BRUSSELS RULED BY SPIES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 91, 15 April 1916, Page 3

BRUSSELS RULED BY SPIES.

SOCIETY WOMEN AS SECRET SERVICE AGENTS. So far as a considerable number of the people of Brussels ale concerned, the German occupation constitutes a moral as well as a physical martyrdom. , A private correspondent whose letters have reached me (says a correspondent) through friendly diplomatic channels informs me that the German system of espionage has reached such a point that the more nervous-minded of the people live in a state of perpetual dread. "There is an army here of more than 1,500 spies," he writes. "These are well paid, but they are paid by results; they live extravagantly, and when funds are low more victims mast be made. There are spies of eveiy grade and species. "There is the society woman, such as that relative of von Bissing, who succeeded in forming a little .'ourt of her own, and who herself attends the society teas in private houses and at the fashionable confection ers (at Matins', in the Rue du Trerenberg, for •example) in order to exercise her espionage. There is the former factory agent who, taking advantage of his pre-war connections, worms himself into financial and industrial' circles; there is the officer's or professor's wife who frequents middle-class coteries; there is the demi-mondaine who keeps an eye on the theatres, the cafes, and the boulevards, and there are men in hundreds who penetrate like ants into the innermost recesses of private life.

| "The letters we receive from our dear exiled friends we may neither ■' keep nor answer, for a domiciliary

visit may be made at any moment and on the slightest pretext, or none at all. both men and women may be hurried away to the kommondantur, and thence to prison after a mockery of a ' trial.' "Two days ago I was reading the war report posted at the corner of Ihe Boulevard Botanique and th-.s Blue Royale There we were, a silent gronr A man joined us and began to read the news aloud, with painful slownei*, almost spelling out the words. Coming to a number he read 'seven thousand' instead of 'seventy thousand,' the words appearing on the notice board. "He got no further. A man forcing part of the group placed his hand

on his shoulder and dragged him along to the ko'mmanantur. We were lucky to escape arrest for .having heard him make the blunder.

"In the tramway ear from Brussels to Tervueren I saw a man arrested because he carried a parcel wrapped in a copy of a London paper, the date of which was

"In the Rue de Flandre I saw two brewer's nien being marched off as prisoners because, afteT unloading a heavy barrel of beer, they had remarked, 'The Kaiser himself could not do it as neatly.'

"I could cite hundreds of astonishing facts, but it would bore you, as they are all more or less of the same category."