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The German Spy System from Within, by William Le Queux.

PREFACE

The amazing ramifications of the German spy system in England are, unfortunately, not even to-day fully realised by the British public, or admitted by the Government.

In face of the hard facts contained in this book, in face of the serious statements of Members in the House of Commons, and in face of what the public are themselves daily reporting to the "authorities," the present apathy of the Government, and its refusal to admit the peril and deal with spies with a firm hand, is little short of criminal.

Seven years before the outbreak of war, by a mere accident while in Germany, I was able to place before the Intelligence Department of the War Office certain facts which, on being thoroughly investigated, resulted in the establishment of a department for contra-espionage. Therefore, however lightly the Government may to-day affect to treat the question, the fact remains that they have, all along, known of the existence of a horde of German secret-agents in our midst.

Nevertheless, even as recently as March 3, the Government, in response to urgent appeals, blankly refused to vest in one Minister powers to deal with enemy aliens and spies, in place of the present divided policy.

Truly deplorable it is to think that to-day, while we are fighting for our very existence as a nation, spies are permitted entire freedom, and are nobody's business. This most vital question has been shuttle-cocked between the War Office and the Home Office until it is now impossible to say where the responsibility really lies. The one fact, however, which cannot be disguised from the public is that, if the Germans made a raid upon our shores, the Government, so self-satisfied, would suddenly awake to find, as France and Belgium did, an army of spies busily assisting in our undoing.

"Ex-Intelligence Officer" has, within the covers of this book, plainly shown how systematic espionage is, and that it has been for many years a most cherished part of German war administration, developed with much forethought, and with characteristic Teuton cunning. That a settled and widespread system of spies exists in Great Britain at the present moment is well-known, both to the Government and to the public, yet certain Ministers would have us close our eyes and accept the extraordinary assurance given by Mr McKenna, early in the war, that the spy-peril has been stamped out.

But is it stamped out? I here assert that at no moment of our national history have we been confronted by a graver peril from within, than that with which we are confronted to-day. The public are daily realising more and more that they are being hoodwinked and bamboozled by this shuttlecock policy, which is playing so completely into the enemy's hands, and is allowing dastardly preparations to be made to hasten our downfall. The inflamed state of public opinion is only too apparent by the mass of correspondence which I have received from all classes, from peers to working men, regarding the publication of my book "German Spies in England," and, further, by its phenomenal sale. Every letter of the piles before me as I write, complains bitterly of the apathy and disregard with which the authorities treat the reports made to them of the doings of spies, and all express disgust at the refusal to stir in a matter which so closely affects our national security, or even to institute the smallest inquiry.

Over the whole subject mystery and mystification brood.

The present policy--in face of what the Government know, and what I myself know, as one who has spent the past seven years in studying the German Secret Service system and patiently watching its agents--allows, for example, Baron von Bulow, brother of the German ex-Chancellor, to live comfortably at Putney, in the full enjoyment of a telephone; it mysteriously reverses many military orders for the removal of alien enemies from prohibited areas, providing always that those persons are of the better class; it allows signals to be sent nightly from our shores to the sea, and vice versa; it releases about 1,000 aliens monthly from the internment-camps; it has attempted to gag the Press, and is, to-day--as I will presently prove--stifling all inquiries into the doing of spies among us.

In no other capital in the world, save London, would such a disgraceful scandal be for one moment tolerated, as that which any reader may investigate for himself, providing he is careful not to obtrude his British nationality, namely, the toasting of the "Day" of Britain's downfall by these self-same enemy aliens, who, recently released from the internment-camps, now nightly meet and plot in the various little foreign restaurants in the neighbourhood of the Tottenham Court Road. Here, round the small tables in the underworld of London, sit enemy men and women, openly expressing the most intense hatred of us, gloating over their own piratical deeds and barbarities, and declaring that in England, ere long, there is to be repeated the same savagery and unbridled lust with which poor Belgium was swept from end to end. This is no idle statement. I have been present, posing as an Italian and a neutral, and I have seen and heard. Indeed, in those places, news from Germany is known hours before it is known to our military or naval authorities, and I have heard it declared openly that the vanguard of spies among us are ready to act at a given signal--which is to be the appearance of Zeppelins over London--to blow up bridges, water-mains, and railways, destroy telephones and telegraphs, and commit the most widespread havoc, incendiary and otherwise, for the purpose of creating a panic, and preventing the movements of troops.

Naturally, one asks, where are the police? On discovering this scandalous state of affairs I went to New Scotland Yard to ask that same question. I had interviews with various officials, and after over an hour's prevarication and elusive replies to my rather 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.

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 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 false official assurances, the sleepiness of the much-vaunted Intelligence Department, and the fettered hands of the police--both Metropolitan and Provincial--must surely give the man-in-the-street to pause. Spies are to-day among us in every walk of life, and in almost every town in Great Britain. Every single man and woman among them is impatiently awaiting the signal for the destruction of our homes and the ruin and massacre of our dear ones, and yet we are actually asked to believe that no danger exists!

The same kid-gloved policy which, at a cost of 13,000 pounds has provided a pleasant mansion with charming grounds, and a staff of valets, servants, etc, for German officers, many of whom were responsible for the barbaric outrages on innocent women, and the massacre of children in Belgium, has also placed a protecting hand upon our alien enemies. Assuredly this is an injudicious policy, for it has already created a very grave suspicion and distrust in the public mind.

The "authorities"--whoever the persons in real authority may be--know full well how, with every outgoing mail to Holland or Scandinavia, there goes forth a mass of information concerning us, collected by spies, and forwarded to neutral countries, where it is again collected by German secret-agents, and forwarded to the German Secret Service in Berlin.

These letters are generally written, either in invisible ink or in cipher-ticks, upon newspapers or magazines, which are merely placed in unsuspicious-looking wrappers addressed to somebody, usually with an English name, in Holland, Denmark, or Sweden. I have before me two such letters posted in Hertfordshire. Further, we have undoubted communication existing nightly from the sea to London by means of the line of signal-lights which I have described, and further, these, it has lately been proved, extend north, from the neighbourhood of Harrow, right up to Leeds, Manchester, and Liverpool. There are other fixed lights, too; brilliantly-lit windows and skylights, which show each night, and are intended as beacons for the guidance of the enemy's aircraft. Yet, all the time, we pursue the foolish policy of trying to hide London by darkening it, and, at the same time, shine searchlights at the self-same place and at the same hour each night--apparently to betray to the enemy our most vulnerable points.

It was not long ago that, in this connection, my friend Mr Geo. R. Sims pointed out the existence of a line of these guiding-lights, extending from Willesden across to Buckingham Palace, and happily, through the exposure he made, those of our "friends" who maintained them have now been forced to leave them unlit.

Germans have been found in possession of hotels and mansions in strategic positions all over the United Kingdom, and to-day numbers of alien enemies--thanks to the order which has released them from the internment-camps--are actually employed at the various great railway termini in the Metropolis! Fancy such a state of affairs being permitted by Imperial Germany--a country in which British prisoners of war are half-starved, as evidenced by a cleverly composed letter before me from one who is unfortunately a prisoner, and which passed the German censor, whose knowledge of English was not so extensive as to cause him to suspect.

When the reader has digested the pages which follow--chapters which give a very lucid, calm, and first-hand idea of the low-down methods of German espionage, he will, I venture to think, agree that it is of no use to cross the barbarian's sword with a peacock's feather. Germany intends, if she can, to crush and to humiliate us, to devastate our homes, to outrage and massacre our dear ones, and by every subtle and dastardly means, to bring upon us a disaster so stupendous as to stagger humanity. Shall we remain lulled to sleep further by assurances which are not borne out by facts? Germany's advance guard of spies are already here, rubbing shoulders with us, many of them smug and respectable citizens passing among us entirely unsuspected, members of our churches, honoured, and believed to be Britons. Some are alien enemies, others are traitors, who have imperilled this country's safety for the lure of German gold.

In another place I have fully explained how the German Government held out an alluring bait to myself. If this was done to me, then surely it has been done to others.

We are Britons, fighting for our King and our Country. Our fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers, have gone forth to battle for the right and hurl back the barbaric Teuton-tide which threatens to overwhelm us. Some, alas! already lie in their graves. Is it therefore not our duty to those we hold dear to see that spies shall not exist in our midst? If the Government are so utterly incapable of dealing effectively with the problem, as they are now proved to be, then why do they not allow the formation of a Central Board, with drastic powers, to end at once this national danger, which grows more acute with the dawn of every day?

I am no alarmist, nor am I affected with spy mania. I am merely here writing a plain and bitter truth, the truth which I have learnt after years of experience and patient inquiry. If space permitted, I could relate a hundred stories of espionage, all supported by evidence; stories which would contain as much excitement as any I have ever written in the guise of fiction. But my only object in this preface is to urge the public to read this book, to inquire into and study the problem for themselves, and to assure them that the words of "Ex-Intelligence Officer" are full of very grave truths, which cannot be ignored or refuted.

It is for the public themselves to demand satisfaction in a very determined and outstanding manner. The voice of the country is unanimous that we are being trifled with, and surely it is a thousand pities that mistrust should thus arise, as it is rapidly arising, at this grave crisis of our national history.

The public have been told definitely by Mr Tennant that "Every enemy alien is known, and is now under constant police surveillance." If the public, in face of the mass of evidence accumulating to the contrary, will still believe it, then let them rest in their fool's paradise until the Day of Awakening. If not, then they, through their representatives in Parliament, have the matter in their own hands.

William Le Queux.

Devonshire Club, London S.W.

April 1915.

Foreword.

Further, as an ex-member of the Intelligence Staff, the writer has had access to information respecting the British secret service which is not generally available, but patriotic motives would alone be sufficient to withhold this information. All that is said with regard to the British methods of counter-espionage, or with regard to the measures adopted by any other Government against German spying, is compiled from information available in the columns of the Press to all who care to read. The book is written in the earnest hope that it may do something toward revealing the nature of the German spy system to incredulous folk, for by opening the eyes of the public to such a definite danger one is a step nearer to the crushing of German militarism.

The Author.

A REVIEW OF THE SPY SYSTEM.

In all things pertaining to the conduct of war Germany of to-day has copied as far as possible the methods of Napoleon the First. In military strategy, German experts have fallen far behind their model--or rather, they have never approached his methods, because they have never fathomed the secret of his success. Von Clausewitz, the greatest German military writer, planned his "On War" on Napoleonic lines, but left out the greatest factor of Napoleon's work. As he saw the work of the great conqueror, Napoleon made use of accident: in reality, Napoleon made the accident, and this Von Clausewitz could not comprehend. French genius rediscovered the Napoleon strategy, but even unto this day German military methods leave out the idea of making circumstances instead of being limited by them.

Thus, in striving to attain the Napoleonic ideal in things military, Germany has failed. But Napoleon established a new branch of military organisation when he codified and arranged a system of espionage, and, in adopting from him this systematisation of what had hitherto been a haphazard business, German builders for a world-empire have gone far beyond their model, so that to-day the German spy system is the most perfect ever organised, not even excepting the system of Venice in its palmy days, where all was written and nothing spoken, nor that of Russia in comparatively modern times.

The German system falls naturally under several heads. To take them in reverse order of importance, there is first the commercial system of espionage, which takes the form of sending out men who accept posts as clerks in foreign business firms. These men come, especially to England, ostensibly to learn the language, but in many cases they have received thorough tuition in idiomatic and commercial English from some member of the British colonies existing in such centres as Berlin and Dresden. They accept a very low wage for what are in reality services far beyond their pay in value. They gain access to books and price-lists, and to lists of customers, by means of which they are able to give exact details of the markets to which British goods are sent, and the prices, rates of freight, discounts, etc. These particulars are transmitted in full to Germany, and with them the German competing firms are able to undercut British firms in foreign markets, and to secure British trade by always making their estimates a little lower than those of the competing British firms. Since in commerce all is legitimate in the interests of one's employer, the only comment to be made on this method of spying is that it is despicable in that it involves the deliberate abuse of hospitality, and thus no code of ethics can be found to justify it; but business and ethics are two different things.

This commercial spying, however, is but an offshoot from the great espionage system perfected by Stieber, chief of German secret police and privy councillor, of whom more anon. The main system is concerned with military and naval matters, and various points discovered in connection with this main system show that Germany has for many years made up its mind to embark on a war of aggrandisement--whether or no the War Lord of popular conception was fully in agreement with the idea is another matter, and one that history will probably show.

The superiority of the German system to that of other and what may be termed competing nations is evidenced by one apparently unimportant fact. When French and British spies have been caught in Germany, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment in German fortresses, in a great number of cases it has transpired that the offenders were military officers still on the active list. They had been specially chosen for their work, perhaps; they had undertaken it with the highest of motives, also, perhaps; and they had understood the grave risks they ran in that their Governments would afford them no direct protection in case of their being detected. But they were officers on the active list, soldiers by profession.

Now, on consideration, the calling of a spy reveals itself as one of doubtful honesty, no matter what the motives prompting the spy may be-- and the soldier is at all times supposed to be a man of honour and strict integrity--which he usually is. Whether the spy be a British, French, Russian, or German subject, he is engaged in abusing the hospitality of the country on which he is spying, and, from a military point of view, is not playing the game. So little is he playing the game, in fact, that in time of peace his government refuses to recognise him if he fails, and in time of war he gets no combatant rights, but is shot out of hand by the enemy into whose hands he falls. The formality of a trial is unnecessary, if the fact of espionage, accomplished or attempted, be apparent. Guilty of what cannot be called other than a mean act, attempting to endanger the lives of soldiers by unsoldierly methods, in revealing himself as a spy a man condemns himself and passes his own sentence--which is as it should be. And yet two of the Great Powers permit commissioned officers to undertake this dirty work, as it must be called!

Germany has realised that special men ought to be employed for this special, necessary, but at the same time despicable business. Your perfect spy is a man of criminal impulse, a moral pervert of sorts, and, recognising this, Stieber and his followers in the government of the system have organised a separate branch of the Great German General Staff, a branch made up of chosen men and women, of whom the men may at one time have held military or naval commissions in this warlike nation, but very few are officers on the active list. It has been realised in this land of nearly perfect espionage that the duties of a spy and those of an officer of the services--of either service--are not compatible.

The German secret-service corps which Stieber organised is a matter of three main departments: the military, the naval, and the diplomatic spy corps. Under the last-mentioned head must be grouped the work of Germans in foreign countries, notably in France and to a certain extent in England, with a view to influencing labour by means of strikes and industrial unrest, a system of influence which often approaches closely to and sometimes interlinks with commercial espionage, though it is primarily directed to the paralysis of a possible enemy in case of war, and the facilitating of a German attack on the country in which the work is being done. For always German strategy has been that of attack; whatever protestations of peaceful intents the German nation may make, there can be no doubt of its real designs when one considers the trend of all its policy in recent years, the nature of its naval and military increase of effort, and, as far as revelations show, the methods pursued in its espionage system. Germany as a whole has meditated attack with a view to extension of territory and commercial advantage for years, and no apologist can adduce evidence to justify, on the score of a defensive policy, such preparations for war as the country has made. One instance of the methods pursued by the espionage department will illustrate this.

The fortifications of Maubeuge, the French fortress which fell to the German attack in so marvellously short a time, were proof against anything short of the heaviest siege-artillery, and, before this class of artillery can be mounted for use against a town or fortress, gun-platforms levelled and supported by masonry equal to the strain imposed in firing the guns must be constructed. The construction of these platforms involves much calculation and measurement, and is not a matter of such time as was involved in the fall of Maubeuge, but of a much longer period. The explanation of the use of siege-guns against Maubeuge, and the rapid reduction of the fortress, is said to lie in the purchase of about 600 acres of the woods of Lanieres, about four miles from Maubeuge, by an agent for Frederic Krupp, the builder of the siege-guns with which Maubeuge was reduced. The firm of Krupp, for whom this purchase was made as far back as 1911, announced its intention of building a locomotive factory on the ground acquired; but, long before the present war was declared, Krupp constructed the platforms on which siege-guns could be mounted to command Maubeuge, and totally neutralised the value of the fortifications as well as turning out locomotives.

Here is evidence, if evidence were necessary, of Germany's deliberate intent to make war in its own good time; not merely to defend German frontiers, but to attack and reduce a neighbouring State by the use of methods which any nation save this one would regard as too dishonourable for use. Since the system of espionage has reached to such lengths as this, it will be seen that the stories of spies and their work, in which the public delights, are built up out of the doings of comparatively innocent agents, who are credited with dangerous tendencies and many melodramatic and impossible actions. That minor plans and persons do exist is certain, but for the most part the spying of which the public hears is merely incidental to the great whole--a whole composed for the most part of far different elements from the clerks, hotel-waiters, and other minor incidentals on which the imagination is fed, in order that the reality may more easily escape detection.

There are in existence many books purporting to tell the actual work of spies and to expose the system under which these spies work, but it may be said at the outset that no full exposure of the spy system of Germany has ever been made. Stieber, in his Memoirs, told exactly what it suited him to tell, but he did not give away any essential secrets of organisation, nor has any other writer done this, up to the present. All that we have in the way of real evidence consists in things as well attested by fact and result as the incident of Maubeuge and the gun-platforms, related above; in selections from the Memoirs of spies of those portions which bear in themselves evidence of truth, and in reports of police-court proceedings in England and France. From these sources we can piece together a fairly accurate conception of the whole business of the spy; but, as regards books purporting to detail the experience of spies, or the character of the organisation under which they work, we must accept these experiences and the rest with all possible reserve, remembering that, the more melodramatic and the more plausible they may be, the more they should be questioned as regards accuracy.

Moreover, there is sufficient evidence to show that the system is so extensive, and that its ramifications are so far-reaching, that no one book could contain all details of the various kinds of work entailed on the German spy system. It is possible only, in a book dealing with the system, to indicate the main lines on which spies in connection with military and naval matters work, and to give some concrete examples of their failures and successes. Naturally, there is far more material available as regards failures, for the work of the successful spy is of such a nature that it rarely comes to light; it is more often unheard of until, as in the case of the gun-platforms constructed in time of peace about Maubeuge, the work itself is put to use.

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