WOMEN AS INTERNATIONAL SPIES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 276, 18 May 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

WOMEN AS INTERNATIONAL SPIES

THE ROMANCE OF ESPiONAGjv i "The wit of most women serves njore to strengthen their folly than their reason." and it is as the result of [woman's wit that a brilliant young German officer is at the moment of writing languishing in prison under the terrible charge of high treason, while his sweetheart has also been arrested as his ,accomplice. r I he allair (says a recent, London paper), is one of the most romantic cases of espionage on record. The officer, who was attached to ihe g,|rrison at Posen. fell in hive with a girl, but owing to lack of money they were unable to marrv. A Russian secret agent learned of this. and. approaching the officer, promised him a sum. equivalent to £SOOO for a plan of the fortress at Posen. After a, while the officer gave way to temptation. but found it impossible, on account of the careful watch kept., to get the plans out of the fortress. In his perplexity be confided to his sweetheart, and her woman's wit suggested a way out of the difficulty. "You shall tattoo the plans on my skin,'' she said, "and f will go to Russia with them. They will never discover us in that way." The officer accepted the fantastic and heroic suggestion, and after a very painful process an accurate plan of the fortress was tattooed on the shoulders of his sweetheart. The girl journeyed to Russia, received the reward, and returned to her lover, and it was the silly ex- 1 travagance in which they indulged'with the money on her return which led the authorities to suspect that they had derived funds from some illegitimate source. Tliev were arrested, and it was when the girl, in accordance with prison regulations, had to be measured and in- ■ spected fo'r purposes of identification that their ingenious plan was discovered. FASCINATING SPIES. That women play a very important in may cases of international spying is shown by Mr. H. L. Adam in his remarkable book, "Woman and Crime." Mr. Adam gives some startling revelations concerning young and attractive women who win their way to the confidence of youthful military-officers, whom they induce to betray State secrets. "A few years ago," ho says, "a young and beautiful woman named Peterson was arrested at Kiel, in Germany, in suspicion of being a French spy. Posing as a teacher of languages, she had entered into a love affair with a non-com-missioned officer named Dietrich, of the Explosives Department, for the purpose of inducing him to reveal important German naval secrets. She had, by the exercise of her arts of fascination, attained complete ascendancy over the young fellow, who was found to be supplying her with the formula for the manufacture of German smokeless powder, and the situation of port mines. The attention of the authorities was first drawn to her by the ample funds she always seemed to have at her disposal." One of the most notorious and successful Russian female spies was Mme. Joutehenko, who began her career as a spy at the early age of twenty-three, and was the cause of many people losing their lives and of many others being sent into exile. She was one of the most scheming and treacherous of women, her method being to fraternise with Russian revolutionaries and then betray them to the Government, as a consequence of which many persons found themselves on their way to Siberia. No work was too dirty for this handsome traitress to do in pursuit of her bloodmoney." Then there was the case of the notorious French beauty, known as La Belle Lison. who fascinated a young naval officer—Lieutenant rilmo— wh'o, in order to obtain funds to gratify (lie expensive whims of this woman, sold some of his country's secrets to a foreign power. He was discovered, put on trial, arid the most important witness against him was the woman who had ruined him. In the end the young man was publicly disgraced. and. sentenced to imprisonment for life, hut nothing appears to have been done with the woman, although, as AfAda-Hi truly remarks, she ought to have been held guiltv as an acecssorv.