
that the machine would scarcely be powerful enough to carry the seven
men without the plough, and that it was inhuman to employ men to do the
work of animals under such conditions.
If trade with Russia is essential to a low cost of living in this
country, why have prices continued to fall? The reason is given in
the Board of Trade returns. The world, having done without Russian
exports for eight years, has readjusted itself. The cereals, butter,
eggs, timber, and flax, which we formerly had from Russia, are now
being produced in Canada, the Argentine, and other countries. Half the
flax-producing provinces of Russia now lie outside her frontiers. The
world can do without Russia until such time as she recovers her sanity.
As long as she continues to tolerate the form of government that has
brought her to economic ruin she is beyond help.
Trade with Russia has been opened for the past eighteen months, and
there has been no trade. This has not been for lack of enterprise
on the part of traders. It is due to the fact that Russia now has
practically nothing to give in exchange, but there is the further
factor that one cannot trade with people of bad faith. Two or three
vessels carried goods to Odessa last winter. They were not allowed to
sell them except at prices fixed by the Moscow Soviet, and these prices
were below cost.
A Belgian firm undertook to repair and run the Odessa tramways. They
had to pay a large deposit for the concession. As soon as the tramways
were running the local Soviet stepped in and sequestrated the tramway
as Soviet property, and when the Syndicate protested it was threatened
with arrest by the Tche-ka. It then demanded the return of the deposit,
which at first was refused: in the end half only of the deposit was
repaid.
It is difficult for those who do not know the Communists to understand
this policy of suicide. The fact is that only 10 per cent. of the
Communists in Russia are men of education; the remaining 90 per cent.
are illiterate workmen, peasants and gaol-birds, who have achieved by
the Revolution a position of power and comparative affluence which they
never dreamed of under the old régime. They have just sense enough to
know that, if foreign capital is admitted into the country and the
Russians are freed from the Terror, their day will be done. Lenin and
his colleagues may propose; they, the majority, dispose; and while
Lenin may quite honestly mean what he says about a change of heart he
is powerless to carry out his promises.
One of the most curious of the obsessions is the fear of anarchy if the
Reds fall. There is anarchy already. Russia is the last country in the
world to fall into the sort of anarchy feared by our statesmen. For
centuries she has been accustomed to village councils, with which the
Czarist Government interfered very little. She has them now, and all
that will happen when the Communists fall, as fall they must, is that
the country will break up into these little entities, each stretching
out hands to its neighbours. In such conditions the last state of
Russia will be better than the first.
Meanwhile, the real Government, so far as there is a Central Government
at all, is the Tche-ka, the Extraordinary Commission, which has changed
its name but not its nature. It is now called a political committee
under the Commissary of the Interior, and in due course, when its
new name becomes as much hated as its old name, it will change it
again. Even Lenin himself would not be exempt from its attentions,
and he knows it. This terror that walks by day and night is the real
Government of Russia.
The conviction, honestly held by all classes of Germans, that the War
was forced upon them by an inexorable ring of steel that hemmed them
in, is not to be dismissed lightly as the figment of their military
party. It was a sub-conscious impulse like that of a hive of bees
before they swarm, and, like the bees, they were armed with stings. It
is even now idle to point out to them that their surplus population was
as free as air; the sparsely-populated regions of the earth lay open
to it; it could do as so many thousands of Germans had done, and form
German-speaking communities, not in German tropical colonies, which
have never been successful, but in temperate zones where men can reap
the fruits of their own labour; that was not their vision of a place
in the sun. Nor is their conviction shaken by the argument that by
their industry and their commercial enterprise abroad they were already
beginning to inherit the earth. Perhaps the Great War was the first
premonition of what is to be the destiny of poor humanity. Far back in
the ages the millions of Asia, driven out of their own lands by drought
and famine, swarmed westward and swept away the Roman Empire, but then
there was land enough for all, and as a torrent pouring down a mountain
cañon comes to rest in the broad waters of the lake, so the irruptions
from the East spent themselves and subsided. But when there is no
longer any lake, what then? In the time of Elizabeth the population of
England and Wales was 5,000,000, as late as 1750 it was only 6,500,000,
and in 1801, the year of the first census, under 9,000,000. Up to that
date these islands were self-supporting. During the last century it
has increased at a rate of more than 2,000,000 every ten years, in
spite of emigration, and if we were cut off from supplies from abroad
we should be starving in a few weeks. The population of the earth is
now estimated at something over 1,500,000,000: at the present rate of
increase it may be 3,000,000,000 in less than a century. The empty
spaces of the world are rapidly filling, and when all those in which
men can support themselves are filled up, posterity will have to look
to itself. Nature’s old remedy, plague, and the early death of the
weakly and the ailing, have been subdued, and unless the birth-rate
is artificially regulated the sub-conscious swarming instinct, having
no outlet, must behave as it does in the hive, and whole nations and
classes will fall upon one another for the right to live. Beside such a
vital struggle the Great War will seem as insignificant as the Crimea.
The generation upon which this catastrophe falls will find plenty of
reasons to justify the breach of Peace, and it will remain ignorant of
the root cause to the end.
Therefore it is idle to think that the world has seen the last of War:
conferences on disarmament and the revival of world trade are mere
temporary palliatives which can do nothing for any generation but our
own, for the one unchanging thing in the world is human nature, and the
strongest instinct in human nature is self-preservation. This terror
will not come in our time nor in that of our children, but come it will.
Sub-conscious impulse is manifested in little things as well as in
great. The dress of women is passing through a period of decolletage as
it did immediately after the Napoleonic campaigns, and after all the
great wars of modern times. There was always a marked deterioration
of public morals in every country after visitations of plague, as if
the race were unconsciously obeying an instinct to quicken up the
process of replacement. Fashion is supposed to be controlled by the
dressmakers: is it not more likely that the dressmakers are merely
quick to interpret the inclinations of those whom their clothes are to
adorn? A whole generation of young women have lost the mates of their
own ages; another generation who were in the schoolroom during those
tremendous years are treading hard upon their heels. Are they to lose
their birthright of wifehood and motherhood, and tamely be laid upon
the shelf? Their sub-conscious instinct impels them to attract; their
dressmaker divines the impulse, and obeys it. The dress shrinks to its
narrowest dimensions.
We have lived through War: we have yet to live through Peace with the
economic fabric of civilisation shaken if not shattered. Let those who
feel it difficult to face the lean years read the intimate records of
the ten years after Waterloo, and take heart again.
Transcriber note
Table of contents has been completed with the addition of Page xi.
Spelling and punctuation errors have been corrected.
Italics have been enclosed in underscores.
Smallcaps have been capitalised.
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