Famous Spy Visits N.Z.

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 254, 17 January 1928, Page 13

Famous Spy Visits N.Z.

HOW GERMANS WERE FOOLED

Tale of the Secret Service

An unassuming, grey-haired man sat in a cabin on the Niagara. He looked anything but a famous British spy. Travelling trunks bearing labels from almost every large city of the yvorld denoted the globe-trotter or the biggame hunter. Here was the man on whose head the Germans had put a price during the Captain Nicholas Everitt, tlrfe famous British Secret Service agent. He laughed when asked about his exploits. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I was fairly busy during the war, but there has been a lot of nonsense written about me.” Captain Everitt wanted to be a war correspondent, but his father insisted that he studied law. He eventually became the sporting lawyer of England. Since he was 17 years old Captain Everitt has written for the newspapers. He has several books to his credit, the most famous of which was “The British Foreign Secret Service During the War.’.’ This book created considerable discussion and Lord Birke.nhead threatened to take drastic action about it. Long before 1913 Captain Everitt had been round the world with a fishing rod and through the Sun Yat Sen revolution in China. His life has been one of many travels and wonderful adventures, about which he is naturally reticent. ROPED IN “Yes, I was roped in for secret service Avork during the- war,” he remarked this morning. “I had charge of the lines betAveen Petrograd and Archangel and Ave kept the northern route open for two years. But for that communication Avith Russia would have been blocked.” Captain Everitt stayed there for two

years, and then, as he says himself, he “sot knocked out.” He was concerned in many daring adventures and gathered much valuable information for the British Foreign Secret Service. “Naturally the Germans knew our men and we knew theirs,” he said, “and when either side affected a coupe the other fellow was mad to get it.” As recently as 1925 Captain Everitt met Raisuli near Morocco and in 1913 Tie “came into collision” with the Chinese bandit known as the “White Wolf.” India is the only country which he has not visited, and that will be done sooner or later. STORY OF RUSE This morning Captain Everitt told the following story of the work of the British Foreign Secret Service during the war, and one felt that lie was one of the fishermen concerned in it. At one critical period of the war the British Admiralty was trying to put a barrage of defence across the Straits of Dover, because of the damage of German submarines operating from the Belgian coast. They were playing havoc with British shipping in the Channel. Admiral Hall, of the Foreign Secret Service, devised a very ingenious plot by which the barrage was completed. A map, a secret code and part of a log book, which was made to look as though it .belonged to the Black Prince, a British cruiser which had been sunk, were devised and sent out to a British secret service officer in Denmark. This officer made the papers look as though they had been partly damaged by fire and oil and water, put them in a locked-up cupboard, and fastened them to a piece of wreckage. Eventually the wreckage was washed ashore In Denmark and found by a fisherman who (of course) was in sympathy with England. His companion was in sympathy with Germany, according to plan. The papers were taken to a German vice-consul and Berlin was communicated with. After some bargaining the secret code book and part of the log book were sold to Germany. The map was kept by the Danish (?) fishermen. With the aid of the code book the German fleet was able to pull off some small stunts. Satisfied with their success the Germans negotiated for the purchase of the map from the Danish (?) fishermen and it was eventually sold for £I,OOO in gold. When the Germans got the map they found that it gave full particulars of the defences of the Straits of Dover, and that it would be impossible for German submarines to get through the chain of nets and other devices. This so frightened the German naval authorities that they gave orders that no submarines wer.e to go through the straits and that they were to take the route round the north of Ireland. By this ruse the British defences in the Channel were completed successfully and the British Government obtained £I,OOO of German gold.