SPY ROUND UP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 February 1940, Page 9

SPY ROUND UP

NAZIS' ESPIONAGE SYSTEM CHECKMATED. BRITISH SECRET SERVICE GIVES ENEMY A SHOCK. While the British Navy and Air Force are engaging the enemy on sea and in the air, and the Allied Army is 'digging in for the winter, a great battle of wits is being fought out behind a smoke screen of secrecy between the British Secret Service and the Nazi espionage organisation, writes a London correspondent. Just as in 1914, the efficiency of the British Intelligence Service has given the enemy a nasty shock. The Nazis had built up an elaborate spy organisation in Britain, which they fondly believed could never be uncovered. Actually, the Intelligence Service was well aware of the activities of the horde of German “secret” agents. As soon as war was declared, a prearranged plan was put into action. The spies had been shadowed for days and, at a given signal, were arrested and clapped into prison. V/hile the British Expeditionary Force was crossing to France, these spies, on whom the Nazis were relying for their secret reports, were all under lock and key. A laconic Home Office statement merely announced that “some hundreds of Germans had been arrested for purposes of national security.” Among these Germans were some who were taken purely as a precautionary measure; but a great many were spies sent over for the sole purpose of espionage, both in time of peace and war. Many of them were secret agents jf the Gestapo, and provided with forged credentials which enabled them co pose as refugees from the Hitler cegime. The proof that the British Secret Service made few mistakes in the great spy round-up is that a small number of them have availed themjelves of their right to appeal to the special tribunal set up by the HomeSecretary. The arrests were all so well syn.hronised that every member of the spionage organisations was rounded .tp simultaneously. None had sufl’icent warning to take refuge in flight. The question may be asked why the British Secret Service waited for war before arresting the German agents. Ihe answer is that once a spy is arrested another spy is sent over to take his place, and it may be some time before the new arrival is detected.

By rounding up the entire enemy espionage system at the outbreak of war the Secret Service cut off the Nazis from their secret sources of ini formation at the most critical period when armed forces were being moved to their war stations. Although the espionage service has scored so heavily, it is inevitable that the history of 1914 will be repeated, and that the Germans will try to send to England other spies to replace those who have been rounded up. It is lor this reason that such stringent precautions have been taken to prevent any leakages of information, and that notices have been posted up warning men in the Services and members of the public against the dangers of talking too freely in the presence of strangers. Warned by the accumulative evidence of German espionage activity in Britain, the Government increased the

Secret Service vote months before war broke out to £700,000 a year, or nearly four times the normal peace time appropriation. No account of how the Secret Service funds are spent is ever made public. To do so would be, as' Mr Asquith said in the House in 1908, to defeat the objects of the grants.