Hamil Grant

The German railway system radiates from Berlin, not according to the concessional plans of other countries, but in accordance with the definite warlike designs and conceptions of the military authorities whose ulterior aim is a confederation of all European States governed from Berlin. Thus, the great network of railways is divided into military divisions, the most familiar of which to us are Berlin, Magdeburg, Hanover and Cologne, the first of the strategic lines of attack which is directed like a pistol at the French frontier and which co-operates with parallel systems with depÔts at Coblentz and Elberfeld. Along these lines German military authorities profess to be able to transport, within twenty-four hours of the order to mobilise, a number not far short of 1,000,000 men, together with full equipment, commissariat and war material. At the head of each of the railway divisions is a military officer whose functions are much similar to those of a general commanding an army; under him is a staff of officers, non-commissioned officers and men who in reality "run" the system and are responsible for its working in regard to freights, passenger transportation and time-schedules. And since the railway systems are designed primarily for military purposes—as were the old Roman roads—little if any consideration has been paid in their construction to commercial or industrial requirements. In every respect the systems are regarded as, first of all, the means of military transportation, and accordingly, wherever any portion or portions of a given line may appear to be exposed to hostile attack, principles of ordinary fortification are adopted. The depÔts are mainly built with commissarial objects in view. The personnel of the systems, guards, ticket collectors, engine-drivers, are all military in every sense (including the worst) of that term, as no one who has ever travelled over the German-Belgian boundaries at Herbesthal and met the dictatorial German railway guard for the first time will require to be told. Along these lines, which radiate from Berlin to the French frontier, it has been laid down as one of the most stringent of official German regulations that:

"No native of Alsace or Lorraine, even if performing his military service in Germany, shall, under any circumstances whatever, be recruited or admitted in any capacity, no matter how minor, for employment on German divisional railroads."

On the other hand Stieber had seen to it that as many hundreds of Alsatians and Lorrainers who were willing to enter his service should be employed by the French railway systems at the other side of the Frontier as soi-disant Frenchmen. In accordance with their engagement to serve Stieber, they were paid at the rate of twenty-five per cent. of the wages they were drawing from their French employers, and until 1884 there were at least 1500 of them so serving both the French system and the German espionage bureau. In 1884 the French Government was roused to a realisation of the peril of allowing these men to work on their railroads, and they were rapidly removed. It is on record that in 1880 Stieber had promised the old Emperor William that on the day on which Germany should again mobilise her armies, he himself could guarantee for the railways of France over 1000 trusted agents who were prepared, by destroying locomotives and other railroad stock, to paralyse the French mobilisation to the Frontier in such a way that German armies should have fairly approached the capital before the Republic had got her forces decisively in hand.

In regard to the second part of his programme—namely, that which was to create factions, unrest and revolutionary conditions in countries which were to become the objects of German military aggression—Stieber developed the ideas which still hold good in the plans of the German Secret Service. The main principle underlying his plan of campaign was the fomenting of industrial disorders. In each case a literary propaganda was to precede action, which was first to be undertaken by trained spies and agents provocateurs who were capable, by the common methods of political and industrial agitators, of promoting class antipathies. German enterprise in this respect has not been confined to France, but has been active in every country in Europe, including England. In 1893 the successor of Bismarck, Count Caprivi, signed an appropriation of £4000 for the purposes of "providing foreign pamphlets and publications useful to the policy of the Empire." In later years the sum was increased to £20,000, while a number of paid agitators, inciting the great industrial centres of France, of Belgium, of Russia and (it is recorded) of England, is said to have drawn large sums from the German funds. The recent epidemic of industrial strikes in France, Russia and England is declared to have been fomented by paid agitators working on behalf of German authorities—some of them unconsciously, and as a result of the influence exerted by publications which had been subsidised by German gold. There are French writers who still maintain that the Dreyfus agitation was initiated and supported with the connivance of the highest military authorities in Berlin for the purpose of destroying one of the most potent forces in France—namely, belief and trust in the Army. Most of us, at all events, will recollect how towards the close of the momentous Affaire, when the Republic was already weakened by the series of national and international crises attending on the entire event, ominous threats of mobilisation were more than once made from Berlin. Again, the memorable Associations Bill, which enacted the disestablishment of the Church in France, was said to have owed its conception to German secret-service agents. To this movement—bound in any case to awaken the cupidity of venal politicians, in view of the vast Congregational possessions involved—succeeded the era of Syndicalist unrest, and finally the outbreak of the war of 1914. Nor can Englishmen forget that the so-called Agadir incident of the spring of 1911 coincided with one of the most devastating strikes Britain has yet known. In view of what we now know, there can hardly be a doubt that German plans and policies had meditated the paralysing of our transport system and our coal-supplies. Nor is there, again, the least possible doubt that for many years past German "philosophers," drawing pay from the secret-service funds, have been instructing British as well as French and Russian workmen in the art of combining "in defence of their rights" against the privileged classes. In Germany such revolutionary doctrines never leave the theoretical stage, nor could they do so, given the system of government which is in principle and practice hardly different from martial law. Most people who have been resident for any time in Germany will, in this regard, recollect an old piece of advice which friendly elders are accustomed to give their juniors—namely, that in the Fatherland every good citizen is required to "pay taxes, build barracks and shut his mouth." When one considers this pearl of civic wisdom in conjunction with the unwritten law which requires that even the public portraits of all royal and princely personages shall be criticised favourably, or not at all, one is bound to admit that anything like Anglo-Saxon liberty of opinion or outspokenness is still far removed from the ordinary life of your German of to-day.

In order to indicate the operation of the German secret service in regard to the spreading of revolutionary unrest among neighbouring countries, we cannot do better than cite the publication which was addressed to Ireland, the supposedly "revolted province," in the early days of August 1914. Here are the terms of that historic manifesto which moved all Ireland to mirth for many a day:

"IRISH FOOLS!

"Have you forgotten that England is your only enemy?

"Have you forgotten, Kathleen, that you are willing to shed your blood to win England's battles?

"Have you lost your wits that you believe all the ridiculous lies published against the Germans in the Jingo papers?

"Have you forgotten how the English treated the Boers?

"Have you forgotten Ninety-Eight?

"Have you forgotten the Manchester Martyrs?

"Have you forgotten the K.O.S.B. murders?

"Have you forgotten that the Future lies in your hands?

"Have you forgotten that England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity?

"God Save Ireland."

It is hardly necessary to say that so obviously crude and inartistic an appeal had no effect upon an essentially acute and artistic race; and its positive inartisticity bears the hall-mark of your Prussian's incapacity for entering into the more intimate feelings of men of other nations, a point which need hardly be laboured, having in view recent and current bovine misconceptions on the part of German diplomatic agents both in Europe and America.

A more serious attempt to "revolutionise" French railway systems was made in 1893 some few months after the granting of £4000 from the secret-service funds for the purposes of international pamphleteering. In August of that year the Mesnard pamphlet made its appearance containing an appeal to all workers connected with the railroad systems of France and urging them to take advantage of their country's dependence upon them in order to wring concessions in money from the Government, failing which a general and permanent strike was to be declared having the inevitable result of paralysing the country's energies and exposing it to attack on the part of its traditional enemy. The pamphlet was proved to have been issued from Geneva, a chief centre of the German international secret-service body. It was promptly disavowed by the labour unions of France, and it was well recognised at that period that its appearance was timed to create an industrial upheaval to coincide with the friction which the Dreyfus Affair was then causing between French and German diplomatists. During the course of several general strikes which have taken place in France within the past twenty years, it has clearly come to light that the charitable subscriptions made in support of the families of strikers by Frenchmen have been exceeded by contributions coming from German "sympathisers," in the proportion of twenty sovereigns to one. In the famous strike of boot-makers at Amiens in May 1893, for example, local subscriptions amounted to £48. At least £1000 was sent direct from Frankfurt![2] "In the last fifteen years," wrote Lanoir in 1910, "the instigation of strikes in French industries has been raised by the directors of the German Secret Police to the degree of a real principle of government." The same authority states that in 1893 he heard an ultra-Radical parliamentary candidate for the Seine Department declare that a German admirer, whom he did not know, had sent him £100 towards his election expenses. Stieber in his Memoirs affects to believe that this sum is commonly sent to any French parliamentarian who advocates a policy which is thought to be useful to German imperial interests.

Stieber died in 1892, being honoured with a public funeral at which the highest personages in Berlin were officially represented. His fortune amounted to nearly £100,000 of our money and he possessed both a town residence in Berlin and a villa in the Hartz Range. He had been successful in accumulating throughout his public career twenty-three decorations testifying to his Honour, and as this would appear to have been his chief ambition in life, there can be little doubt that the sleuth died happy. It is customary to say that Stieber took with him to his grave the essential secrets underlying his organisation of a national system of internal and external espionage. Frankly we think that this can hardly have been the case, since the operations of German espionage have at all times clearly proved themselves traceable to definitely ascertainable objects and plans. Nor do we think that the German system holds anything more in the way of elemental secrets to be revealed, and the excellent systems of counter-espionage adopted by British and French authorities justify us in our belief. Price Collier's pregnant statement that the Germans have organised themselves into an organisation, ahead of which they are incapable of thinking or planning, may well be held to apply to their organised espionage, and Stieber's elaboration of its arts may be taken to have reached the highest possible point. In bursts of friendly confidence, and presumably as a matter of proving the ineluctable superiority of the Teuton over the poor Anglo-Saxon, German lecturers in English universities have occasionally permitted their patriotic sentiments so far to exceed the bounds of official reticence as to throw a certain amount of light upon this mystic bag-of-tricks which is going to assure to the House of Hohenzollern the overlordship of the five continents and the seven seas. According to one of these German professors whom we well and, indeed, affectionately remember, the high priests of the policy of Prussianisation have thought out the whole matter along lines alleged to have been laid down by the Hebrew Elders in accordance with their policy of recovering the world for the Chosen Race. According to this interesting system of Jewish Eugenics, the racial stock of Sem is to be permanently assured as to its integrity by enforcing the marriage of all male Jews with Jewesses. Result: all-Jewish offspring. The superfluous women of the Hebrew families are to be distributed as far as possible among the Gentile males, especially among those who possess means, with the object of ensuring that the resultant offspring shall possess such an admixture of Jewish blood as to make it at least sympathetic towards Jews and Jewish ideas. And as sympathetic qualities come in the main from the distaff side, the eugenic results must inevitably favour Hebrew propagandism. We might go further into this matter and point out that the Jewish rite of circumcision was not meant to be simply hygienic in its effects and reach. We will not labour the point, however, but proceed to indicate the analogy—according to the learned German lecturer.

Prussia, said our authority, had appropriated large sums from the indemnity of £200,000,000 sterling which she had obtained from France in 1870, for the purpose of establishing her "national missionaries" in every quarter of the world. Men were chosen according to their abilities to preside over the destinies of foreign commercial houses, banking institutions, agencies of all kinds, commission and money-lending businesses and contracting corporations. These men were really in the pay of the Berlin authorities who were financing the various firms in question and paying their agents large or small profits in proportion to the turnover of each particular business. It was, however, certain that every German, no matter what his position, was really acting in the interests of Germany, and so the ubiquitous German clerk was enabled to undersell the labour of the British clerk for the good reason that the deficit was offset in his particular case by a quarterly grant from official German sources. The intermarriage of Germans with British women was not only smiled upon, but a premium was actually paid in each case and unknown to the women. The children were, as far as possible, brought up in sympathy with German institutions and ideas and taught to revere the chief of Hohenzollern as the potential overlord of every country which came within the operations and purview of German ambitions and land-lust. In the event of war and in accordance with this propagandism, "everything went," as the Americans say. In the early days of the conquest of Belgian territories in 1914 we saw how particular attention was paid to the younger unmarried women, as in Louvain, to give but one example. These women were interned in a sort of concentration camp and systematically seduced, making it a last possible hope for many a hapless victim to accept a German husband, who in his own turn was offered either a premium or promotion, whether civil or military, for marrying the lady, as the saying is. It is not necessary to pursue this theme to the extent to which it is capable of being emphasised. It is sufficient for us to reflect that the main principles upon which German ideas of conquest are based are not only vicious and immoral in themselves, but are openly admitted and encouraged by the German civil, military and cultural authorities who have raised their apostolic voices in the cause of Prussian propagandism. Those who possess even an elementary acquaintance with the history of nations do not require to be told that, with the object of forcing "sympathies," methods quite as outrageous as those cited above have more than once been resorted to and, notably, in the early days of Rome's founding. It has been well said that Stieberism has had the result of demoralising the entire German nation by putting a premium on treachery and immorality in the pursuit of special information and so has made that trade a career open to the talents of all who care to adopt it. Responsible ministers have declared more than once in the imperial parliament at Berlin their concurrence in the view that "all is justifiable" in the interests of the future of the Fatherland, and in this regard we remember that not so long ago Herr Richter, the leader of the Opposition, raised a protest reflecting on the doubtful character of the secret-service agents of the Government only to receive from Puttkamer the now-stereotyped retort:

"It is the right and duty of the German Imperial Government to employ all possible and necessary methods in order to secure for the State the benefits of useful intelligence, and if the Minister of Police has had success by employing doubtful persons for his purposes, I personally express to him my satisfaction and thanks."

The particular methods to which Richter had taken exception included the bribing of magistrates, politicians and wealthy industrialists to give up information in their possession. Some of the most disreputable night-houses in Berlin were protected by the police for the reason that they had become the fashionable rendezvous of officers and diplomatists who, in their cups, were easily induced to give up information regarding their superiors, which the secret-service sleuths were anxious to obtain with the object of creating situations that left important public men at their own mercy or else at the mercy of men immeasurably higher up. Much has been written about the "high sense of virtue" which prompted the famous revelations which were made by Harden in his publication Die Zukunft in 1907. We do not personally question the sense of virtue possessed by the German editor, but it is certain that the opinion was current in Berlin in the succeeding year that reasons of State had required the removal from official life of many of the high social and political personages implicated in the scandals, and that the apparently "private" information possessed by an editor was selected as the easiest means of forcing them irrevocably from public life. Knowing what we do of the exiguous liberties of the Prussian Press, it is quite obvious that the life of an editor who should venture, of his own initiative and authority, to divulge a tenth part of the story which was printed in the Zukunft, would not have been worth an hour's purchase in militaristic Berlin. And here we recur to the statement once made by an old servant of Frederick the Great to the famous Count d'Antraigues: "That day on which you begin to imagine your services are indispensable to him will be your last day. He has no heart, and the very thought that you possess a claim on his friendship will suffice to destroy you."

It is essential before passing from Stieber to consider his methods of covering a foreign country with a fully organised system of German spies, and all the more so because the work done in modern days by Steinhauer and his congeners is based altogether on the conceptions of Bismarck's sleuth. We have seen that in 1870, when the German armies crossed the frontiers of France, they had already been assured, through the energies and foresight of Stieber, of the co-operation of some 36,000 spies in Northern and Eastern France who were to smooth the way for von Moltke's advancing legions. Indeed, Stieber's work largely discounts that of both Bismarck and von Moltke, if it does not wholly supersede it. In his Memoirs the sleuth tells how Bismarck, when told that Jules Favre was putting out feelers for the surrender of Paris in 1871, sent for his lieutenant, instructing him to keep Favre under the closest possible observation during the course of the negotiations. The Prussian and French statesmen met at Versailles, where Stieber had made all necessary arrangements for lodging the visitor. He selected for this purpose, and unknown, of course, to Favre, the headquarters of the German Secret Police Service—Stieber's own office. The Frenchman was given as valet a man whom the proprietor highly recommended. This valet was Stieber himself, who, during Favre's whole stay at Versailles, acted for the statesman in the most menial capacities, taking care during his master's absence to ransack the latter's luggage and examine all his voluminous correspondence entering from Paris. Stieber boasts that much of the information he thus obtained formed the basis of the negotiations on which peace terms were concluded. Moritz Busch in his Memoirs makes no especial mention of the sleuth's services in this regard, and we may dismiss Stieber's claim to have counted for much in the peace negotiations as being characteristically overdrawn.

He was, however, active in the remapping of the invasion zones in 1871 for the operations of his corps d'espions, the members of which, in regard to all French territories, were from that year chosen mainly from among the French-speaking Swiss. He laid it down as a condition of the "fixed-point" spy's employment that he should be the keeper of a shop of some kind, a public-house, a tobacconist's, an hotel, a grocery of an established character and certain to attract custom from the townspeople. Each spy was to assume the character of an honest peace-loving citizen, anxious to give public service and make himself personally popular. He was to receive in payment some £4 a week besides out-of-pocket expenses to Brussels, or Lausanne, or Geneva where his particular reports were made and whence his salary was paid every month in the form of business remittances. The system of counter-espionage adopted in France during the past five and twenty years has undoubtedly had the effect of neutralising the work of the fixed-point agent. Nevertheless, it is certain that in August 1914 there were some 15,000 of them still operating throughout France. Paul Lanoir gives a specimen of the remittance letters which pass between the chief spy inspector and his agent, the fixed-point expert. In some cases they are ordinary business letters; but in the larger number they affect to be communications between relatives. Thus:

Occasionally a man is suspected of being a spy. He is asked to produce his foreign correspondence, and does so, giving some such letter as the above in token of his integrity.

"There!" he is certain to say, "that's the sort of spy I am—a kind and loving brother who has lent money to his relatives to keep them out of the poorhouse. And this is a letter which encloses me the interest on my loan." And then, of course, the fixed-point agent gives way to tears. Nevertheless, the above apparently harmless message is well understood by our spy who reads it as follows:—

It is obvious that our residential spy is not allowed to select his place of business at random. His location is at some strategical point in the line of military advance, mapped out some years ahead. Thus, our agent can spy upon the local garrison, upon a military post, a railway depot, a terminal, and at any critical moment he has his own corps of agents—some of them, alas, unconscious traitors—ready, for a few francs, to do his bidding, among them, perhaps, a poor charwoman or an unemployed labourer. In country towns in France it is not hard for a prosperous man of business to make friends with the officers of the garrison. Sooner or later and after a series of visits to the billiard-table, or the hotel bar, he discovers among his military acquaintances needy young officers who are in debt, who have lost heavily on the race-courses, and it is not long before he begins to talk of his large winnings on the turf. The way is quickly opened to a loan, and then the German Secret Service begins to find out things. Naturally our residential spy keeps his book of expenses and is duly recouped for his outlays on drinks, dinners, race-course visits and loans, with interest at 5 per cent. And if the spy is unable to make headway with a young officer, there is always a possibility of his being able to bribe the officer's wife or mistress, and his allowance of earnest-money is practically unlimited. So that, when we consider how our agent is a man of leisure who fishes the local streams, and has plumbed their various depths; how he keeps horses and knows the average amount of forage available in his town at any given moment; how he has shot over the outlying country and knows the lie of the land for miles around; how he is on visiting terms with every local farmer and knows his resources—why, it is not surprising that when German armies are moved across the frontiers, they should know every step of the country much better than the inhabitants themselves are likely ever to know it. And so with Belgium and England, where there is not a farmhouse, a strategic copse or upland, the depth of a river, or military capacity of a given road, which is not as well known to the headquarters staff in Berlin as to our own ordnance-surveyors.