The strategic ideas laid down more than two thousand years ago by PolyÆnus, of whom we have spoken in an earlier chapter, and to whom Napoleon admitted some indebtedness, are evidently rated high among the military authorities of the Berlin military academies. It is therefore not surprising to learn that in accordance with the Greek's teachings every foreign general or superior officer of note who is considered likely ever to play a prominent rÔle in European wars, is in each case as well known to the German military authorities as he is to his own military superiors. His personal character, disposition, virtues, vices and foibles, once an officer reaches to high rank and acquires a reputation as a possible commander, all form the subject of one of those dossiers with which the Dreyfus case made us so familiar. It is a main part of the duty of our fixed-point agent to collect all sorts of information regarding the chief garrison officers at the town in which they are established and transmit the resulting data to their inspectors by whom, when verified, they are forwarded to military headquarters. The especial categories which claim the attention of the German authorities are the following:—

(a) Generals and officers of superior rank and high repute.

(b) The staff-college professors at Saint-Cyr, the École Polytechnique and Saint-Maixent, the disciplinarians, bursars and superior employÉs of these institutions.

(c) The managers of all arsenals and military establishments.

(d) All aides-de-camp and staff-officers.

(e) All superior employÉs in the department of the Ministers of War and the Navy.

(f) Special information as to the financial and domestic conditions and relations of all those officers mentioned in the above categories who are known or thought to be "unsettled" in their mode of life.

It is also stated that promising cadets from the military and naval academies are at once registered at Berlin and honoured with their respective dossiers. Lanoir is the chief authority for the above-mentioned details, and as a trained journalist, he gives an instance of the working of the spy in a case which came directly under his notice. The fixed-point agent in question had found it somewhat difficult to penetrate into the society of the superior officers at a garrison town. He therefore decided to find out all he required through certain subaltern officers who were accustomed to frequent his place of business—an hotel, as it happened. Accordingly he called in the services of an occasional visitor at the house—a commercial traveller who was also a spy in German pay. Possessed of all those gifts of the genial man of the world, the supposed commercial traveller found no difficulty whatever in winning the confidence of junior officers whose social talents were far in excess of their means and who were quite willing to overlook the inferior rank of their new acquaintance when they discovered that with him the spending of money was altogether a small consideration. It was not long before one of the subalterns had confessed that inability to keep up his position had necessitated sending in his resignation, which had been duly forwarded to the authorities. Expressing sympathy in a fatherly way, the traveller requested the young officer to inspect his own military papers. "You will see that I, too, have done my duty to France," he said, handing over some forged certificates attesting military service, for the manufacture of which Berlin has a special department. "Knowing me for a good Frenchman, perhaps you will treat me with more confidence." The commercial man goes on to propose that the subaltern shall enable him to do business with the officers of the garrison. His particular line of goods is hosiery, which he is willing to sell to officers, since he is an ex-soldier himself, at almost cost price. The subaltern is naturally interested, but declares that he knows nothing about business. The tempter then tells his young friend that in reality he is travelling for his own firm and can make a profit on the goods even if he allows the subaltern 50 per cent. on everything sold. "For every £4 worth of hosiery I sell, you shall have a cheque for £2. As for the difficulty of introductions—just say I am your cousin; it is done every day and all over France. It will be worth £250 a year to you." The poor subaltern is not long in falling, and by the end of the next month the commercial traveller has wormed his way into the officers' quarters, has learned all there is to be known about the ammunition and ordnance stores, together with personal details about superior officers, which he could never have obtained in any other way. German money is making up the deficit on hosiery sold at cost price, but in return Germany is getting far more than her money's worth in military intelligence.

Lanoir also gives an instance in which one of the most promising French officers of his generation was, less than a score of years ago, paid £8000 by a supposed man of wealth, a casual garrison-town acquaintance, in order to rescue his father from bankruptcy. The information had come to the ears of the German tutor of a French General to whom our young officer was acting as aide-de-camp; the tutor forthwith informed the German fixed-point agent, with the result that the offer of £8000 was subsequently made and accepted, the young officer in question ultimately transferring his services to the dossier bureau attached to the Secret Police in Berlin. Another officer is said to have been given a sufficient fortune by the German War Office to make him an eligible parti in the eyes of the daughter of a well-known French General who was said to possess especial knowledge regarding mobilisation plans and arsenal material. The officer, whose heart was elsewhere, as they say, accepted the commission from Berlin, paid half-hearted court to the lady in question, but was seen sufficiently often in her company to justify the local agent's belief in the young man's assertion that things were going on famously. On his promise to supply Berlin with copies of documents belonging to his fiancÉe's father, they consented to advance £10,000. He thereupon drew up plans of mobilisation of his own, as well as details regarding artillery, which he had himself thought out. Eventually the price was paid in full, our officer promising to reveal much more when the wedding was over. Then he went off with the other lady, and Berlin was badly beaten, though not, it is certain, for the first time. Within the past ten years it is well known that large sums of money have been on several occasions paid for intelligence regarding French and Russian fortifications, the plans and specifications having been drawn up by individuals who had deliberately devoted themselves to military studies in order scientifically to produce the "information" in question. Such a set of plans was sold to Germany in 1909 by a Pole, for a sum exceeding £4000. It is, however, not often that the German military experts are caught nodding, their sources of primary information being as a rule excellent. They take few risks, but then there is no source of possible information which they overlook. This being so, the extravagant wife of an army man is always an object of interest to them, and many an officer has fallen, owing to his desire to shield a venal wife, blackmail, in such a case, being invariably the method of coercing the husband.

If ever a nation has proved to the world that she is devoid of essential military genius, that nation is Germany. Her successful campaign of 1870 was almost entirely due, as we have seen, to the preparations and plans laid down by Stieber and his co-adjutors as well as the fact that France had relied too much upon the traditional ability of the French armies to cope successfully with those of Germany. The same may be said of Germany's "marvellous advance" towards Paris in 1914, which was really a triumph for organised espionage and by no means a proof that military genius was inspiring the movements of the Kaiser's hosts. This organised system of espionage has for some years been in the hands of Major Steinhauer, the present chief of the Berlin Secret Service, and evidently a worthy successor to Stieber. Belgium, as all know who have studied German methods in what has been long known as the "penetration area" of the Netherlands, was so completely in the hands of German spies at the outbreak of the war, that it was only the failure, by a rare miscalculation, of the Berlin military authorities to have forwarded adequate siege-guns to LiÈge which prevented the Imperial armies marching through the country in a week and reaching France sooner. The entry into the Belgian capital of 700,000 men, without confusion or mishap, has been credited to the military genius of von Kluck and his lieutenants, the fact being entirely overlooked that in view of the inevitable war which Berlin expected to take place before 1915 (as a well-known German newspaper-proprietor told American and Canadian reporters in 1910) the German Secret Service authorities had made an especial appropriation from their funds for the purpose of placing some 8000 spies on the various routes of march between Aix-la-Chapelle and Saint-Quentin. As a result, the very quarters of the various regiments of German invading forces had been marked out for occupation by the Berlin authorities at least two years ahead, while for the purposes of lodging important personages, special hotel managers had been installed several months before August 1914. In Brussels as well as in Paris the city had been so well mapped out that, as American correspondents reported, distinguished officers arriving by rail at the Gare du Nord or the Gare de l'Est gave their instructions as couriers might have done, without doubt or hesitation, to the cabmen at the stations. All these preparations had been made by German fixed agents whose various residences throughout the line of advance bore the familiar caricature of "Kluck's cow." As the event proved in Belgium, such fixed spies had become, from lengthy and normal residence in the various cities, so familiar to Belgian inhabitants that these last supposed them to be either the victims of the German billeting process, or else compulsory agents under the terms of martial law. In Paris matters had been prepared so far in advance that it had been decided to give a representation of Sudermann's Heimath at the ComÉdie FranÇaise, at which the Kaiser and his Staff were to be present. That chronically disappointed potentate was to reside, the German papers of the time declared, at the ÉlysÉe, the President's abode, while the procuresses of Paris, mostly Germans, felt, in view of the commissions already distributed in advance among them, emphatically assured that their financial millennium was to arrive with the German Staff. It had even been arranged, by way of a spectacular revanche, that the so-called War Lord was to visit the Invalides, where Napoleon's body reposes, and there possess himself of the great soldier's sword, as the Corsican had, in 1806, possessed himself of the sword of Frederick the Great, saying as he took it, "Ceci est À moi"—this is mine. The military set-back was in all probability the least which the Emperor William suffered by his failure to "hit" Paris as a Westerner might put it, seeing that the Kaiser can hardly be called a military man in any practical sense of the term.

In regard to the fixed spies in Belgium, it has to be noted that they were not all, as far as is known, natives. Competent Belgian journalists declared at the outbreak of the present war that, at the defeat of France in the war of 1870, Germany had already laid down plans for eventually overrunning and annexing both Belgium and Holland. With a view to carrying out her plans, she made in 1872 definite appropriations for the covering of both countries with a system of what was known at Berlin as "Germanising influences." It was based on a principle of giving to deserving minor tradesmen in the Rhineland districts sums of money sufficient to set them up in business in the so-called Belgian "penetration area." Preference was given to couples with young children who had been born on German soil. The people of the Rhineland and Westphalia are for the most part Catholics; large numbers of them speak both French and Flemish, or at least "Plat-Deutsch," while from a mental point of view, there is very little difference between them and the populations of LiÈge and Limburg. Once settled on Belgian soil, it was easy for them to adapt themselves to the people and bring up their children as Belgians. It was part of the agreement, however, that the children, after attaining a certain age, should return to the Fatherland, there to undergo a process of re-Germanisation, at the close of which, having resided with close relatives and passed through German schools, they returned to Belgium ostensibly pro-Germans. In the meantime their parents were being helped to enrich themselves by acting as commission-agents for large industrial houses on the German side. It was supposed that this scheme—an invention of Bismarck—would prove the key to the conquest of the Netherlands, for the plans were also put into operation in Holland. As a matter of fact, the results of the scheme were far from coming up to expectations, and if any proof were wanting to demonstrate the elemental incapacity of the German for assimilating another race, here it was. The Belgian and the Dutchman both proved their capacity (and at the same time their racial superiority) for assimilating the Germans to the point at which the latter became anti-German—even as is the case with the German-Americans of to-day, who are Americans first and Germans last of all. By the mid-nineties it was hoped that a large nucleus of Germanophile Belgians and Dutch would be preparing for the easy (and perhaps peaceful) conquest of the Low Countries. Bismarck had realised, however, by 1890 that "the German is not by nature or disposition a good coloniser," whatever virtues he may possess as a colonist, and for that reason was opposed to his new Kaiser's ambition to push the frontiers of the Fatherland farther than they had already gone. At all events, the organised system of the Germanising influences proved, to a large extent, a failure in the Low Countries. It is precisely because it had not proved so to the whole extent that Belgium fell so easy a victim to the German aggressive advance, once LiÈge had fallen, in 1914. For as a result of the system of 1872 and onward, it was hard for Belgians themselves to know who was in 1914 an agent for Germany and who was not. In this connection, and as the analogy holds in some degree, it may be stated that the main objection to the Oxford Scholarships founded by the late Mr Rhodes was based on an argument advanced by observant German professors who had seen Britain's system at work—namely, that the German citizen was too easily assimilable by stronger and superior types to allow of his passing three or four years at the intellectual hub of the British Empire without detriment to his German patriotism.

While discussing Belgium we are reminded of the fact that at the University of Louvain many theological students from Germany were in residence before the war and were, therefore, enabled to keep their correspondents in Germany in touch with matters of importance as to the feeling of Belgian professors and the Belgian hierarchy generally towards Germany and German aspirations in Belgium. It is not so commonly known, however, that every German army includes in its ranks a number of renegade priests, or priests in minor orders, who are sufficiently well acquainted with religious matters to be able to impose upon villagers, or local parish priests and nuns. The non-Catholic forces which arrived at Louvain in September 1914, when they came into conflict with the Catholic Bavarian troops, were entirely to blame for the mutilation of the historic city, since reprisals on the part of the inhabitants—if any serious reprisals ever took place—were said by American and Australian correspondents to have probably been due to the fact that many of these ex-priests had been given clerical attire from the military clothing department and sent to visit the local religious houses, not as soldiers, but in their clerical capacity. The result was a series of outrages both at convents and colleges, the recital of which has already been officially given to the world by Belgian authorities. Stieber placed much reliance on this peculiar class of spy in the Austrian campaign of 1866 and again in that of 1870. The German authorities continue to employ them and they are ever willing to serve, since as a rule they belong to a class whose poverty and rakishness are known throughout Germany. They are not, it may be said, confined to any particular religion, and in the present war their functions have been exercised mainly in ministering to the wounded, from whom they are successful enough in extracting information as to the movements of opposing forces. Readers do not require to be told at this juncture of the unscrupulous use which German armies have made of the Red Cross ambulances in the war of 1914. Not only have they clothed the most notorious creatures of German towns in nuns' attire, but in many cases youthful soldiers have been dressed as Red Cross Sisters and have thus been enabled to pass through the enemy's lines, ostensibly on errands of mercy, but in reality in order to spy out the situation. That German commanders have little regard for the lives of their men is better known, perhaps, than a common ruse to which they resort when looking for artillery range. At nightfall two recruits are invariably asked to volunteer for duty with the wire-coil. They advance towards the enemy's lines which they are instructed to inspect, paying out the coil of wire as they advance. Naturally they are shot as they approach the other camp; their officer's object has, however, been accomplished, and when his end of the coil ceases to "pay out" he is in possession of the range.

The present war, experts assure us, has not developed anything new in the way of cipher messages, and it is now generally admitted that man has yet to devise a cipher which, given time to solve its principle, will continue long to remain a puzzle to inquiring minds. Napoleon adopted a cipher with which he communicated on many occasions with his chief-of-staff, Berthier, whose only recorded witticism is that the Emperor's handwriting was the hardest cipher he knew. By Napoleon's directions, a certain pamphlet was to be employed according to the day of the week or the date. The names of these were of course known beforehand. The instructions ran: "The first figure will give the number of the page; the second figure will give the line; the third number will serve as index to the required word, or letter, and give its position in the line indicated by the second figure; if the figure denotes a whole word, it will explain itself; if it only means a letter the fact will be shown." The whole system was found, however, to be too slow for the most impatient of commanders, and as a result was rarely called for by the Emperor. The Great War has disclosed the fact that old Indian tricks of conveying information over long distances have been resorted to, particularly the Red Man's signals by smoke which ascends at various points along a given line and the different readings of which are settled by agreement in advance among those sending and receiving the signals. It is now known that information as to "range," which, at the opening of the war, German artillerists were able to discover with a rapidity and a precision which were not less than miraculous, was being transmitted to the enemy by fixed spies in towns behind the French and British positions by means of smoking fires built upon upland territory according to indications previously agreed upon and based mainly on the number and arrangement of the different volumes of smoke. The ruse was quickly penetrated however, and thereafter German gunners proved less expert in judging distances. We also heard much at the beginning of the war, both on the Continent and in England, of the "window-light" and the "window-blind" system of communicating intelligence to the enemy on land as well as on the coastline. All these tricks have been discovered, and as a result of the most stringent exercise of precautions, as well as the insistence upon martial-law regulations at nightfall in the fighting areas, military spies have been forced to rely more largely on personal adventure and its risks, than was the case in the earlier phases of the conflict. Spies sent in advance of an army, disguised as peasants of the countryside, can keep their friends informed of the movements of the enemy by various signals also drawn from the Red Man's code, such as the breaking of trees or branches, cutting up squares of turf and disposing them in a certain order near trees, by chalk-marks not very dissimilar to the "marks" used by English and American tramps or by the placing of stones at certain distances—all signs which can be read according to previous arrangement. In regard to these ruses it may confidently be said that modern man is far behind primitive or uncivilised man in the effective employment of them, and, in any case, there were few of those now recently in use which were not commonly practised by Napoleon and his commanders.