The German Spy System from Within. Anonymous
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disconcerting questions, I succeeded in eliciting the very illuminating fact that they were unable to act without the consent of the Home Office! Why, one may ask, is it withheld? Why should we risk our well-being by allowing these hot-beds of conspiracy and crime to be officially protected, while a man may be hauled before the magistrate for the heinous offence of not having a rear-lamp to his cycle? What a comedy!
Mr. Justice Ridley has rightly said: “We must make an end of spies.” Yet the fact that spies are being officially winked at can no longer be doubted. Before me, I have fully two hundred cases reported by responsible citizens in various parts of the country in which the “authorities”—who seem, by the way, to have no authority at all—have refused even to make the most superficial inquiry, or else a constable in full uniform has been sent to interview the person under suspicion!
Let us calmly consider the present situation. The mystery of the official protection afforded to spies has been greatly increased during the month of March, and the public confidence has been further shaken in consequence of the statement of Mr. Bonar Law in the House of Commons, who not only declared that there were, on March 1st, 600 male alien enemies still residing on or near the coast, but also made a most interesting revelation. The Admiralty, he said, in order to test whether signalling was really going on from the shore, sent a trawler to sea with instructions to show German signal-lights. And these were instantly answered!
What was done? Nothing! And, judging from the experience of the public, this is hardly surprising. Perhaps a case in point may be of interest. In the middle of February, from an officer in His Majesty’s Service, I received information that certain highly suspicious signals were being made nightly between the Kent coast and London. Therefore I went forth at once to investigate, in company with the officer in question, who is a qualified signaller and wireless expert, and a non-commissioned officer also qualified in signalling, while I myself know something of signalling and wireless. For a fortnight we were out nearly every night in a motor-car—sometimes watching from the tops of hills, a cold and weary vigil from dark to dawn—until we had established, beyond all shadow of doubt, the houses whence the mysterious lights emanated. These houses—several of them being residences of well-to-do people, and all in high commanding positions, had, in each case, an alien living in them, whose name and calling I succeeded in obtaining. Then, one night, while posted on a hill commanding nearly the whole of Surrey, and having taken down their code-messages on many occasions, we resolved to make a test, and with a powerful signalling-apparatus, I suddenly replied to one of the signals, repeated part of the code-message, and in pretence of not understanding the remainder, asked for its repetition. At once it was flashed to me and read by all three of us! In the message, which, later on, was submitted to an expert in ciphers, occurred the numeral five. It was more than a coincidence, I think, that only an hour before that message had been flashed, five German aeroplanes had left the Belgian coast on their way to England!
On three separate occasions, from various high positions in Kent and Surrey, we flashed German signals, which were at once responded to. Then, having fully established that messages were being nightly so exchanged, to and from the metropolis, always with the same three code-letters as prefix, and having definitely fixed those houses harbouring the spies, I considered it my duty, as an Englishman serving his country, to call in the assistance of the Intelligence Department of the War Office, and to them I furnished a full report, together with the signals sent and received.
Though my facts were vouched for by three officers and a signaller, and four civilians. I, at first, did not even receive the courtesy of a reply to what I had declared to be a matter of extreme urgency.
Two nights after sending in my report, some officers of the Royal Naval Air Service discovered a powerful car containing two men reconnoitring certain main roads in a Surrey valley actually beneath the residence of one of the enemy signallers, and they naturally stopped it. The strangers were questioned, so suspiciously were they acting, while in the meantime one of the officers reported by telephone to the Admiralty and asked for instructions. But the amazing reply received was that they had no authority to stop the car! As for myself, I again wrote to the Intelligence Department of the War Office, but after eleven days all they would deign me was a mere printed notice informing me that my report had been received. To this I replied, asking that immediate steps might be taken to investigate and arrest the signallers as dangerous to the State—more dangerous perhaps even than the cyclist without his back-lamp—but to that letter I have not even received an acknowledgment! Another instance may perhaps be of interest. I discovered that, among the Belgian refugees from Antwerp who had received charitable aid in one of our biggest seaports, were two men upon whom considerable suspicion had fallen. One posed as a smooth-tongued priest, and wore that garb, while the other was a “friend,” apparently somewhat lower in the social scale. The priest asserted that he had been head of a college near Antwerp; and in consequence of his pious profession, he was, as was but natural, made much of by the ladies in the city in question. One day this priest, who it had been noted had been unusually inquisitive, and had been constantly strolling round the extensive docks and quays, and had watched the military preparations in case of a raid, suddenly applied to the local Belgian Relief Committee for money to return to Antwerp. Questioned, he told rather a lame story about some of his pupils having returned, while his friend, who also applied at the same time for leave to return, gave as excuse that he had to go to look after his cows! One wonders how many the Germans had left him. Or, perhaps he was a humorist, and meant the Black Cows—those mystic signs employed by Von Kluck’s spies. The Relief Committee, apparently, were not exactly satisfied with the stories; nevertheless, they eventually granted the pair money for their journey back to Belgium.
A report of this I furnished immediately to the Intelligence Department, offering to send them information when the pair left the seaport, in order that they might be met on arrival in London and questioned, and I also supplied them with the time of the train by which they were to leave London for Flushing. The whole matter was ignored, and an official acknowledgment, printed, of course, was sent to me three days after the fair had gone across to Flushing—full of most important information, as was afterwards discovered! Here is yet another instance. In Liverpool the special constables were performing most excellent work in hunting out alien enemies and sending them to internment-camps, when, of a sudden, an order came—whence nobody appears to know—to arrest no one further, for, as the order put it, “such action may create public alarm.” Why is it, too, that men of wealth and influence, bankers, brokers, financiers and Birthday-baronets, German-born Privy Councillors, and other alien enemies who happen to possess money, are caressed and given such latitude to exert any evil influence they may like upon us? Why, also, was Baron von Ow-Wachendorf, a lieutenant in the Yellow Uhlans of Stuttgart, just under thirty years of age, permitted to practise running in Hyde Park so as to fit him for his military duties: and why was he—on March 1st—allowed to leave Tilbury for Holland to fight against us?
These are questions upon which the public should demand satisfaction, and to arraign those responsible.
I here wish to state, most emphatically, that I am not a politician, neither am I criticising, for one moment, the splendid military administration of Lord Kitchener. If the spy-peril were placed in his capable hands—with complete power to act, to arrest, and to punish—then I would, at this moment, lay down my pen upon the question. Yet, as one who was among the very first—perhaps the first—to discover the secret plans of Germany and to report them, I consider it my duty, as a lover of my country, to warn the public.
The time has passed for mincing matters, or for the further protection of traitors in our midst. I here cast no reflection upon any single person, and further, any person mentioned in this article is beyond the pale of my statement, but I here assert that I have had, in my possession, a list—actually shown to me by a friend at Wilhelm-strasse, who was their paymaster—of persons in England and America who have been in receipt of German money, and who, by dint of it and of secret influence, have risen to high degree, and, in some instances, to places with fat emoluments. Motives of patriotism alone prevent me from revealing that list at this hour of our national crisis.
The many truths contained in the following chapters of this book must surely reveal to the reader the edge of the volcano upon which we are now sitting. Notwithstanding all the