NAVY SECRETS AND LADY SPIES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 177, 5 November 1910, Page 10

NAVY SECRETS AND LADY SPIES

It may be remembered that a short time ago some valuable Admiralty plans disappeared from Chatham. Mr. McKenna, the First Lord of the Admiralty, admitted they had been stolen, but a mystery surrounded their disappearance. It is now suggested that a well-known international woman spy, who is ever ready to sell her services to the highest bidder, lie it the Russian, German or French Government, was responsible for the disapp#arance of those plans. It is known that she was in the country for some weeks prior to the incident, and it is supposed that during that time she engineered the plot which resulted in the vanishing of the important papers. Whatever truth there may be in the storv it is a very feasible one, for it is usually women who prove the most successful spies. "When it conies to trickery and cunning," said a well-known detective to the writer on one occasion, "there is no match for a clever woman. If she is pretty into the bargain, I would back her to beat the cleverest men at Scotland Yard nine times out of ten." And judging from the success of women in Secret Service Work, it would seem that the tribute is in no way exaggerated. GERMAN NAVAL SECRETS BETRAYED. It is only a short time ago that a beautiful and fashionably-dressed teacher of languages, Fraulein Petersen, about twenty-five years of age, was arrested at Kiel, in Germany, on suspicion of being a French spy. She was said to have entered in a love affair deliberately with a non-commissioned officer named Dietrich, of the Explosives Department, for the purpose of inducing him to divulge important German naval secrets. Dietrich, flattered by the attentions of such a beautiful woman, could deny her nothing, and at the time of her arrest was said to have been supplying her with the formula of the manufacture of the German smokeless powder (one of the most effective yet invented) and the situation of the port mines. Te disguise her true occupation she posed as a teacher of languages. Suspicion was directed to her on account of the ample funds with which she was always provided, and of her fear of giving the police the customary notice of her frequent changes of address. A FEMALE AZEFF. In Russia, where the Secret Service is raised to the level of a fine art, the woman spy is recognised as an extremely valuable medium for obtaining information, not only about foreign matters, but also concerning the various revolutionary movements going on at home. One of the most notorious of these feminine police spies is Mme. Joutchenko, who has been described as a female Azeff. This person, posing as one of the Terrorists, took part in their enterprises, and, discovering all their plans, gave information to the police. For this work she was paid a handsome monthly salary. She began her nefarious trade at the age of twenty-three, and her first nig coup was when she betrayed the Respontine plot against the Czar in 1895. Scores of those who had trusted her went into exile in Siberia on the plot being discovered. She herself, to disarm suspicion, was gent away also, but was allowed to escape and rejoin the revolutionists, in order to obtain more information. One .of her victims was a handsome girl named Frania Froumkin, who was sent to the gallows after an abortive attempt to kill the Prefect of Moscow. The archtraitress wormed herself into the confidence of families, with the result that numbers of persons were banished to Siberia. BARMAIDS AS SPIES. . Quite recently the French Government caused a large number of German women, employed on the Eastern frontier as barmaids, to be expelled from the country. These women had been watched, and found to be in the pay of German spies, to whom they gave the information that they acquired from listening to the conversation of drunken soldiers in the taverns. A more serious affair was that at Rheims. Seven men and three women, alleged to be paid agents of the German War Office, were arrested. The three women were in the habit, l't was said, of making the acquaintance of soldiers, and wheedling military secrets out of them, which information they passed on to the men. Compromising correspondence was found at their lodgings and seemed to reveal wholesale espionage by the women. As a matter of fact, the arrest; of these men and women is said to have disclosed the existence ot a widespread organisation of Gorman spies throughout the country. Allowing some discount for the spy mania which breaks out now and again in the various countries, there is no doubt that the Secret Services of evencountry contain many spies who are on the qui vive for military and naval information concerning other Powers, and amongst these spies women are to be found doing much important work.