SPY-CATCHING.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 November 1924, Page 4

SPY-CATCHING.

EXCITING WAR-TIME SPORT. EFFICIENT BRITISH SYSTEM. It ail began well before 1914, when it became clear that Germany had considerable numbers of spies iu England (says the London “Evening Standard”). Sometimes they were merely foolish people, like the lieutenant down at Plymouth who used to he treated with afi’eeoiiiate hilarity by the naval officers on duly in the port, and sometimes, when ho \v;\s too intoxicated to walk, taken home in a wheelbarrow. There was another man whose antecedents were much more difficult to determine, hut who was certainly Geilu,in. though liis name was English, and his speech passed as Scotch, who Usisl to Iilllif! about till* licij'libotirlioud of the Forth Bridge and pick up what |,i. could about the movements ol ships in exchange, apparently, for discussions on the subject of the works of Robert Burns. And there was one Englishman. He was a naval gunner, and, in exchange of a monthly supply of money, which was foolishly paid to him in Bank ol England notes, and the promise of a iolTafter his work was completed as a steward in the A nelit C lull at Kiel, was stupid enough to put himsell at the disposal of the German Secret Service. By the time that lie had begun his operations the law in these matters had tightened up, ami though he did not know it. lie was living in a glass house. A little department had been set lip called the Counter Espionage Departmen. which ultimately grew and became one of the branches of the general stall’ known as “ALL” and there two officers, working in ordinary business premises quite apart from the War Office and with extreme discretion. carefully built up the case. For weeks before be was arrested bis correspondence bad been opened and closed again, with the numbers of his banknote.-, taken. These were the days when the system of accommodation addresses slill existed, and this man used lo have his letter- addressed to a lulaiceoiiist in Chelsea.

One day when lie went fur them In; was just unobtrusively arrested, and from there lo the Old Hailey, where lie was presented hy Sir John Simon in his most ellicieut manner, was a very short step. F.very one of the notes paid to him had been traced, hi- movements hull I n shadowed, and It’s File, ...pi.-.1, ..ml le h.i I lo ! (I.lend lo meet an agent I ruin IFi'lmi. | In' hail been shadowed by Scotland j Yard. Air Justice Darling, with remarkable ' leniency, gave him four years’ penal | servitude, and when lie eumideted his I sentence he was interned for the dnraI tinn of it just as a precaution. | 111'XDI! F.DS OF ARRESTS. | That was. | think the first of the eases of the Counter-Espionage Department. j It was started and run by two ollij oers of singularly uiimilitary appearand*. They remained in control of it until the end of the war. though the stall' was very much enlarged, and one of them went to France to do simi- | lar work there. They worked inconspicuously from ordinary olliccs, which would not be known tn belong In any | Government organisation at all, and they had the most ingenious minds. AYith Sir liasil Thomson, who was head of the C. 1.1). at Scotland Yard, they drew the finest of possible meshes over the country, and when the beginning of the war canto mure than a hundred Hetman agents were swiftly arrested without any fuss. One of the chief of them was a hairdresses in an Fast lend suburb, who acted as a kind of central exchange for the whole organisation; others wore people in quite menial positions in Portsmouth and other towns. It is. of course, possible that really good foreign agents defied detection, and that we do not know who they

were. AVhen Alnjor Trench and Captain Hramlun were caught in Germany investigating what the late Air Frskinc Chandlers called “The Kiddle of the Sands,” they were only one pair out of a nnmlier of odicers who had undertaken the duty of reporting upon the defences of Germany on its sea coast. All the others got away safely. The first German who was a real spy lo he caught and executed after the beginning of the war was I.oily. He was a German naval ollieer, and his ostensible employment was that of a tourist agent in the South of Ireland. There is. of course, no doubt that the Germans lung before the war had realised that the coast there was a vital point in the maritime safety of this eoiintrv. On the seeuritv of the waters

along it depended a good deal of our food supplies, and our main passenger route to America. One lias only got to look at a map marked with places at which merchant and passenger ships were sank to see how for a long time it mu-t have been studied and organised as the bat is of German submarine warfare. Tt was off the south coast of Ireland that the Lusitania was sunk, and up the long deep-water esianrics Gorman submarines used to lie. feed, or at least so. it was suspected, from previously arranged petrol dumps in the desolate hills round about. DIHXK AND A U-BOAT.

At least one submarine eanto to a had end there. It had been lying in one ot the hays for weeks, and its crews used to come ashore at night in a collapsible boat, and go and drink in one of the local public-houses. They knew enough English to ask for what they wanted, and the Irish did not recognise their accent as lieing anything peculiar.

One night, however, pushing off hack to their vessel, they were foolish enough to shout out something in German. The local doctor, on the way to an urgent case, happened to hear them, and he telephoned to the admiral at Queenstown. The next day. up tiie estuary came the methodical trawlers sweeping with depth charges, and that was the end of tiie submarine.