SPIES MASTERED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1939, Page 4

SPIES MASTERED

BRITISH SPHINX,OF ROOM 408 THE CHAIR OF FATE. • . I Archbishop’s son, Etonian, Oxonian, Prime Minister of Tonga and British New Guinea, Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, head of the Criminal Investigation Department, and author —that was the record of Sir Basil Thomson, whose sudden death at Teddington, at the age of 77, was announced in London on March i 26. n • Foourteen months before the war he succeeded the late Sir Melville Macnaughten as head of the Criminal Investigation. Department. As director of the Special Branch he was “the sphinx of Room 40B.” From the chamber of many secrets he controlled a secret service organisa-' tion that had to beat the secret service agents of Britain’s enemies. Beat them it did. Rosenthal, Muller, Sir Roger Casement, Carl Lody, and the rest, paid With their lives.

All of them sat at one time or another in a certain chair in Room 408, faced Sir Basil’s inquiring gaze, and engaged in a duel of wits. Sir Basil, in some recollections of those interviews, wrote afterwards: — “There was in my room an ugly and uncomfortable armchair with remarkably short legs. In peace time no one ever sat in it. In war time, it was always wheeled up to my table for the suspected spy. “We noticed that people who sat in it immediately became communicative, and that whenever a speciallyawkward question was put, they would raise themselves a little by the arms as if to bring their faces up to the level of their questioner.” Sir Basil frequently met with a type of .spy that pretended to have come from Germany with an offer of service to the Allies.

Von der Goltz was of that sort. Sir Basil not only brushed aside the baron’s bogus offer of service, but within half an hour dragged out of him that he had left papers in a safe deposit in Holland and obtained the key of it. Three days later Scotland Yard had the papers —not that they proved of great importance. Von der Goltz was “removed to America.”

Of Muller, who was shot in 1915, Sir Basil used to say: “He had been sending the Germans really valuable information; they were athirst for more.

“It seemed a pity to disappoint them. So for three whole months Muller continued to _ supply them with the most startling' facts, only the ‘facts’ • were supplied by officers sitting round my writing-table at Scotland Yard.”

Sir Basil married, in 1889, Grace, daughter, of Mr Felix Webber, of Blandford. There are two sons and a daughter. ' .