KAISER'S SECRET SPEECH.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 September 1915, Page 6

KAISER'S SECRET SPEECH.

"WE SHALL STRIKE—WHEN ] READY." GERMANY'S SPY ARMY. REMARKABLE DISCLOSURES. Mr. W. le Queux, who lias made so great a study of espionage in Europe, and. as lie admits, ''has done a bit of it on his own,'' lectured at Bath ill June on the spy peril. In the course of his opening remarks, Mr. le Queux read a telegram from Lord Charles Beresford, who said:—"l wish you every success in your lecture. The German spy peril is very serious, and in my opinion the authorities are not taking adequate steps to meet it." In his lecture, Mr, le Queux explained that he had spent half his life-time travelling in order to collect information and to reproduce it in the form what he hoped might have been interesting fiction. For a number of years he had made a special study of the secret service system of the Powers in Europe. He thought he could with modesty claim he was the first person 111 Great Britain to discover the hostile intention of the Kaiser. It came about briefly in this way. Early in IOOT he was in Berlin studying the gay night life of that city for the purpose of writing a book, and in the course of many evenings spent in those gay surroundings lie made the acquaintance of a young German actress, to whom he was able to be of some little service. She revealed to him that her brother, a Prussian officer, had been sent to England as a spy. At first he took the statement with the proverbial grain of salt, but on his return to England, what lie made it his business to discover showed the statement was true. He found that in 1007 a perfect network of spies was being spread over the face of Great Britain. With that knowledge he went to the War Office, where a very affable gentleman told him there was nothing in it. THE ADVICE OF LORD ROBERTS. He then saw Lord Roberts, who realised the gravity of the situation, and urged him to continue his inquiries. He did so, discovared much more evidence, and three months later returned to the War Office, where was at once formed a special department to foil the German espionage. In that department lie (Mr. le Queux) became a voluntary assistant, and from that day to the present had remained so. (Applause.) Although he had been in practically every corner of Europe, he had never asked one penny as recompense, and he had paid the whole of his travelling expenses. Everything he stated could be substantiated by reports in the achives of the War Office. On June 20, 1908, he returned from Berlin with a document which the German Government would have given many thousand pounds to get from him. It was an accurate verbatim report of the secret speech delivered by the Kaiser at a Council held at Potsdam Palace on June 2, 1908, to Ministers, admirals, generals, and chiefs of the Federal States. KAISER'S SECRET SPEECH. The speech took over two hours to deliver, and for five hours afterwards was discussed. The report he brought home was placed before the next meeting of the British Cabinet and discussed. At first, some little suspicion was cast upon ithad the speech ever been delivered? So further inquiry was made, and there was no doubt it was perfectly genuine. The gentleman who had handed it to him (the lecturer) was a high official, very near to the Kaiser's person, an official to whom we should all be very grateful, for he had furnished us with much important information. He was friendly disposed towards England, and had no sympathy with the present war. If his name were revealed he would be arrested and probably shot. In the course of the speech the Kaiser said: "We shall strike as soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins at my disposal.. I have given orders for the construction of more airships of the improved Zeppelin type. When these are ready we shall destroy England's North Sea, Channel and Atlantic fleets, after which nothing on earth can prevent the landing of our army on British soil and its triumphant march to London." He went on to say: "You will desire to know how the outbreak of hostilities will be brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall not have to go far to find a cause for war. My army of spies scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South America, as well as in other parts of the world, will take good care of that. I have issued already secret orders that willl at the proper moment accomplish what we desire." The concluding sentence was, "With Great Britain and France in the dust, with Russia and the United States at my mercy, I shall set a new course to the destinies of the world, a course that will ensure to Germany for all time to come the leading Power among nations of the globe." While the Cabinet knew that the Kaiser had decided to make war, still the British public read daily the idea of disarmament. Three days after reading that speech Lord Roberts resigned from the Army Council and devoted the rest of his life to his universal service scheme. (Cheers). He (the lecturer ) considered it his duty to place the whole matter before the public, to expose what was intended. With that object he made a copy of the speech, and wrote the first two chapters of a book warning the public. He took them to his publisher.

A MYSTERIOUS THEFT AND AN INSPIRED COMMAND.

In liis (presence Mr. . .ash locked them away, but three days later they were stolen. Two days after that three friends of hia in Berlin, officers, received domiciliary visits from the police, who ransacked their houses from top to bottom, searching for correspondence from him. Happily nothing was found. On the following day he received an urgent message to go to the War Office, where Colonel Macdona, Director of the Secret Service, said: "I have been instructed by a very high personage to request you to say nothing about that secret speech of the Kaiser's, and not to publisii that book concerning it" He did not know who the high personage was, but having received such orders he could not disobey them. By Lord Roberts's advice lie wrote "The Invasion of England.'' But it did not wake the public, and the then Prime Minister, Mr. Campbell-Ban-nerman, denounced him as a scaremonger. According to The Hague Convention, a "spy" could only exist in a war area, as Great Britain was not in that area, technically speaking, there could be no spies here. The German system was the most marvellous ever conceived. Were he permitted to reveal one quarter of the knowledge he possessed concerning it lie was sure it would create a sensation in that room. But if he did bo it would reveal to the enemy what must

not be given away, because we are at war. There were two centres in Germany whore spies were trained, for a spy to be successful must be clever; expert in photography, iiv observation, and in the drawing up of reports. Most of these people became naturalised. The head of the system for the last five years had spent £750,000 a year in Great Britain alone. Our secret service cost us only £50,000, and lie thought we must believe it had done marvellously on such a small sum. CURIOUS POINT NEEDING EXPLANATION. There was a very curious fact that needed explanation. The question would probably be asked, though to-day was not the time to ask it, why Colonel Macdona, the head of the department, at the outbreak of the war, was relieved of his post? He made no comment. But that was the officer who knew everything about the service, who had worked everything; yet the moment his presence was wanted he was sent to the front! In the course of the lecturer's investigations he had made many interesting discoveries. The first district in England to which he turned was the south-west corner. Ho found that in a certain area there lived and was still living a man of the Dresden Army reserve, and in that same district they were all Dresden men; in the next district they were all Liepsie men; in the next, including Newhaven, all men of Hanover; and so on right through the country, And the sectional officers were from the same part of Germany as the spies, who were mostly little tradesmen—barbers, clock makers, or hotel managers. They became good churchgoers, apparently quiet, well-disposed folk, subscribing to local charities, and worming themselves into the good graces of their neighbours, They w y ere visited periodically by Germans, who were ostensibly commercial travellers, but who in reality were sectional officers who collected the reports and paid the spies. They were not paid very well. Small men in the villages got £1 a week or 305., others £3, sectiona officers about £5 a week; they knew people who got £IOOO a year, ever £3OOO. What the financial spies go) they did not know. GERMANS TOO CLEVER.""" Mentioning eases in which their egpionage had achieved no advantages, Mr le Queux said the Germans were very anxious to secure a certain naval code book, and also the mobilisation scheme for East Anglia. In each case a traitoi was conveniently found, and the documents reached Berlin. But in neither case was it the right information, (Laughter). We should never believe"ii was only the man who speaks with a German accent who is a spy. There was the case of Frederick Adolphus Gould, a John Bull to the very core, but who received six years' penal servitude for supplying the Germans with secrets from Chatham. THE NIGHT-SIGNALLING SYSTEM Recently, within the last few weeks lie had been investigating night signelling in the South of England, in the counties of Sussex, Surrey, and lieut, Accompanied by two officers of the naval air section he spent eighteen consecutive nights on the hill tops in those countries, They saw signalling; it was in code, but they were able to understand the messages, and they replied to them. (Applause). One evening in the message the letter "H" and the figure "5" repeatedly occurred. It puzzled them very much, but the next morning it was perfectly clear. At the hour they received that signal there bad been five hostile aeroplanes over Dunkirk. Those messages iiad come from the sea, probably from a submarine, had been picked up on the coast, and sent right through England, because the same signals that were seen in the county of Surrey were sent, and read by watchers on the lookout, as far north as Berwick-on-Tweed. They discovered, too, that these very signals within a few minutes were known in the obscure cafes in London where Germanß congregated. All this signalling had something to do with hostile aircraft, and he was quite certain that one day the signal would be given of a complete Zeppelin fleet over London, and at this moment, if we were not very careful to intern them all, the aliens, 19,000 or so, would create a tremendous panic and disaster. A CLEVER SCHEME. Having given instances to support his opinion that the female spy i 3 far more dangerous than the male spy, Mr. le Queux came to the question, How can spies communicate with Germany? They did it, he said, by many ways, but he was not permitted to reveal very mucl. For a long time past there had been a mystery about advertisements in cipher inserted in the most obscure newspapers in Great Britain; the key was at last supplied through the French Secret Service. The words "love," "bricks," and "Maud" frequently occurred in these advertisements, but these words meant something very different. When the door to Holland was closed —it was kept open far too long, as the lecturer demonstrated—another mystery started. In the mails going to Holland two or three days a week there was found a new pair of lady's gloves. Tliey were closely examined and tested, but nothing was discovered —except that every pair of these gloves was perfumed differently. They now knew what the perfumes meant. Rose meant ''Look in such a paper," lilac "Look in another," and so on. Of course large numbers of papers went to Holland, in the ordinary wrappers, and it was impossible to censor every newspaper. They would all agree that this was a very interesting means of comnjunication.

INTERN THEM ALL, In conclusion, the lecturer suggested to the authorities two or three things. One was that a strict search should be made in the religious institutions in England for concealed ammunition and armament. We should never finish this spy peril until every alien was interned, naturalised or unnaturalized, rich or poor. (Cheers). It was useless to tinker with the question any longer. We should do exactly what the Tsar did. The IVar 'saw that the Germans had spread over the land a network of spies. When war began, by one stroke of the pen he sent all women and children back to Germany, lie interned everybody, naturalised and unnaturalised, and he ordered the property of all aliens to be sold by public auction. The consequence was that today you could buy in Russia a. big factory in thorough going order, and its machinery, for the price of the brick.-? and mortar. He would not suggest ar.ything unjust against honest naturalised Germans. There were many Germans amongst us who had brought up their children as Englishmen, and it would be a grave injustice to intern them; but he would intern them, and then allow these good Germans to come, not beforo the Home Secretary (happily, we had a nw one now), but appeal before a British jury, who would not do them any injustice'