Spies and Secret Service
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Title: Spies and Secret Service
Author: Hamil Grant
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPIES AND SECRET SERVICE ***
SPIES AND SECRET SERVICE
[Illustration: Fouché
_From an engraving after Girardet_]
SPIES AND SECRET
SERVICE
THE STORY OF ESPIONAGE, ITS MAIN
SYSTEMS AND CHIEF EXPONENTS
BY
HAMIL GRANT
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS LTD.
ST MARTIN'S STREET
LEICESTER SQUARE
MDCCCCXV
PRINTED BY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE ETHOS OF THE SPY 17
The Pragmatical Age—Spies always with us—Prehistoric
Ages—Antiquity—Jurists and Spying—Morin's
Views—Napoleon and Spies—Modern Spy's
Characteristics—The Aristocrat as Spy—Teutons inferior
to Latins—Women as Spies—The Salic Law—Mentality
of Efficient Spy—Degeneracy of Spy—Good
Education and Presence essential—Audacious rather
than Courageous—Napoleon's Leniency towards Spies
CHAPTER II
THE SPY THROUGH THE AGES 29
Spies and the Bible—The Jew as Spy—Polyænus and
his Work—Mithridates his own Spy—Frontinus and
_Stratagems_—Ruses of Lelius—Tarquin's Son—Military
"Psychologising"—Alexander's Black Cabinet—Histiæus
and Ionia—Carrier-Pigeons used by Ancients—Hannibal
and his Spies—Cæsar's Use of Spies—Rome
and Church Spies—Continental School Spies—Frederick
the Great real Founder of Modern Espionage—His
Ambition for Prussia—Napoleon and Spies
CHAPTER III
LE CARON 39
Piggott and Le Caron—How the Major adopted his
Alias—Birth and Bringing-up—Puritanical Surroundings—Works
in Paris—Volunteers in American Civil
War—His Religion—Fenian Movement—Employed by
British Government to spy on Fenians—Joins Irish Republican
Army as Organiser—An Impromptu Speech—Fenian
Movement's Growth—General O'Neill's invasion
of Canada—A Generous Cheque from Ottawa—The
Clan-na-gael Movement—Le Caron an Active Spirit—_The
Irish World_—Influence of the Clan—A Russo-Irish
Alliance—Le Caron and Parnell—The Major's real
Status—How he won his quasi-Heroic Reputation
CHAPTER IV
SCHULMEISTER 58
Schulmeister a Master Spy—His Value to Napoleon—A
Claimant to Lofty Origin—Birth and Early Life—Smuggling
as a Trade—Meets Savary—His Capture of
Duc d'Enghien—Is presented to Napoleon—His Rôle
in Austerlitz Campaign—Becomes Mack's Confidant—Supplies
False Information to the Austrian—Personal
Description of the Spy—The Capitulation of Ulm—His
Advice to the Allies—Austerlitz—His Political Sense—His
Social Ambition—Employed at Congress of Erfurt—Spies
on Emperor Alexander, Queen Louise and
Goethe—His Request to General Lasalle—The Legion
of Honour—Retires from Paris—Fortunes crippled—Poverty
in Old Age—Meets Napoleon III.—Death
CHAPTER V
NATHAN HALE 79
Nathan Hale's Fanaticism—Compared with André—Puritanism
of Hale's Family and Education—At Yale
University—His Splendid Appearance—A Schoolmaster—Battle
of Lexington—Hale wins a Captaincy—The
Military Situation—Hale volunteers as Spy on
British—He justifies his Action—Enters British Lines
in Disguise—Mission serves little Purpose—A Fatal
Rencontre—Is captured by the British—Sentenced to
Death by Howe—His Last Words
CHAPTER VI
MACK AND THE MOLLY MAGUIRES 90
M'Parlan a North-of-Ireland Man—The Rush to Pennsylvania
Coal-fields—The Irish Adventurers—Growth
of New Ireland—Erin a Land of Political Unrest—A
Nursery of Political Agitation—The Four Provinces—Irish
Hatred of Traitors—The "Molly Maguire" Dispatch—Frequency
of Murders—Franklin Goven intervenes—Mack
enters the Field of Investigation—His
Qualifications for the Business—Picking up the Lines—A
Narrow Shave—Becomes an accepted Molly—His
Strenuous Task—Becomes a Suspect—Is sentenced to
Death—Eludes his appointed Slayers—Whisky saves
him—His Escape from the Coal Zones
CHAPTER VII
MAJOR ANDRÉ 104
Mongrel Breed of Spy—Marcus Crassus and his Spies—Birth
of André—Geneva University—His Precociousness
in Love Affairs—Buys a Commission in the Royal
Fusiliers—Learns his Trade in Berlin—His Charming
Personality—Leaves for Quebec via Philadelphia—Captured
after Lexington—His Value to Howe—Promotion—Mr
W. Seargent's Picture of André—Relations
with Benedict Arnold—His Correspondence with the
American Traitor—Importance of West Point—André's
Bright Hopes—Interview with Arnold—His Adventures
in Hostile Lines—Capture by an American Farmer—Bribery
of no Avail—Colonel Jameson's Mistake—André's
Letter to General Washington—What Tallmadge
thought—Is sentenced by Court Martial—His
Execution at Tappan—A Last Request
CHAPTER VIII
BRITISH SECRET SERVICE 123
Little or no Espionage in Britain—Beginnings of Secret
Service—Henry VII. and the Monastic Estates—The
Intelligencer in Elizabeth's Time—Statesmen employ
his Services—Some Expensive Intelligencers—Cromwell
well served by Spies—Charles II. and Duchess of
Portsmouth—Many German Spies in Georgian Times—Pitt
organises Foreign Spy System—Fox and the First
Consul—Canning's famous Tilsit Coup—Pre-Union
Espionage in Ireland—Le Caron's Indictment of British
Paymasters—The Trench-Brandon Trial at Leipsic—Germany's
Fear of Foreign Spies—Her Traitors seek
English Gold—The Cost of Espionage to England,
France, Germany and Russia—Home Office Alertness in
August 1914—Measures of Counter-Espionage
CHAPTER IX
FRENCH SECRET SERVICE 147
Frenchmen Unwilling Spies—Paris Centre of vast Police
Network of Spies—Colonel Henry's Fate—The Prevalence
of the _Dossier_—Fame and the _Dossier_—The _Agent
Provocateur_—Divisions of French Secret Service—Esterhazy's
Seventeen _Poursuivants_—M. Bertillon's
Bureau—Lower Orders of Spies—Forced Espionage—Newspaper
and Bankers' Spies—The French War
Office well informed—Renan's Views
CHAPTER X
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE 161
Germans are Natural Spies—The Principles of Frederick
the Great—_Matinées du Roi de Prusse_—Royal Views on
War, Religion, Policy, Justice—Essential Militarism of
Social Germany—Price Collier's Opinion—Stieber the
Organiser of German Espionage—His Origin, Character,
Unscrupulousness—Employed by his Sovereign—His
Importance in Official Circles—His Activity in all Classes
of Society—His Decorations of Honour—Bismarck
meets a Kindred Soul—Stieber "fixes" Bohemia—Downfall
of Austria at Sadowa—Stieber promoted
CHAPTER XI
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_ 179
Bismarck's Faith in Stieber—Red Eagle for the Sleuth—Stieber's
Preparation to _invade_ France—His Requisitions
of Female Agents—An Attempted Assassination—Bismarck's
Far-sightedness—Stieber precedes the Army
of 1870—His Duties in the Field—A Pen Picture of
De Gallifet—Stieber's Ferocity and Boastfulness—The
Reptile Press—Bismarck and the Sleuth—Shooting a
Bridegroom—German Gold wins Friends—Importance
of Stieber in Berlin—His Wealth and Social Pretensions—Fears
the Theatre and Literature—Meeting
with Mommsen—Berlin a new _Urbs Sacra_
CHAPTER XII
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_ 195
German Strategic Railways—Their Military _Personnel_
and Character—Stieber's Railway Spies in France—His
Foreign Agents of Domestic Unrest—England also
"covered"—Stieberism and the Dreyfus Case—Economic
Unrest and Berlin Gold—An Appeal to Irishmen—The
Mesnard Pamphlet—Who financed the Suffragettes?
(_Note_)—Death of Stieber—His Decorations of
_Honour_—German Lecturers and Teutonic Ambitions—Jewish
Eugenics copied—Prussia's National Missionaries—Creation
of "Sympathetic" Areas—Stieberism
a Sink of Immorality—"All is Justifiable"—How
France was overrun—German Sleuths at Work—The
Residential Spy
CHAPTER XIII
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_ 214
Berlin and Polyænus—What the Spy has to find out—Lanoir's
Tales in Point—Buying a Subaltern—£8000 to
a Lieutenant—Berlin pays £10,000 for False Information—A
Pole _does_ the Bureau for £4000—German Spies
in 1914—The War Lord's _Un_acted Drama—Germanising
Influences in Belgium—Rhodes Scholarships
objected to—Ex-Priests in German Army—Cipher and
Red Man's Signals
CHAPTER XIV
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_continued_ 229
Steinhauer in Stieber's Chair—His Work at Headquarters—Scare
Policies—Elme Caro quoted—The
Zeppelin Programme—Hermann Turr's Revelations—Windell
the "valet"—"Number Seventy, Berlin"—The
Personal Qualifications of German Agents—No
Pretenders need apply—Salaries of Secret Agents—A
Hard Curriculum—Berlin's Tireless Quest of Intelligence—Mr
Graves and his Experience—Generous Pay for
Good Work—Game not worth the Candle
CHAPTER XV
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE—_concluded_ 242
Impotence of German Espionage—Berlin's Sleuths and
Diplomats equally bad—Training Secret-Service Men—Insistence
on Facts—Naval Agents and their Knowledge—The
Fatuity of German Ambitions—Practice
_versus_ Theory—A Bismarck Touch—"Dirty Little
Lieutenants"—An American War Correspondent in
the Field
CHAPTER XVI
DIPLOMATIC, SOCIAL, CHURCH SPIES 255
No Sex Mystery about D'Eon—The Chevalier's Great
Courage—His Trip to Russia in Woman's Dress—Empress
rewards him—Spies for Louis XV.—Proves an Apt
Soldier—Minister in London—Is removed and recalled—Receives
Fat Pension—His Return to France—Resumes
Female Attire—Disappoints the Curious—Death
in 1810—Comte d'Antraigues—Napoleon's Opinion of—His
Real Importance—Murdered in London—Diplomatic
Secrets rarely divulged—Popular Misconceptions of
Diplomatic Spies—Napoleon's _Cabinet Noir_—Prussian
Spies at every Court—The "Posen" Case—Social Spies
ubiquitous—The Lower Types—The Tausch Bureau—London's
Peer Spy—A Self-constituted Social Cerberus—His
Courage in Action—Rise and Fall of the "Prince"—Sainfoin's
Derby—The Meyerling Tragedy—Church
Espionage—The Spanish Inquisition—Its Terrors and
Tortures—Congregational and School Spies
CHAPTER XVII
AMERICAN SECRET SERVICE 282
Few Spies in America—Political Spies active—Charles
I. and his Spies—Louis XVI. and De Kalb—Washington
and his Spies—James Rivington's Work—Secession
Dreams in 1812—The Mexican and Civil Wars—Southern
Female Spies—Their Cleverness and Exploits—Belle
Boyd and her Corps—The Whisky Ring Spies—Custom
House Spies—American Newspaper Spies
CHAPTER XVIII
NAPOLEON, HIS MISTRESS AND—A SPY 298
The Long Arm of British Diplomacy—Its fateful
World Rôle—Spying on Bonaparte—Romance of a
Captain's Wife—Madame Fourès and Bonaparte—Getting
rid of a Husband—John H. Barnett, British
Agent—Bonaparte's Unscrupulousness—The Harem of
Elfi Bey—Thrashing an Unfaithful Wife—Self-sacrifice
of Fourès—Napoleon's Narrow Escape
CHAPTER XIX
CONCLUSION—BIBLIOGRAPHY 309
INDEX 317
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fouché _Frontispiece_
Henri Le Caron _To face page_ 40
The Duchess of Portsmouth " " 128
Frederick the Great " " 162
The Chevalier d'Eon " " 256
I
THE ETHOS OF THE SPY
The worldly philosophy of the current age bears the name of Pragmatism,
the principles of which, so far as they are susceptible of being
weighed, constitute a more or less modified view of the doctrine that
the end justifies the means, a teaching which has become familiar to
us through the pages of Nietzsche and Stendhal, and which is based
mainly on the idea that might is the proper measure of right. Taking
it, then, that pragmatical notions of this sort have become almost
an implicit condition of individual progress, it would seem to serve
little purpose seriously to go into the question of the wrongfulness
or the rightfulness of spying as a factor in the struggle for complete
self-expression—itself the real aim of all ordered and prearranged
lives. It is sufficient for us to reflect that the successful spy
flourishes to-day, as he has flourished since the beginnings of
recorded time, and as in all probability he will continue to flourish
till the day of doom. Indeed, it is not an unreasonable presumption
that in the very earliest ages of the world, espionage must have been
an entirely necessary condition of the struggle for existence among the
infra-men who then peopled the caves of the earth and who succeeded in
successfully surviving only by virtue of predatory acts and excursions
in which the spoils and the plunder went to the strongest, who had
also made themselves the best-informed as to sources of supply. Bible
history, too, has told us about the Spy. The story of Joshua, the
leader of Israel's hosts and the excellent organisation of informers
which he controlled, remain like other tales of common human interest
in the Scriptures among those that linger always in the minds of the
least Biblical of students. Babylon, we are told, was overrun with
informers of all kinds, Memphis and Thebes in their turn became what
Alexandria proved to be in the time of Tiberius, and what the great
capitals of our own day have become—namely, recruiting centres for
criminal adventurers of all types, nationalities and classes, and
consequently happy hunting-grounds for all in rapid quest of the agents
of intrigue, iniquity and maleficence. Those, too, who have read the
classical writers will remember that great leaders like Alexander,
Mithridates, Scipio, Hannibal, Pompey and Cæsar, laid the foundations
of successful campaigns and political achievement upon information
previously supplied them by commissioned spies.
According to the Roman idea, spying was accounted a fair stratagem in
both war and politics and was, in theory at least, distinguishable
from treachery. Between the two acts there is, of course, a real
difference, although in works dealing with international law the terms
are often confused, some writers treating them as interchangeable,
whilst others but loosely differentiate between the act of spying and
that of betrayal, the presumption always remaining that the man who
is capable of being a successful and voluntary spy also possesses
talents which are common to the elemental traitor. The penalty of
death, says Bluntschli, should be such as to terrify all spies, and it
is the custom accordingly to execute them ignominiously by hanging.
Technically the spy has been defined as one who clandestinely goes in
quest of information, whilst a traitor is one who spies within his
own community and to its undoing. Although most authorities agree
in considering espionage as lawful among the ruses of warfare, all,
with one exception, concur in determining that death remains the
only logical desert of the man who has possessed himself of secrets
upon which the common safety depends. Certain international jurists
have objected to the employment, in any cause, of spies, as being
immoral, or as condoning acts which are of themselves immoral, and
the French writer Morin looks upon espionage with particular horror
on the ground that it is "usually malice aforethought and is never
voluntary," a peculiar enough view. It is especially blameable, he
holds, because a premium is placed upon essentially dishonest dealing,
although he admits, with some inconsistency, that it may sometimes
become lawful—when it is unsoiled by perfidy, as he puts it. Only the
last emergency can at all justify it, says Morin, who is singular
in declaring that a spy should not be put to death unless caught in
the act. Napoleon himself displayed an unexpected leniency wherever
possible towards captured spies, and this on the ground, as he said,
that the spy is, by his nature, a base character. In the opinion of
the great soldier the best spy is the half-breed who is a natural
cosmopolitan and is consequently unaffected by ideas of patriotism. His
greatest spy, Schulmeister, was a man of decidedly mongrel antecedents
and began life as a smuggler. Pedlars he also declared to be invaluable
in espionage, and for the reason that they are naturally disposed to
vagabondage, itself a trait of degeneracy. It is well known that he
would only employ in such work men whose past had been soiled by some
act of a disgraceful or criminal kind, and like the great Frederick,
it was his custom to propose to actually convicted criminals their
enlargement as the reward of a successful piece of spying.
Modern spies of the professional type, more especially those employed
by Germany, fully meet the specifications of Napoleon's idea of the
race. The accomplished spy of to-day is invariably a man of at least
quasi-criminal proclivities, a being entirely lacking in a moral
sense, a degenerate briefly; and indeed experts in the secret history
of the German special-information departments all agree in declaring
that a "white man," to use an Americanism, is worse than useless to
the experts at the chief bureau of the Berlin Secret Service. As a
consequence, their _corps d'élite_ is mostly made up of men who, if
they have not known the inside of prisons, have at least earned an
unequivocal right to such knowledge. One of the profoundest technicians
in the business of organising spy campaigns, the late Karl Stieber,
has stated that the most valuable spy is your born aristocrat with
a bad record and a worse reputation. Proof of the soundness of this
view would seem to have been fully advanced by the noble interveners
in the Dreyfus case, and, in any event, it is known that among the
names of the organising staff of Berlin's school for spies, a large
number are those who bear the names of famous families, while the
remainder, if not all gentlemen by birth, are at least gentlemen by act
of parliament, as the saying is. Courage, _aplomb_, the possession of
what Americans so aptly term "a good front," easy manners and a genial
temperament—of any or all of these qualifications, a man of good birth
is only in rare cases devoid. Heredity alone has given him many of the
psychic requirements that go to make up the most valuable of actors in
a desperate situation, including, perhaps, that philosophy of absolute
_insouciance_ which makes of him the most sinister and cold-blooded of
all criminal agents.
It would be unfair, however, to accuse the Germans of monopolising
all those vicious characteristics which go to form the complete spy.
Indeed, it would probably be nearer the mark to declare that it is only
because of the elaborate excellence of the German organisation that
the Teuton has signalised himself so prominently these later times in
espionage. For, in truth, the Teutonic mind is fundamentally lacking,
it is well known, in those qualities of craft and imagination which
produce the best kind of secret service agent. Perseverance and the
philosophy which knows how to wait on circumstances, these conventional
enough qualities he undoubtedly possesses in a marked degree above his
fellows. Nevertheless, they are not the most important requirements of
the master-spy, whose base diplomacy and its results must depend to
a great extent upon the exercise of constructive imagination and the
forcing of circumstances to suit his particular strategy. The German
has excelled his congeners at the business in the opinion of modern men
solely for the reason that among the Germans the trade of the spy is
not accounted more dishonourable than any other. In all probability,
however, the Italian, the Greek, the Kelt, given a highly systematised
school and an equal ethical standpoint, would prove abler executants
in any mission which called for the employment of deep-set guile, the
power of divining motives and the ability to calculate the effect of
moves. The essential arts of the diplomatist—has not an ambassador
been described as an official spy?—underlie, in respect of the mental
operations required, the work of your successful secret service agent,
and although men like Bismarck, whose mentality was not of a positively
Teutonic cast, may be cited in disproof of the statement, it is
certain that the German mind is less adapted and less adaptable to the
fine processes of the arts of political negotiation than that of either
the Kelt or the Italian.
Women, it is interesting to learn, from high authorities on the arts
of espionage, are rarely effective or satisfactory agents in secret
service. Not, it must be understood, that woman is incapable of the
requisite baseness that is, in the successful spy, an indispensable
quality. Far from it. Goethe, who was a competent judge of the sex,
has placed on record his view that woman, when intent on turpitude, is
capable of sounding lower depths than the vilest of the male species.
German experts are, however, unanimous in eliminating to a minimum
point the services of women as spies, and that too on the ground that
they are rarely to be relied upon if once romantic sentiment becomes
engaged in their operations—an ever-present possibility. "Any woman
but a German woman" was a common cry of Karl Stieber who may be
trusted to have well understood the character of his fair compatriot,
for whom love and romance—the purer the better—constitute the only
things worth living for in this drab enough world. Indeed, the famous
Salic Law is said to have owed its first enacting mainly to the fact
that German women were as a rule found to be unreliable, shall we
say? where their intimate feelings were apt to become involved, and
those who have resided in Germany will not require to be told that
a handsome face and a brave air, added to a romantic bent, go very
much further with women in the land of beer, love and song than with
their sisters in perhaps any other country in the world. The work
of the efficient spy involves, it is clear, a peculiar but none the
less specific proportioning of analytical and synthetical qualities
of brain-work, and while the feminine mind, which works mainly on its
intuitions, may be described as wholly of a synthetic calibre, it has,
except in the rarest cases, of analytical faculties—the ability for
properly appraising and forecasting causes and effects—the very poorest
provision.
The elaborate calculations of your Schulmeisters and Stiebers may be
said, in nearly all cases, to have worked out with the smoothness of
algebraic equations, and it is extremely rare that women display either
the self-restraint or the reasoning power which carry to successful
solution dragging intrigues with anything like the patient routine
and regularity which a series of really unromantic situations calls
for. Obviously, the work of the spy, no matter how dramatic it may
appear in its co-ordinated whole, must, in respect of its various
separate acts and phases, be bared of all dramatic or arresting
incident. Were the opposite the case, woman, a natural actor, would
find herself in the most congenial of elements. Anything more sordid,
however, or more commonplace than the general phase-work of the spy,
it would be difficult to imagine, and it is precisely for this reason
that woman as a rule fails as a secret service agent. In matters of
love or revenge, where her deepest feelings are concerned, she is
capable of a sustained effort calling for the application of whatever
analytical powers she may possess, but seldom in other cases; for an
appeal to, say, her patriotism leaves her almost invariably cold and
unenthusiastic, since love of country is a quality which depends too
largely on an essentially platonic and impersonal principle to attract
and hold for long her undivided interest and attention.
On the whole, a study of the spy, however interesting it may prove in
respect of the undoubted variety of its actors and dramatic aspects,
must be held to be a criminological study. Even in the cases of Hale
and André, whose careers owe much of the halo which invests them to
their tragic fate, one is suspicious of fanaticism in the former and
pronounced megalomania in the latter, both symptoms of unsoundness
of mind. However much the spy may plead disinterestedness in the
pecuniary sense, or point to present poverty as a token of his claim
to have worked for an implicit moral principle, one is conscious in
studying the life of any one of the species in more modern times, that
he contained within him all the necessary elements which go to make
up the character and personality of that class of degenerate who is
prepared to travel any path provided he be given the means to play
a more or less spectacular rôle. He is invariably to be found among
that type of men who advance the peculiar claim that "the world owes
every wight a living," strangely forgetful of the historic retort in
point. The application of this principle to all the length to which it
is capable of being extended would, of course, justify the struggle
for existence of the summer burglar, the swell mobsman, the sand-bag
artist and the lead-pipe assassin, to mention but a few members of the
big brotherhood which lives by crime. It is undoubtedly true that many
successful spies lay claim to be scions of splendid families, and,
as we have said, German authorities will not employ men on important
missions in espionage who have not at least had the education of
gentlemen. The boastful claim of pedigree—obviously untenable in the
majority of cases—provides for the writer, at any rate, something of
a key to the psychology of the spy. Pride of mythical ancestry is
undoubtedly a capital symptom of megalomania, among the conditions of
which is the obsession of self-importance, and this would seem to be
a widely prevalent disease among the sons of men. The desire to be
near important people, to be engaged in no matter how lowly a capacity
with men who direct important affairs, to associate in more or less
familiar fashion with celebrities, or people highly placed, to count
for even an infinitesimal part in the conduct of big events, to have
the tips of one's fingers in the particular pie of the moment, to have
been "not altogether out of it," as the cant phrase goes, in any given
episode, but above all to be known to integral outsiders as having
played the rôle of a fractional insider in any cause—this is an acute
mania with a larger part of the human race than is commonly suspected.
Megalomania of this kind goes a far way to explain the reason why men
fitted for success in the unspectacular and prosaic careers of life
will deliberately devote themselves to what must ever be considered as
among the most disreputable of trades.
It may be objected that at least it is a business which requires
courage and that all successful exponents of the metier of spying have
been men of undoubted courage. While admitting the boldness of men like
Le Caron and Schulmeister, it may be said that they displayed audacity
rather than courage, and the two qualities spring from entirely
distinct motives. Often the audacity which passes for courage arises
either from a lack of imagination, or else from a blind fatalism, and
in neither case is there any display of real courage. Duty, presumably,
is the fundamental motive of courage, and until your spy can be shown
to have engaged in the perilous business of espionage out of purely
conscientious devotion to task and principle—Le Caron, it is only
right to say, claims all of this—he must be classed with that type of
individual who enters into the business of unrighteousness "for all
there is in it," to use an American phrase, and well knowing the tolls
and penalties which failure will inevitably exact. It is impossible, in
perusing the private correspondence of the loud and boastful Stieber,
not to divine the presence of a spirit of active maleficence, the
measure of whose humanity is to be found in the number of cold-blooded
executions for which he was responsible in his capacity as an agent
of Bismarck's lust for conquest. And Stieber's congeners were as a
rule no worse and no better than himself, the only difference being
that the German held a larger stage on which to enact his rôle and had
correspondingly greater opportunities. The most charitable argument
that one can employ to excuse the existence of the spy is that by
which Napoleon sought to explain his leniency towards them: They are a
species of humanity which is by nature base, and to that extent only
are not responsible for their characteristics.
II
THE SPY THROUGH THE AGES
The spy, as we have seen, has been given mention in the Old Testament,
Joshua, David and Absalom having employed their services, and most of
us remember that passage in Genesis in which his brothers answer Joseph
saying: "We are true men, thy servants are not spies." The protracted
peregrinations of the Israelites necessarily called for the employment
of emissaries who should learn the qualities and dispositions of the
many peoples whom they encountered on their way to the Promised Land,
and your anthropologist might possibly not be far wrong in concluding
that it was the experience gained in the course of his ever-perilous
wanderings which made the Jew so apt an exponent of the arts of spying
as he most certainly proved himself to be in the days of consular and
early imperial Rome. In the New Testament, too, we hear of the spy
when the high priests, having Christ under suspicion, sent forth spies
who should feign friendship with Him for the purposes of extracting
information. Every commander of antiquity was accustomed to employ the
services of spies, as the Greek historian Polyænus tells us in the
course of that marvellous compilation of his in which he gives details
of some nine hundred stratagems, serviceable, it is noteworthy, not
only in war, but also in civil and political life. If we are to judge
by what the Romans say of themselves, their character was incapable of
stooping to the baseness of common spying or studied treachery of any
sort. The view is, of course, open to criticism, and when we reflect
upon the treatment which triumphing generals were wont to accord to
their most illustrious captives, not easily acceptable. One of the most
formidable spirits of antiquity, Mithridates, King of Pontus, a prince
regarding whose exploits writers have been strangely neglectful, was
himself the chief spy of his army, and for the purposes of this work
had made himself master, Pliny tells, of some five and twenty languages
and dialects, by means of which, as well as fitting disguises, he was
enabled to penetrate every region of Asia Minor. It is written that
from the time of his succession to the throne of Pontus at the age of
fourteen, he spent seven years wandering through and spying out the
countries which he eventually conquered, and for the possession of
which he waged a lifelong war against the power of Rome.
In the course of a work entitled _Stratagems_, Frontinus, a military
writer in the time of Vespasian, records how Cornelius Lelius, having
been sent by Scipio Africanus in the capacity of envoy to Syphax, King
of Numidia, but in reality for the purposes of espionage, took with
him several officers of high rank in the Roman army, all disguised. A
general in the camp of Syphax, recognising one of these companions,
Manlius, as having studied with him at Corinth, and well knowing him
to be an officer in the Roman army, began to put awkward questions.
Thereupon Lelius fell upon Manlius and thrashed him, declaring the
fellow to be a pushful valet and nothing better. On the same occasion,
the envoy allowed a high-spirited and richly caparisoned horse to
escape from his suite in order to be given the opportunity of going
through the camp to recover it. Again there was Tarquin the Proud
who, failing to capture the city of Gabii to which he was laying
siege, had his son flogged till the blood ran from his body and then
sent him a refugee into the midst of the enemy, with instructions
to procure by bribery the surrender of the place, all of which the
youth accomplished. Polyænus tells how Sertorius, the Roman general
in Spain, was the owner of a white fawn that he had trained to follow
him everywhere, even to the steps of the tribunal which the animal had
been taught, at a given signal, to approach as Sertorius was about to
deliver sentence in judicial cases. The commander allowed it to be
made known that he derived much information from this fawn. Meanwhile
his spies were very active all over the country and the tribes all
marvelled at the knowledge of the general, who attributed it to the
little beast for which he claimed supernatural powers.
Polyænus also teaches the necessity of "psychologising"—a term not
unknown to American experts in that form of police torture which is
known as the Third Degree—the leader to whom one may be opposed.
"One must exert oneself," says the Greek, "to find out the character
of one's enemy as well as his disposition; whether he is impetuous
and spirited at the first shock, or patient and apt to await the
onslaught." Every general should know all there is to be known about
the business of opponents, and he goes on to tell the tale in point,
showing that what we know to-day as the Black Cabinet—that is, the
spying of private correspondence in the post—was practised by Alexander
the Great who lived some three hundred years before Christ. "Being
in Carmania, he was informed that the Macedonians and Greeks in his
army were speaking badly about him. Alexander thereupon assembled his
friends and told them that as he intended writing home they should do
likewise. Accordingly, they all wrote home and Alexander saw to it
that the couriers were recalled with the mails before they had gone
very far on their journey." Recurring to the same authority, we learn
that cipher was well known to the Greeks under the name _skutate_ and
to the Romans as _scutula_, meaning a wooden cylinder around which an
inscribed papyrus was rolled. He also records the story of Histiæus, a
tyrant of Miletus who wished to incite Ionia to rebel against Darius;
fearing however to send letters to the Ionians in those perilous times,
he thought out the ruse of having the head of a trusted slave clean
shaved and a message written on the scalp, addressed to Aristagoras in
the simple words: "Rouse Ionia to revolt." The slave was then sent on
his way to Ionia, and, his hair having grown over the fateful message
by the time hostile camps were reached, he passed safely through to
Aristagoras, who had the poll shaved once more and so learned his
general's design. Altogether it would seem that during antiquity, ruse
rather than real ability was the cause of many loud-famed successes
and victories. Frontinus tells how the Consul Hirtius used to send
carrier-pigeons to his friend Decimus Brutus, and Justus Lipsius is
responsible for the statement that swallows were trained for purposes
of military and other espionage, the same authority informing us that
it was the custom among Eastern nations for birds to be trained as
long-distance messengers, more especially between lovers. It may be
certain, too, that postal communications were not all entrusted to the
famous relay runners, regarding whose marvellous stamina the Roman
records tell us.
Hannibal, it is certain, could never have performed that wondrous march
from the edge of Andalusia right up through Spain, over the Pyrenees,
across France and beyond the Alps into the plains of Piedmont, where he
fought his most artistic battle in 218 B.C., at the Trebia, had it not
been for an organisation of spies and informers who prepared the way
by ruse and diplomacy for the advance of his hordes. Of him Polybius
writes: "For years before he undertook his campaign against Rome, he
had sent his agents into Italy and they were observing everyone and
everything. He charged them with transmitting to him exact and positive
information regarding the fertility of the trans-Alpine plains and
the valley of the Po, their populations, their military spirit and
preparations and, above all, their disposition towards the government
at Rome. There was nothing too large in promises that the Carthaginian
was not ready to make in return for their support against the hated
City." Cæsar too employed spies to the undoing of his adversaries in
Egypt, in Gaul and also in Britain, and although in his Commentaries
he records his employment of emissaries of this kind, history remains
generally blank as to special details, leaving us to conclude that,
like Napoleon, he relied mainly on the exigencies of the moment to
produce the required information through the bribery of individuals in
the opposite camp. In his early political career, especially during his
tenure of the office of Pontifex Maximus, it seems clear that he then
laid the leading lines, through the employment of many informers, of
that vast political network of which he subsequently became the master,
while his later association with Marcus Crassus, who mainly owed both
wealth and power to the army of spies which he controlled, was in every
way to Cæsar's advantage in respect of the means of procuring important
information. Had he employed the services of a spy system on his
attainment to supreme power, it is unlikely that he would have come to
his destruction at the hands of a group of the best-known men in Rome,
the fact leaving us to infer that he had ceased to use a secret service
after the Civil War.
On the passing of Constantine to the Bosporus in the fourth century,
Rome, in the process of the ages, became the centre of a vast
ecclesiastical power. The work of the spy then reached the honours of
a kind of consecration. Writers like Lachesnaie and Deville emphasise
the view that ecclesiastics are especially fitted for the business
of spying. Fouché and Talleyrand had been clerics in their early
days and certainly both were masters in the business of organising
special-information corps. In his works, too, the Prussian General,
Karl von Decker, declares that "a secret which cannot be penetrated
by a woman or a priest will never be penetrated." To tell the story
of Church espionage would exhaust the capacity of a large library,
and in this connection it may be said that adversaries of the Church
of Rome have ever held that the Confessional was a purely political
invention, the object of which was to spy upon the community. Whether
this be so or not, it is fortunately not our business to decide; it
is fair, however, to mention the prevalence of the view. In any case,
clerics have ever proved themselves apt for the work of espionage, and
in a collection of ordinances issued and signed by Louis XIV. in 1652,
a certain Father Berthoud, "although an ecclesiastic, is authorised
to disguise himself in any way he likes in Paris, Bordeaux, Blaye and
elsewhere," for the purposes of spy work among the political and
social enemies of the Crown. Cardinal Richelieu and his understudy,
Père Joseph, practically inaugurated in France the system of opening
private communications, a practice which was carried to its extreme
under Napoleon, of whose daily budget of private letters, his fourth
secretary, Fain, has told us much.
That the system of espionage persists to our own day in Continental
colleges and convents under the control of congregational clerics, is
a fact which is well known. Each division of a school is invariably
placed under the chronic vigilance of a "surveillant," or watcher,
who in his turn employs his own corps of spies, privileged boys
moving among the masses of their congeners, marking their intentions,
noting the relations of the younger boys with the older, getting
information as to unlawful programmes to be carried out, ferreting
out secret testimony as to the habits of suspect characters and, if
possible, intercepting amorous billets which pass between elder boys
in other divisions and the younger fry. In regard to these unwholesome
_liaisons_ the vigilance of the spies is certainly justified; but the
system goes much deeper than this in foreign schools, its objects
being to inquire into the most intimate details regarding the private
character of a boy—heaven only knows why, if it is not for the pure
love of finding out. Indeed, it must be allowed that the baser
tendencies which are to be noted in the case of all spies, here display
themselves in the form of a pruriency which often touches the indecent
and always the unwholesome.
The real founder of the business of organised spying in modern times
was Frederick the Great, who was wont to boast that his spies exceeded
his cooks in the proportion of a hundred to one. It is impossible
closely to read the story of Frederick, or even to study minutely his
face as pictured, say, by Meyn, without becoming conscious of the
fact that here was a being who realised in his personality the claim
of the psychologists that great ability and criminal tendencies are
often closely affiliated. Apart from what we know of his perverse
eccentricities, it is certain that his deliberate elimination of all
the higher ideals of humanity from a place in his political philosophy
had the effect of making him as impersonal as an automaton where his
material ambitions were concerned, and he knew no other. Like the true
pragmatist he was, Frederick considered all things good in themselves
which served his ends, and his policies were invariably conceived on
his pet principle: "If honesty fails us, we have always dishonesty to
fall back upon." He it was who laid the foundations of that policy
of Prussianisation of which our story of Stieber tells in its turn,
and in which no measure was to be considered too extreme or base, nor
turpitude too abhorrent, provided it advanced the interests of his
House and furthered its ambition to play in Europe that rôle which had
passed to the Habsburgs by inheritance from the Cæsars. For Prussia
Frederick sought a permanent predominance in Europe equal to all which
Louis XIV. had exercised between 1661 and 1715. An understanding of
these facts is really the condition of grasping the significance of the
elaborate Prussian spy system of our own time.
Lastly comes the age of Napoleon, in which we find that, for all the
essential militarism of the imperial regime, the spy really played a
more prominent rôle in the social and political drama than in that of
the camp, the great soldier, except in extraordinary cases of long-laid
plans, as in the Austerlitz campaign, relying mainly on human cupidity
touched by the magic of his gold, to find, as the occasion demanded,
willing perverts to provide him with the information necessary to the
success of his combinations.
III
LE CARON
Away back in the later eighties, when Ireland was in the throes of her
penultimate fight for the principle of self-government, all true sons
of Erin had marked out for their particular obloquy two individuals who
have since become notorious—namely, Piggott, the forger, and Major Le
Caron, the spy. Those whose memories travel back easily to the famous
_Times_ Commission will recollect how offensively both names stunk
in the nostrils of all who supported the late Irish leader. Among
Nationalists, it will be remembered, the spy was invariably spoken of
under the name "Le Carrion," and even those who gave him the benefit
of a proper pronunciation of his pseudonym were wont to utter it
with that peculiarly hissing emphasis with which Irishmen, among all
men, seem able to invest the names of those who run counter to their
political bias. The positive venom which certain eloquent Nationalists
seem actually to instil into the pronunciation of names like "Dublin
Castle," "Major Trant," "Lord Clanricarde" lingers long afterwards in
the memory of English listeners, just as the rattle of certain snakes
is said ever afterwards to linger in the ears of those who have escaped
them in the jungle. To hear the late Mr Biggar, for instance, utter
the _nom de guerre_ of the famous British spy was a real lesson in the
onomatopœic art, and on his lips the name, otherwise inoffensive and,
indeed, on English tongues a liquid enough quantity, was made to attain
a sibilancy which was truly weird in its effect.
[Illustration: Henri Le Caron
_By permission of Mr. William Heinemann_]
How came the Major by his adopted name, and was it really meant to
portend anything? It was humorously said at the time that the spy had
taken his pseudonym from the French form of the name of that mythical
boatman of classic memory who was wont for a few halfpence to ferry the
souls of the damned across the river Styx, Charon, to wit. Le Caron
is, however, a common enough French name, and the Major had lived some
years in France previously to migrating to the United States, in which
country Thomas Beach first became Henri Le Caron. Born at Colchester,
Essex, in 1841, Beach belonged to a type of family which was clearly
of old-fashioned puritanical stock, and the point is important enough
in view of his later claim to have acted the rôle of traitor purely
on the ground of moral principle. In his autobiography he tells how
from his earliest days he had been brought up to cherish the Bible
and to loathe all forms and quantities of alcoholic liquor. His home
life was altogether not a very bright one and dull domestic repression
soon began to exert its own particular reaction on a character which
was already bursting with the spirit of adventure and derring-do. He
records it that the routine of his existence grew too monotonous
for the larger soul within him, and how he ran away from home and a
Quaker's shop at least three times before his sixteenth year, breaking
his apprentice bonds and travelling far and wide, yet managing, at
whatever town he made a halt, to earn what he calls a respectable
living. Like most characters of his obviously crude and untutored kind,
in whom the spirit of romance is a considerable, if a somewhat jumbled,
equation, there was not a little of the megalomaniac in the boy, and
even in those early days his soul thirsted after the big things of
life. In young Beach, too, there was a bit of artistry of sorts, and
just as it was a chief ambition of Spy Schulmeister to dance like a
marquis of the old regime, and a foible of Spy Stieber to accumulate
pectoral decorations testifying to his honour, so also the youthful Le
Caron discovered a precocious passion for hymns and the music of the
church organ. At Colchester he became a leading and decorous choir lad,
and according to himself it was his love for psalmody rather than any
regard for his puritanical parents which invariably brought about his
return, prodigal-wise, to the paternal roof. One is obliged in that
spirit of fairness which gives the devil all that is due to him, to
insist on what are otherwise prosaic enough details, and all the more
so because, to the man's admirers, his piety provides an argument for
the rôle he afterwards adopted in life.
Having spent some years in Paris, where he worked as an agent for that
now-extinct old worthy, John Arthur, earning a living which enabled
him to present a highly respectable figure, he clearly felt a call,
he tells us, to join the North in 1861, when the kindling American
Civil War made the States a kind of promised land for all sorts of
adventurous spirits, most of whom, it may be supposed, were still
feeling the influences of the comparatively fresh Napoleonic legend.
Taking out a passport in the name of Henri Le Caron, young Beach
shipped on the _Great Eastern_, then about to take her maiden trip
across the Atlantic, and landed duly in New York, where the military
authorities enlisted him as a private in the Pennsylvania Reserves. Le
Caron—he was never after 1861 known by the name of Beach—passes over
his military career with unexpected haste in his autobiography, it must
be said. He was present, he tells, at important engagements during
the course of the war, first as an infantry soldier, subsequently as
a cavalryman, receiving promotion and being especially detailed for
scouting operations. In 1864 he was gazetted second lieutenant and by
1865 had attained the rank of regimental adjutant with the title of
Major—a rank which became, it may be said in passing, at the close of
the war, so common throughout the States, that humorists were wont
to tell how in 1866 it was impossible to throw a brick in any given
direction where men happened to assemble without hitting an officer of
that standing.
Le Caron, it is interesting to note, records his act of religious faith
in the following words:—"We are impelled by some unknown force to carry
out, not of our own volition or possible design, the work of this life,
indicated by a combination of circumstances to which unconsciously
we adapt ourselves." This, it may be remembered, was the religion of
the late Prince Bismarck, and it must be allowed that it is a highly
convenient and elastic hypothesis of life. It goes far to explain how
he came to be associated with Fenianism. Le Caron declares, however,
that he was far from having gone in search of the Fenians; on the
contrary, he insists, the Fenians came in search of Le Caron. The Major
disappoints us rather badly, nevertheless, by failing to show how it
was that the Irish in America, even in those days a powerful community,
should have sought out the psalmodical soldier who abhorred alcohol in
all its forms and possible quantities, and why he, a Briton, of all
men, should have been singled out to put life into the Irish-American
movement for the emancipation of the Sister Isle. At the head of that
movement in 1865 was James Stephens, who directed the organisation both
in Ireland and America, while his agents on American soil included
some of the shrewdest Irishmen of that age and, indeed, some of the
most prosperous. Le Caron explains briefly how he first entered the
movement as a spy. A fellow-officer had informed him quite casually
that the main object of the Irish-American agitation of that date
was the invasion of Canada. This startling bit of news proved more
than sufficient to call out the fires of the old puritanical moralist
dormant in the Major, who proceeds to inform us in the language of
tragic passion which one applies to a tailor who has omitted a minor
detail, that he "felt quite indignant at learning what was being done
against the interests of my native country." Accordingly, and in order
to unload his chest of the perilous secret, he addressed a letter
to his father, a local tradesman, at Colchester, informing the sire
that an attack was contemplated on the Dominion by a group of bold
bad Irishmen. Evidently there was in the Beach tribe a congenital
incapacity for holding a secret, for no sooner had the old man read his
son's letter than, "startled and dismayed at the tidings it conveyed,
he, true Briton that he was," made over the letter to the then sitting
member for Colchester, a Mr Rebow. It was this gentleman who was
instrumental in procuring Le Caron his salaried commission to act in
America as a spy for the British police authorities.
In 1867, Major Le Caron, freed from military service, was looking
around him for the means of maintaining his family, and in the course
of a visit to England, was instructed by the British Government to
ally himself with the Fenian organisation in America, "in order," as
he frankly admits, "to play the rôle of spy in the rebel ranks." His
adventurous nature welcomed the work as congenial, he says, while his
British instincts made him a willing worker from a sense of right.
Accordingly, on his return to America, he offered his services as a
military man to General O'Neill, who was to lead the anti-British
forces in the event of another uprising. On his cordial acceptance by
O'Neill, as well as initiation, on his solemn oath, into the Fenian
Brotherhood under that soldier's sponsorship, Le Caron returned to his
Western home and lost no time "in commencing to lead my double life,"
as he puts it. At Lockport, Illinois, he set about the organisation of
a Fenian "circle" in which he took the position officially known by the
title of "center," or commander, a post which entitled him to receive
all official reports and communications issued by O'Neill. These
reports were duly transmitted to London by the Major and one pauses
here to reflect that in this supplementary office Le Caron might not
inappropriately have borne the subsidiary title of "scenter." The soul
of the Major was clearly one of no ordinary beauty and versatility, for
in order to supplement his gains as a secret-service agent, he accepted
about this time a comfortable post as hospital steward in a vast gaol
in Illinois. Here, he naïvely admits, he felt at home, because, as
he writes, "in such a vast assembly of criminals, there were many
whose characters and careers formed subjects for very interesting
study to me. I was fortunate in being connected with the prison at a
time when some more than usually clever and facile scoundrels were
temporarily resident there." O'Neill was, however, on the look-out for
energetic agents, and Le Caron was not suffered to remain long in
the comparatively inactive life of an Illinois gaol. In response to
a telegram from headquarters, he proceeded hurriedly—and apparently
without giving due notice to his employers—to New York, where he was
engaged as "major and military organiser of the Irish Republican Army,"
at a salary equivalent to £650 a year, a rare exchange for the few
pounds he was being paid weekly as a prison official in Illinois. With
his commission he received instructions to proceed on an organising
tour, in the course of which, the Major learned, to his deep disgust,
that he was expected to address public meetings as a sworn advocate of
the Irish cause. He knew nothing whatever about Irish politics and was
well aware that ignorance of Irish aspirations meant, in the opinion
of most Irishmen, wholesale indifference, which was hardly worse than
active hostility itself. Once, indeed, he found himself in a tight
fix which called for all the undoubted nerve the spy possessed. The
occasion was a Convention of the Fenian Brotherhood at Williamsburg.
The Major tells the story in the course of his autobiography in the
following words:—
"The evening came and with it our trip to Williamsburg. On arrival
there in the company of O'Neill and some brother officers, I found
several thousands of persons assembled. We were greeted with the
greatest enthusiasm and given the seats of honour to the right and
left of the chairman. My position was a very unhappy one. I was in a
state of excessive excitement, for I feared greatly what was coming.
Seated as I was next to O'Neill, I could hear him tell the chairman on
whom to call and how to describe the speakers; and as each pause took
place between the speeches, I hung with nervous dread on O'Neill's
words, fearing my name would be next. The meeting proceeded apace,
some four or five of my companions had already spoken and I was
beginning to think that after all the evil was postponed and that for
this night at least I was safe. Not so, however. All but O'Neill and
myself had spoken when to my painful surprise I heard the General call
upon the chairman to announce Major Le Caron. The moment was fraught
with danger; my pulses throbbed with a maddening sensation; my heart
seemed to stop its beating; my brain was on fire and failure stared me
in the face. With an almost superhuman effort, I collected myself, and
as the chairman announced me as Major M'Caron, tickled by the error
into which he had fallen and the vast cheat I was playing on the whole
of them, I rose equal to the occasion, to be received with the most
enthusiastic of plaudits.
"The hour was very late and I took advantage of the circumstance.
Proud and happy as I was at being with them that evening, and taking
part in such a magnificent demonstration, they could not, I said,
expect me to detain them long at so advanced an hour. All had been
said upon the subject nearest and dearest to their hearts. (Applause.)
If what I had experienced that night was indicative of the spirit of
patriotism of the Irish in America (tremendous cheering), then indeed
there could be no fears for the result. (Renewed plaudits.) And now
I would sit down. They were all impatiently waiting, I knew, to hear
the stirring words of the gallant hero of Ridgeway, General O'Neill
(thunders of applause), and I would, in conclusion, simply beg of them
as lovers of liberty and motherland (excited cheering) to place at the
disposal of the General the cash necessary to carry out the great work
on which he was engaged. This work, I was confident, would result in
the success of our holy cause and the liberation of dear old Ireland
from the thraldom of the tyrant's rule which had blighted and ruined
her for seven hundred years. These last words worked my hearers up to
the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and amidst their excited shouts and
cheers I resumed my seat, with the comforting reflection that if it
took so little as this to arouse the Irish people, I could play my
rôle with little difficulty."
Fenian Conventions came and passed; the organisation had grown to
extraordinary proportions, as is shown by the fact that in 1868,
when the Brotherhood made a demonstration at Philadelphia, not fewer
than 6000 armed and uniformed Fenian soldiers paraded the city,
with General O'Neill at their head and Le Caron among the staff.
In the course of his work in the Eastern States, the Major had
already distributed, he tells, 15,000 stands of arms and 3,000,000
rounds of ammunition for the prospective raid which promised shortly
to be undertaken, on the prime condition, however, that the funds
should be forthcoming to finance the adventure. In the spring of
1870 it was decided to make the projected move upon Canada, O'Neill
declaring with a Kelt's enthusiasm that "no power on earth could
stop it." Le Caron, who was, of course, already in active touch with
the Ottawa authorities, met the British agents at Buffalo, giving
them full particulars and details as to the Raid which was about to
take place. On their departure to make complete preparations for all
eventualities, O'Neill arrived at Buffalo, whence, and accompanied by
Le Caron, he left for the Front. "O'Neill," writes the Major, "was
full of enthusiasm and firmly believed that the Canadians would be
taken entirely by surprise, while I myself was laughing at his coming
discomfiture." Arrived at the frontier, O'Neill, who expected to find
at least 1000 Fenians under arms—the nucleus of an army which was to
attract another 500,000 Irishmen from all parts of America—discovered
to his dismay that only 250 men had assembled; this number was swelled
by the arrival of 250 more on the morrow, when the General, fearful
of the effects of hesitation and delay, ordered his force to cross
the border from Vermont into Canadian territory. The simple Irishman
addressed his troops in early-Bonapartian fashion as follows:—
"Soldiers! This is the advance guard of the Irish-American army for
the liberation of Ireland from the yoke of the oppressor. For your own
country's sake you enter that of the enemy. The eyes of your countrymen
are upon you. Forward—March!"
The spy himself, from the crest of a slope, watched the advance of the
little band of invaders as it crossed the border-line into British
territory, some in Fenian uniform of green and gold, others in ordinary
"Sunday" garb. Not a soul was in sight, nor anything like a force
to oppose their progress. Le Caron well knew, however, that behind
the ridge towards which the Fenian army advanced deployed, cheering
wildly and with bayonets fixed, at least 1000 Canadian volunteers were
lying in wait. As the invaders touched the slope, the Canadian rifles
opened fire, the Army of Liberation ceased forthwith to exist, and
the last the Major saw of General O'Neill was that officer's passing
in a hackney-coach seated between the two policemen who had arrested
him. Le Caron of course fled with the rest of the invaders, and
immediately made his way to Ottawa for the purpose, he says somewhat
unconvincingly, of personally "reporting" to the authorities as to the
raid, the result of which had in all probability been telegraphed to
Government House ten minutes after the fiasco. Duly he arrived at the
political capital, where he was, he says, received with the honours
that usually fall to the carriers of military dispatches. Here a
significant enough incident occurred. Wishing to return home at once,
Le Caron prepared for the journey only to find at the last moment
that he was without funds for the ticket; he thereupon applied to a
certain Judge, who wrote him a cheque for the unusually generous sum of
£70—generous seeing that the sum was at least ten times the amount of
his fare supposing him still to have lived in the West, while the fare
from Ottawa to New York State does not exceed fifteen dollars at the
farthest. With his usual dispatch in regard to matters in which one's
curiosity not unnaturally looks for relief, Le Caron passes from the
episode without volunteering any explanation of a satisfactory kind.
In the intervening time between the failure of O'Neill's rising and the
advent of the society of United Irish Brothers, the Clan-na-gael, in
1873, Le Caron spent his time studying medicine. As a practitioner he
claims to have had successes. His taste for spying seems nevertheless
to have exceeded his love for medicine, for in 1873, with the coming
of the Clan, we find him laying his plans to deal with that important
body, which, it may be said, differed from all other Irish-American
societies in the technical excellence of its organisation. Its primary
object was to unite throughout America and the world all Irishmen
who loved their country. Naturally the Major, although supposedly
French, presented himself as a candidate for membership in the new
organisation, and having improvised an Irish grandmother to fortify
his candidacy, was in due course admitted to the Brotherhood on his
sworn oath to be loyal to its covenants. From the very first, however,
he became an object of suspicion to several prominent leaders of the
movement, and it was only after a pressing fight for recognition that
he was eventually appointed to such a position as should enable him
to penetrate the arcana of the society's inner shrines. As with the
Fenian body, he became in the Clan a member of the Military Board.
Every document of value which afforded evidence of the Brotherhood's
dynamite propaganda directed against English cities was, as in the
F.B. days, transmitted to the British Home Office, the correspondence
being actually carried on between Le Caron's wife and another member of
her sex in London. Accordingly, one may readily believe the spy's own
statement that while he was a member of the military councils of the
Clan, he was also shaking hands with danger and discovery at every turn
and only saved his skin by a miracle. In the course of his association
with the Brotherhood Le Caron of course made the acquaintance of some
of the most prominent Irishmen in America's anti-British movements
of the past generation, among them Messrs Egan, O'Donovan Rossa and
the late Patrick Ford. The last of this trio was never, he says, a
member of the Clan nor any other secret society, however much he may
have supported in his early days the physical-force views which were
advocated by extremists of all kinds. Mr Ford owed his prominence, says
the Major, to the wide influence of his paper, _The Irish World_, in
the conduct of which was also associated his brother, Mr Austin Brendan
Ford, as a business director. It was undoubtedly the force which kept
together the various elements of the Irish community in the States;
edited with great ability, it had a vast circulation, which went well
into the hundreds of thousands and had its readers among Irishmen
in every quarter of the globe. Mr Ford, though not a member of the
Brotherhood, allowed himself, says Le Caron, to voice its policies
through his paper.
Some idea of the influence of the Clan may be formed when one realises
that between 1876 and 1880, Russian revolutionary societies were
treating with the American organisation to carry out any part of the
propaganda in which a common co-operation was possible. In return for
Irish-American financial aid, in the event of an Anglo-Russian war, the
Muscovite revolutionaries pledged assistance to the Irish in the cause
of complete emancipation from the English bond. Two extremely wealthy
Irish-Americans were prepared, it was understood, to support this
strange Russo-Irish alliance with many millions of dollars. Included in
a somewhat lengthy programme were the three items, assassination of
Queen Victoria, the kidnapping of the Prince of Wales and the killing
of the Tsar. All of these intentions Le Caron ferreted out, conveying
due information to Scotland Yard. The late Mr Parnell the Major also
met in America, becoming instrumental in "promoting" the Irish leader's
Land League ideas in the States. Of Parnell Le Caron expressed the view
that he was out wholly and solely for what financial rewards there were
to be found in political agitation. Davitt he regarded as a simple
soul, but a born conspirator and one who could not long be induced
to tread a constitutional path. It is clear that Major Le Caron made
the acquaintance of all who were prominently engaged in the Parnell
movement, and it is a remarkable tribute to his powers of deception
that until he returned to England for good and proved his real quality
before the Commission, not one of the actors in the last phase of that
memorable struggle ever suspected him of being a secret-service man.
It is not the purpose of this story to follow the Major throughout
the whole of his career as a spy. His work, which differed but little
in regard to its methods at any time or in any undertaking, cannot at
all be said to have been of a class which required a very high type
of mentality or any diplomacy worthy of that description. For all his
prominence in the profession, it cannot be said that Le Caron, at any
point in his career, ever rose above the status of a common informer.
He himself admits that he owed much of his success to the fact that,
finding himself among a hard-drinking society, he was one of the rare
men who never allowed a taste for fire-water to endanger the operation
of his business. Nor can we suppose that the Clan-na-gael men, whom he
deceived so long, were at all adept in the deeper arts of political
intrigue, or that they possessed any of that finesse which marked
the type of men with whom Schulmeister had on nearly every occasion
to measure his nimble wits. Le Caron claimed to be considered on a
different level from all other spies and for the reason that he adopted
the profession purely in the interests of his patriotism. A close study
of his confessions discloses, however, a positive disposition towards
the mercenary aspect of things and the Major's art—in literature, at
least—is far too feeble to conceal the fact. There is in many of his
reflections upon the parsimony of British secret-service paymasters
the suggestion of a whimper in regard to the small pecuniary rewards
he obtained for services which he himself naturally appraised very
highly, but which really only provided results which were certain to
have been arrived at even if the British Government had never employed
an official spy upon the Irish-American brotherhoods.
Le Caron owed much of that quasi-heroic reputation which grew up around
him and his career to the fact that he appeared on a drab enough stage
as the only figure with melodramatic possibilities inherent in it at
a time when the Americanised type of journalism was creeping into
England and when journalists were being gradually initiated into the
mysteries of writing up what is technically known among newspaper men
as the "human interest" side of all persons and things. In the personal
cast of the Parnell Commission and its long-drawn sessions, there was
nothing of picturesque interest outside the occasional appearance in
the witness-box of Irish peasants who were called upon to bear witness,
in Doric accents, to the truth. Apart from these, the individuals who
gave testimony were a bunch of frock-coated, plug-hatted Philistines
of the most "orn'ery" description, as they say out West, men who used
unfailingly to put the special writers to sleep. In Parnell there was
nothing, externally at least, which could be said to be in any way
picturesque, and Biggar only came up to the specifications of a very
curious picture. Along, then, came Le Caron, a veritable godsend to
the correspondents who were gaping for a bit of decent colour. The
Major may be trusted, as a man who had touched hands with the American
journalist, to have realised and seized his opportunity. The obvious
Napoleon pose, the arms folded across the breast, the sharp sibilant
tones, the Westerner's "yus, yus" and "no, siree," the Machiavellian
suggestion of knowing all there was to be known about mystic shrines
and tangled intrigues, the obvious consciousness of being the apparent
villain of the piece who was finally, he thought, to issue as its real
hero, the glacial fixity of the stare, the pose of long-suffering
righteousness—yes, the spy in the witness-box was exactly what the New
Journalists were looking for, and in making Le Caron they were helping
to make themselves.
IV
SCHULMEISTER
Of all modern spies, Karl Schulmeister, Napoleon's chief secret-service
agent, appears to have possessed mental and temperamental qualities
of so high an order as to justify one's belief that in the business
of _haute politique_ he might have played a prominent rôle, had his
destiny lain that way. As it was, he played in the Napoleonic drama a
part which, although practically unknown even to well-informed students
of history, may be said to have contributed an important quota not only
to the Corsican's achievement of his lofty position in the world, but
also in some measure to its retention. And although Napoleon made his
chief spy a rich man and allowed him to hold in his time many positions
of consideration if not of honour, such as the organisation of the
_corps d'espions_ and the headship of the imperial secret police, it is
a matter of definite record that he consistently and to the end refused
to bestow on Schulmeister any decoration of honour. In what degree and
to what extent the work of the spy was less dignified or honourable
than that of Fouché, the high-placed minister of police, is not
easily apparent and it seems hard to find any real justification for
Napoleon's refusal to Schulmeister of a pectoral certificate of worth
when we reflect on the personal and public character of the heavily
bedizened Duc d'Otranto who, apart from his long career of duplicity
and intrigue, was eventually to prove the agent of the Emperor's final
undoing and betrayal. In view of our expressed opinion that megalomania
largely underlies the psychology of the spy, it is interesting to
note that Schulmeister also laid claim to the honour of lofty birth.
His grandfather, he told the world of his time, had been a Hungarian
refugee noble of the family of Biersky, who settled in Baden, about
1730, where he adopted the profession of schoolmaster, taking at the
same time a name descriptive of his occupation—hence Schulmeister.
What we know for a certainty is that the spy's father was a kind of
unattached or nonconforming Lutheran minister at Neu-Freistett in
1760, and that Karl Schulmeister was born here on 5th August 1770,
when Napoleon was about one year old. The meagre accounts which remain
extant give us the picture of a village boy of respectable position
whose character bore a striking resemblance to that which Robert Clive
earned among the townspeople of Market Drayton in his early years.
Schulmeister, at the age of twelve, was the acknowledged leader of the
local band of youthful marauders and scapegraces—hooligans we would
call them in these days. At the age of seventeen he had already become
known as one of the most accomplished smugglers on the Franco-German
frontier, a business, it is noteworthy, in which he engaged, either
personally or by proxy, to the closing years of his life. At the age of
twenty-two he married an Alsatian maid called Unger, and established
himself in two distinct trades which his considerable smuggling
operations were likely to render lucrative at the time. In after years,
however, when he had become the lord of a château and large pleasance,
and preferred to be known as Monsieur de Meinau, the spy was prone to
overlook the fact that he had at one time kept a provision shop and an
ironmongery at Neu-Freistett. Smuggling he was always willing to admit,
and for the reason that in Revolutionary times, when life was accounted
cheap, it required much courage and resource, he said, to become a
successful smuggler. Undoubtedly the experience he acquired in this
dangerous trade had called for many of the mental qualities which were
to serve him so well in his after-career.
About 1799 he was introduced to Colonel Savary, afterwards to become
the Duc de Rovigo, who was then engaged on a minor commissarial mission
for the Directory in Alsatian countries. Savary was evidently one of
those fortunate individuals on whom the gift of sensing great events
to come appears to be bestowed, and, like all of his kind, he had both
the eye for useful men and the talent for attaching them. An acuminous
judge of character, he was first attracted to Schulmeister by the
latter's cool audacity and splendid resource in the conduct of perilous
smuggling enterprises, though whether, as it is said, Savary was
himself anxious to share in the very liberal profits of the smuggler's
trade, is not so clear. It is certain, however, that the rising soldier
and the prosperous contrabandist continued to meet and to correspond,
so that in 1804, being commissioned to allure a princely _emigré_
across the French frontier, in accordance with Napoleon's resolve to
put a term to conspiracies against his power by sacrificing the blood
of a Bourbon, Savary at once remembered his friend Karl Schulmeister.
The man who had so long and successfully eluded the excise officials at
the frontier would in all probability, he argued, prove easily equal to
the task of trapping a royalist on the wrong side of the international
boundary-line.
Entrusting the conduct of his business operations to his wife,
Schulmeister visited Savary at Besançon early in March 1804. Here
he was definitely instructed by the French General—Savary had been
promoted to this rank in 1803—in the details of the intrigue which was
to bring about the capture of the young Duc d'Enghien, whose murder
had been resolved upon by the authority in Paris, its object being
to strike terror into the royalist camp and clear the way towards a
larger rôle for Bonaparte. Enghien was at that time a young man of
thirty-two resident in the territory of the Grand Duke of Baden close
to the French frontier. Proscribed like all the members of his House,
he was admittedly a man in whom a taste for political intrigue counted
for little, too far removed from possible succession to the throne of
France to be seriously suspected of ambitious designs and, from what
his contemporaries assure us, one who represented the best type of his
royal race. That harshness of lot which was common to the _emigré_ of
every rank in those times did not spare the young Duc, who lived in
very unpretending fashion at Ettenheim, a harmless dependent on the
bounty of England. Historical inquiry into details connected with the
residence of the young Bourbon in Baden has entirely removed from him
all suspicion of having been in any way privy to a conspiracy against
the First Consul. It was the Duc's custom often to visit Strassburg,
where lived a lady friend who was to prove a cruelly unconscious agent
in the intrigue which brought about her lover's destruction.
In accordance with the plans which Schulmeister laid down for the
trapping of Enghien, this lady, to whom the Bourbon was passionately
attached, was taken one morning by emissaries of the spy, conveyed to
Belfort across the French border and interned at a country house near
the frontier, the reasons given for her detention being that she had
become an object of suspicion to the omnipotent French authority. In
the lady's name, a letter was then forged by Schulmeister, purporting
to come from her to Enghien at Ettenheim, retailing the misadventure
and asking her lover to use whatever means he could to procure her
release from the country house. This implicit appeal to his chivalry
was sufficient for the Duc, who, on 14th March, decided to see if by
bribery he could not himself effect the release of his mistress. Acting
just as the astute Schulmeister had foreseen, Enghien left Ettenheim
with two attendants before midnight of the 14th, and it was at a hamlet
in Baden territory close to the frontier and near Lorrach, that the
spy's emissaries, all on the alert and noting the opportunity of an
easy capture, seized upon his person. Thence the prince was conveyed to
Strassburg, from which city he was taken to Vincennes, where, having
undergone a mock-trial, he was executed on 20th March at dawn, his
gaolers forcing him to hold a lantern so that the bullets might find
their mark. It may be remembered that one of Enghien's last requests
was for permission to send a letter to his lady friend, who, as soon as
she had ceased to serve any further purpose, was quickly released by
Schulmeister. This letter, it may be presumed, would have conveyed the
Duc's explanation for the reasons which had prevented him from coming
to his mistress's aid as she had requested. It is said that Savary, for
whom the capture of Enghien meant the certain continuance of Napoleon's
favour, paid the spy blood-money equal to £6000 for his successful
entrapping of the Bourbon prince.
Schulmeister was presented to the notice of Napoleon by his patron
Savary in 1805. "Here is a man who is all brain and no heart, Sire,"
said the General. Our spy has left a short description of Napoleon of
those days, which contains, as far as the writer knows, the only record
of the quality of the great soldier's voice, a more important index
of personality than is generally supposed. According to Schulmeister,
Napoleon's voice was high-pitched, but crisp and with a certain
stridency, while his habit of speaking through the teeth seemed also
to give his utterances a peculiarly hissing sound. For the rest, the
spy does not appear to have carried away a marked impression of the
conqueror's personal appearance. The great soldier seems to have
treated the spy with a playful interest and kindliness, and by the
spring of 1805 we find that Schulmeister had received a commission
from him to report upon the coastal towns of the south of England.
It is also said that the spy visited Ireland, where he made it his
business to become acquainted with the remnants of the rebels of 1798,
who still placed a somewhat simple trust in Napoleon's vague promise,
expressed, if at all, through third parties, that he would some day
consider the question of attacking England through Ireland, granting
her independence to the latter. Whether or not the English and Irish
visits were ever paid, it is certain that Napoleon, in thinking out
the campaign of 1805, especially remembered the existence of Karl
Schulmeister—in itself a rare tribute to the spy's ability from a
master-judge of clever and useful agents. Napoleon, as we gather
from historical writers like Paul Muller, did not place an absolute
confidence in the reliability of non-military spies. "The spy is a
natural traitor" was his expressed view of the species. As a rule the
Emperor trusted to his military intelligence department to supply him
with all that information upon which he based his complex strategic and
tactical calculations. The Austerlitz campaign in view, not so much
of the momentous political contingencies inherent in the whole event,
differed from others, however, as to the character of some of the most
prominent actors engaged. It was on this account that an apparently
insignificant person like Schulmeister came to play, in the stirring
political drama of 1805, a rôle which in its way was almost as helpful
to Napoleon as his own genius in elaborating that memorable episode.
It is well known that the Emperor, more than all other generals, and
true to the maxims of Polyænus, made it invariably his business to
learn all he could about the personality and character of any commander
with whom he was about to measure himself. With Alvinzy, Wurmser,
Beaulieu, the Archduke Charles and Mélas, Napoleon had fought different
types of battles based to a large extent on the personal qualities
and disposition of the general whom he happened to be opposing.
In the early months of 1805, Napoleon, always well served by his
regular diplomatic agents, may be trusted to have known the names and
characters of most of the commanders to whom Austria and Russia were
about to entrust the command of their armies in the campaign which all
Europe knew to be inevitable. As to the attributes of Field-Marshal
Mack, then a man of fifty-three, he can have had but few illusions
and well knew that family influence, rather than the possession of
real ability, had given the Austrian his high position in the military
councils of his country. In Mack was a dull simplicity of mind, unusual
to a man of his class, added to the fatal quality of allowing himself
easily to be influenced by others. Conditions in the Austrian army,
which had within recent years suffered a series of reverses at the
hands of both Bonaparte and Moreau, lent themselves easily to irregular
influences, a fact which had not escaped the penetration of Napoleon.
Mack, again, was anxious to atone for his defeat by the French in 1797
and was prepared to take advantage of any opportunity which should
give him in the conflict a superiority over the conqueror of Italy and
Austria.
In the summer of 1805 that opportunity presented itself in the form of
a letter which was addressed to him from one Karl Schulmeister, who,
like many well-educated Alsatians, spoke and wrote French and German
equally well. The writer in the course of a lengthy communication
informed the Field-Marshal that he had been removed across the French
frontier by Napoleon's orders, on the ground that he was an Austrian
spy. Schulmeister admitted the facts. He had been moved, he wrote, out
of pure love of his country and hatred of Napoleon, to act the spy
through the imperial armies of France, as to the equipment, plans,
intentions and organisation of which he was perfectly well acquainted.
All this information he was willing to give up on the condition of
being allowed to serve on the staff of the Austrian army. Then followed
an account of his Hungarian ancestry and many other details which need
not be particularised here. It is sufficient to say that Mack eagerly
seized the opportunity of possessing himself of the services of a man
who knew all about the French army, and engaged him as secret-service
agent on his own particular account. The spy, who had visited Vienna in
order to meet the Field-Marshal, was furthermore given military rank,
and Mack procured him—on the ground of his noble Hungarian descent,
with forged attestations as to which Napoleon's agents had supplied him
at his own request—membership of some of the most exclusive military
clubs in the Austrian capital. As his supply of money, coming as it did
from Napoleon's long purse, was practically unlimited, Schulmeister,
the ex-smuggler and actual spy, became an easy favourite in some of the
most exclusive circles in the proudest society in Europe.
A description of the chief spy is given by M. de Gassicourt, a
member of the medical suite of Napoleon: "Schulmeister is a man of
rare courage and imperturbable presence of mind. He is made for
great activities, his shoulders being broad, his chest deep, his
body not tall, but capable of sustained exertions. His face is
like an impenetrable mask." A German writer—an anonymous journalist
in the _Courier du Bas-Rhin_, who has written much about the spy's
career—describes Schulmeister as "one who ever seemed to affect the air
of a man on whom the safety of the State depended." While absolutely
incapable of the commonest feelings of humanity where strict business
was concerned, as in the murder of Enghien, the spy appears to have
considered it an indispensable part of his social equipment to waltz
like a gentleman of the old court of Versailles, and with this
momentous object in view employed the services of the most eminent
dancing masters. His manners were said to be excellent by men who were
sufficiently good judges, and, in any case, he must have acquired
considerable polish to have passed muster in Austrian society of that
age. He had not been long in Vienna, at all events, before he had
attached to his own service, and of course for cash considerations,
two well-known military men, who, when Mack took command of his army
in the autumn of 1805, accompanied him to the Front, Schulmeister also
proceeding thither as head of the military intelligence department
attached to Mack's forces. During all this time he successfully
contrived to keep closely in touch with Napoleon, from whom he was
now taking sums of money for necessary expenditure and salary which,
according to documents in the National Archives of France, containing
much of the spy's correspondence, amounted to a sum equal to at least
£20,000 per annum of our own money. Like most of the spy species,
Schulmeister was a high liver, although Napoleon, a hard enough critic
of accounts of all kinds, never laid any complaint to his charge on the
ground of unnecessary extravagance.
Mack, as we have seen, was one of those men who easily surrender their
will-power to bolder spirits. Accordingly, Schulmeister, who possessed
the Austrian's complete confidence and who was well assisted by his
Austrian fellow-spies, Wend and Rulski, acting on the instructions
transmitted to him by Napoleon's headquarters, kept the Field-Marshal,
by means of forged communications purporting to come from traitors
in the French camp, falsely informed as to the movements of the
three advancing imperial armies. As an aristocrat and a convinced
supporter of all feudalistic forms and ideals, Mack was easily led to
believe that the newly established throne of the Corsican received
but half-hearted adherence from the French people. Napoleon even had
newspapers especially printed which were to be shown to Mack in order
to strengthen this impression. According, also, to letters supplied by
the spy, Napoleon, who had left Paris with Vienna as his objective,
had been forced to return with the greater part of his armies in order
to quell a revolution which had broken out against his throne on his
departure from the French capital. Coincident reports, supplied by
Schulmeister's paid collaborants, seemed to point to the truth of the
Alsatian's startling intelligence, and acting upon it, the Austrian
Field-Marshal, with an army of 30,000 men, issued from the city of
Ulm in pursuit of what he thought to be the retreating French armies
only to find himself surrounded by a ring of steel, or what Napoleon
was wont to term his "necklace" manœuvre, Soult, Marmont, Lannes,
Ney, Dupont and Murat closing him in on all sides. The memorable
capitulation of the city, a pivotal point in the set strategy of
Austria's military plans for the campaign of 1805, followed at once,
Mack paying the penalty of what was for long thought to be an act of
treachery, by being deprived of his rank, with a further punishment
of two years in a military fortress. As for Schulmeister himself, his
audacity never showed itself more conspicuously than in the immediate
sequel. Not content with having practically assured to Napoleon the
success of what is known as the Austerlitz campaign, admittedly the
most spectacular of all the Emperor's military exploits, the spy,
after Mack's disgrace, repaired to Vienna, where in the chief military
councils, which were attended by the Emperor Francis and the Emperor
of Russia, he is said to have counselled plans which were sure, he
said, to enable the Allies to offset the disaster of Ulm and redeem
the situation. Strange though it appears, his views, supported as
usual by forged letters of intelligence, were applauded by the
military commanders present, and the result was the shattering of
the Austro-Russian armies at Austerlitz on 2nd December 1805. On the
morrow of that memorable conflict, the spy was arrested at the instance
of highly placed persons in Vienna who had long suspected him. The
timely arrival of the French saved him, however, from a felon's fate,
and it is said that by January 1806 he was back in Paris, boasting to
his friends of the large amounts of money he had accumulated out of
payments made to him not only by the French but also by the—Austrians!
It is impossible to trace Schulmeister in anything like recordful
fashion between 1806 and 1809. His name is occasionally mentioned in
connection with the missions of Savary, who always gave his confidence
to the spy and entrusted him on occasion with rendering military and
political reports in hostile territory, and experts agree in the
opinion that these reports were drawn up with the skill and precision
of an exceptionally well-endowed critic of strategic and diplomatic
values. On Napoleon's second visit to Vienna, the spy was appointed
censor over theatres, publishing houses, religious establishments and
newspapers, and as indicating his possession of a large political
sense, it may be pointed out that he had the works of Voltaire,
Diderot, Helvetius, Montesquieu and Holbach translated and scattered
broadcast among the various races of Austria-Hungary, in furtherance
of the liberal ideas of the Revolution which Napoleon claimed to
represent. All these productions had up till that time been included
on the _Index_, political as well as religious. In 1809, for a short
season, he occupied the important position of commissary-general of the
imperial armies in the field. At Landshut he distinguished himself by
leading a troop of hussars in person and capturing several important
positions. In the same year he reappeared in Strassburg, still under
Savary's orders, and in the course of a revolt which he was called upon
to quell, distinguished himself by blowing out the brains of one of the
most violent agitators, the trouble ceasing forthwith. At Strassburg he
was always at home and to the very end held his popularity among all
classes.
Some years previously he had purchased in the neighbourhood of his old
home the important Château Le Meinau and in 1807 had become also the
proprietor of an estate called De Piple, not far from Paris. In that
year, too, he began to use the territorial distinction—Monsieur de
Meinau. At both mansions people knew him for his lavish hospitalities,
the magnificence of his receptions and routs, his unfailing generosity
to the poor of his districts and, above all, for his love of little
children—this last trait an easily comprehensible transition, it may
be supposed, from the vicious intrigues of his complex trade, to the
confiding simplicity of guileless minds. His property was said in those
years to be worth the equivalent of £200,000, some said much more,
and it is quite certain that Napoleon rewarded him generously for his
undoubted services to the imperial throne.
His last important work in an official capacity was executed also
in 1809 when, through the influence of the ever-obliging Savary,
Schulmeister was appointed by Napoleon to act as chief of the secret
police during that famous Congress of Erfurt to which the Corsican
commanded the presence of nearly all the sovereign princes of
Continental Europe. In the voluminous correspondence which the spy
conducted—his particular Atticus being Savary—Schulmeister, whose
pen was clearly as fluent as his wits were nimble, keeps his patron,
who, it will be remembered, afterwards succeeded Fouché as head of
the French ministry of police, in full touch with the intrigues of
that historic gathering of European celebrities. None was too low or
unweighty, nor any too highly placed to escape the often hypercritical
and always interesting comments of the all-observing spy. The result is
that apart from details bearing on the political significance of the
Congress we are also regaled with tittle-tattle concerning the often
far from dignified relations of the Tsar Alexander, as well as other
august personages, with the subsidiary grand army of _demi-mondaines_
who had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded them by the afflux
of wealthy princes and nobles from every capital, to accumulate
profit during the process of the congressional sun. The Corsican,
with his omnivorous sense of intrigue, laid particular emphasis on
the necessity of closely watching the movements of Russia's Emperor,
whose taste in venal characters of the _hetaira_ type was often in the
inverse ratio of his exalted station. Napoleon, indeed, found himself
more than once under the necessity of reproving the Imperial Muscovite
whose attentions to a celebrated French actress with whom the Corsican
himself had once been on the best of terms, very much perturbed him.
"Visit that woman," he said, with the coarseness of the soldier, "and
to-morrow all Europe will know what your physical proportions are from
the ground up." Schulmeister had even explicit orders to note the
movements of the fair Queen Louise of Prussia, her personal attractions
for the Tsar also providing a source of much soul-burning to the
French Emperor, who, whether he were well informed or not, allowed no
opportunity to escape him of aspersing the much-humiliated Queen to
Alexander. Goethe himself, despite all the admiration the Corsican
professed for the Sage of Weimar, was not sacred from Napoleon's
agent. The insistent "ce Monsieur de Goet'—qui voit-il?" was hardly
less frequent on imperial lips than that other demand: "Et l'Empereur
Alexandre—où a-t-il passé la nuit dernière?" These were types of
implicit instructions which were daily issued to his spy by the
sometimes least dignified of sovereigns.
Readers of the Imperial legend will remember well the young General
Lasalle, Napoleon's most famous leader of light cavalry. This soldier
was also the possessor of many of those characteristics which we are
accustomed to associate with that harmless enough social type which is
described by the term, "funny man." The General's peculiar aptitude
for cutting strange and grotesque figures, his talent for distorting
his features into the most singular of grimaces, his capacity for
assimilating strong drinks, as well as his unfailing geniality with all
sorts of men, were traits as well known to the Army as the theatrical
dress-manias of Murat, or the boastfulness of General Rapp. It is not
surprising to learn, therefore, that Schulmeister, between 1800 and
1809—Lasalle was killed at Wagram, in the latter year—was on terms of
great intimacy with the young General. Well aware of the high favour
with which Napoleon regarded his cavalry leader, Schulmeister confided
to the latter the secret of his great ambition. He had riches, he
said, far beyond his needs and everything, indeed, which was capable
of satisfying the heart of ambitious man. He lacked, however, the one
especial decoration on which his aspirations were set. That was—of
all things—the Legion of Honour! The bestowal of that distinction
would, he declared, cap his noblest and most honourable ambitions.
Would Lasalle use his undoubted influence with the Emperor to procure
him that supreme testimony of Imperial good will? The General,
accordingly, informed Napoleon of his chief spy's aspiration only (a
writer says) to draw from the great soldier what was probably the only
horse-laugh in which the conqueror had ever indulged. "Schulmeister,"
said the Emperor, "may have all the money he wants, but the Legion of
Honour—never!" With the Emperor himself the spy was, nevertheless, on
terms which were cordial enough. It was Napoleon's custom to address
him by his Christian name "Karl," and, in the presence of others
particularly, to twit him, often in the most cruel terms, on the
despicable nature of his trade. The Emperor's refusal to include him
among the wearers of the famous Order which he founded is not to be
explained on very logical grounds, seeing that the decoration was worn
by soldiers like Radet, whose chief business in the Army seemed to be
the execution of, frankly, dirty jobs, from the performance of which
the far from squeamish officers of the Corsican shrank with wholesome
aversion. Such, for example, was the invasion of the Vatican and the
arrest of a harmless old Bishop like Pius VII., or the supervision of
the incarcerated Black Cardinals who had refused in 1810, on religious
grounds, to attend the church ceremony which gave Napoleon a second
wife in the person of Marie Louise.
On the advent of this Austrian Archduchess to share the Imperial
throne, Viennese influence at the Court of Napoleon began to count in
Paris as an important enough factor. Sufficiently important, at any
rate, to put a term to the activities of the man who had been to a
great extent responsible for the debâcle of Austria's military and
political schemes in 1805. Schulmeister accordingly disappeared from
Paris, selling his estate near Paris and retiring to his splendid
property at Meinau, where his popularity with the Alsatians was so
great as to justify the belief that the spy was generously endowed with
many qualities other than those which had led him to adopt the trade
of espionage. "He is a spy," his countrymen used to say, "but surely
also a gallant man." In 1814, during the invasion of France, a regiment
of Austrian artillery was especially detailed to demolish his mansion
and to destroy as much of his personal property as possible. The spy
returned to Paris during the Hundred Days, only to be arrested when
Napoleon left for Belgium. He was released on paying over so large a
ransom that his fortune was permanently crippled. On the return of
the Bourbons, all his attempts to play a social rôle were severely
frowned down by the friends of his prosperous days, and with the small
remnants of a fortune which unfortunate speculations had now reduced
to the vanishing point, he returned to Alsace, there to live a life of
lean days and pathetic obscurity. As late as 1840 he was the keeper of
a _bureau de tabac_, one of those tobacco stalls which are given to
Frenchmen as a solatium for public services in the lower grades. He
was alive in 1850 when the Prince-President toured through Alsace, but
refused to bring himself to the notice of the nephew of Napoleon. The
President called on him, however, vouchsafing him an honour which he
had never received from the great Captain—namely, a handshake. He died
in 1853 and was buried near his wife and parents in the cemetery of
Saint Urbain in Strassburg.
V
NATHAN HALE
On studying the career of Nathan Hale, who, with Major André, owes his
historicity to the American War of Independence, one is conscious of
being in touch with a character at once dangerous and difficult, to
quote the words in which an eminent English statesman has described
the mystic who is at the same time a practical man. In Hale, as his
private correspondence clearly shows, there was every indication that
an otherwise reasonable and lovable disposition was supplemented by a
deep-running current of that hard fanaticism which has ever marked your
descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers. Like his fellow-spy André, Hale was
a man whose social and intellectual gifts were of an important order,
while the admitted excellence of the man's private character, as well
as his high sense of personal honour, go a long way to justify the
opinion generally held by Americans regarding the motives which induced
Hale to enter into the business of spying—according to that view, a
pure love of the principle of liberty, which prompted him to risk his
life in the service of his country. "Spies," says Vattel, "are usually
condemned to capital punishment and not unjustly, there being hardly
any other way of preventing the mischief which they do. For this
reason a man of honour who would not expose himself to die by the hand
of a common executioner, ever declines serving as a spy. He considers
such work disgraceful, as it can seldom be done without some kind of
treachery." Hale himself gave recorded expression, however, to his view
of the matter when he said that, "every kind of service necessary for
the public good becomes honourable by being necessary"—a view which
is quite in keeping with that mysticism which ever characterises the
fanatic who claims the support of spiritual principles for his acts.
Again, Hale declared: "I wish to be useful. If the exigencies of my
country demand a peculiar service, its claims to the performance of
that service are imperious." André, on the other hand, stated that
in the ill-starred enterprise into which he threw himself, he was
mainly "actuated by a thirst for military glory, the applause of his
countrymen and perhaps a brigadiership"—clearly a true megalomaniac.
Indeed, André's last words gave the key to the large personal vanity
which underlay his undoubtedly interesting character: "I call upon
you all, gentlemen, to bear witness that I die like a brave man."
Hale indicated a purely ethical or religious attachment to the ideas
inherent in Independence doctrines of liberty, when he made his last
utterance: "I only regret that I have but one life to sacrifice for my
country"—the true spirit of the Coliseum martyr. The young American
was willing to give up life itself for his idea of liberty.
The Hale family, originally of the Kentish family of that name, had
been settled since 1635 in various parts of the New England States, the
country of the Puritan settlers. The parents of Richard and Elizabeth
Hale were, it is on record, of the strictest sect of Puritans of their
day. The Bible was to them the speaking voice of the Almighty, says a
friend of the family; their admirable civic virtues were also based
upon the religion that was in them and they respected the Law because
they recognised its divine origin. Records still extant emphasise the
important fact that the domestic life of the Hale family was one in
which practical religion played a leading part. Nathan Hale was born
in 1755, the sixth of twelve children, and from his earliest days was
destined for the ministry. With this object he was entered at Yale
College in 1771, after an uneventful village life in the course of
which he gave evidence of a more than usually studious nature. Of the
famous American University he became a graduate in 1773, leaving there
in that year to take up the profession of teaching. All contemporary
writers agree in attributing to young Hale a singularly engaging
personality as well as a presence which was conspicuous among men
whose physical excellence was of a splendid type. "Six feet high,
perfectly proportioned, in figure and deportment, he was the most
manly man I ever saw," wrote an enthusiastic college friend, who
added the interesting fact that "all the girls in New Haven fell in
love with him and wept tears of real sorrow when they heard of his
sad fate. Ever willing to lend a helping hand to a being in distress,
brute or human, he was overflowing with good humour and the idol of
his acquaintances." During his university days Hale had made a mark
in the debating society and his political speeches were remarkable,
it is recorded, for a strong advocacy of those principles of personal
liberty which had reached America by way of France, then in the final
stage of that academic propaganda which was so soon to precipitate
the catastrophe of the Revolution. Determined to devote his life to
teaching, and with a view to obtaining ultimately a professorship at
his old university, Hale settled down to the prosaic enough life of a
New England schoolmaster, devoting his extra-professional hours to the
study of science, ethics and literature.
The outbreak of the War of Independence with the battle of Lexington,
19th April 1775, upset the philosophic dreams of the Connecticut
teacher. Throughout the New England States, action was at once and
almost unanimously called for, and among those who became earnest
advocates of patriotic endeavour, young Hale began to take a prominent
place. "Let us march at once," he cried, "nor ever lay down our arms
till we have obtained our independence." Hale was, indeed, the first
speaker to voice the popular notion of freedom from the union with
Great Britain. In co-operation with kindred spirits, he set about
the forming of a local regiment for immediate service at the Front.
He himself eventually enlisted in Webb's corps, a kind of territorial
organisation for local defence. In 1775 Hale was present with his
regiment at the siege of Boston, where his conspicuous activities won
him a captaincy. The British were driven from that city in March 1776
and sailed for Halifax, the American forces in their turn moving on New
York. That Hale's patriotism was of a purely disinterested kind would
seem to be shown by the fact that he himself paid for the services of
many of his enlisted men. At New York Hale distinguished himself at
once by capturing a British vessel carrying large supplies, a midnight
raid of much danger which secured for his regiment provisions for a
lengthy subsistence and to himself the notice of General Washington,
by whom he was presently to be entrusted with the carrying out of a
mission the successful results of which must react decisively on the
whole war. The commission entrusted to Hale was nothing less than the
penetration of the enemy's plan of campaign, an absolutely necessary
condition of success for the Revolutionary commanders and for the
following reasons:—
After the various actions which compelled the retreat of the insurgents
from Long Island, the main American army in Manhattan, owing to the
demoralised state of its men, ill-clad, half-starved and unpaid as
they were, seemed to be on the point of dissolution. In a force which
on paper totalled 20,000 men, desertion and disease had discounted
one-third of the numbers. Opposed to them was a British army of 25,000
strong, supported by a powerful naval force. Its soldiers were veterans
who had already tasted success and were magnificently equipped with
artillery, stores and war-munitions of every sort. The military crux
which confronted Washington was the defence or the abandonment of New
York, the strategic key of the existing military situation. Unable,
owing to inaction to which his topographical position as well as the
hesitations of Congress condemned him, to divine the real intentions
of the British, Washington instructed his lieutenants to obtain at all
hazards correct information as to the designs of the enemy's generals.
"Leave no stone unturned," he wrote to General Heath, "nor do not stick
at expense to bring this to pass, as I was never more uneasy than on
account of my want of knowledge on this score." The vital matter was
to find out at which point, if at all, the British intended to attack
New York. Such being the situation, it was decided to send a competent
observer in disguise into the British lines on Long Island, in order
to penetrate the momentous secret, and Nathan Hale volunteered for the
execution of the perilous undertaking.
It is recorded that when Colonel Knowlton, on calling the insurgent
officers together, suggested that one of them should volunteer his
services for what was undoubtedly the work of a spy, a murmur of
indignation went round the room. Many of the officers in bitter terms
reproached the Colonel for having dared to carry such a suggestion to
men of honour, even from Washington himself. Knowlton replied that he
was only carrying out his General's instructions, but nevertheless
managed to insinuate in his reply that the reward in the way of
promotion for the successful achievement of the mission would be
proportioned to the danger with which it was undoubtedly fraught. His
fellow-officers, to whom Hale's high spirit and probity were well-known
characteristics, little expected that the Captain would prove the very
first to undertake the work of a common spy. Nevertheless Hale was
the only man, among a band of men of undoubted courage, who could be
found to respond to the suggestion. His friends, in no way deterred,
indeed, rather encouraged, by the presence of Knowlton, whose proposal
they considered as an insult, used all the arts of persuasion at their
command to turn him from his purpose, but without success. Hale in
accepting the perilous commission addressed them as follows:—
"Gentlemen, I think I owe to my country the accomplishment of an object
so important and so much desired by the commander of her armies,
and I know no mode of obtaining the information but by assuming a
disguise and passing into the enemy's camp. I am fully sensible of
the consequences of discovery and capture in such a situation. But
for a year I have been attached to the Army and have not rendered
any material service while receiving a compensation for which I make
no return. Yet am I not influenced by any expectation of promotion
or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service
necessary for the public good becomes honourable by being necessary. If
the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service its claims to
the performance of that service become imperious."
On the same afternoon Hale met Washington for the second time,
receiving from the General instructions with regard to the perilous
task he had undertaken. He was also given a general order addressed to
American shipmasters to convey Captain Hale to any part of Long Island
on which he might desire to land. Sundown already saw him on his way,
accompanied by a sergeant and a boatman, to a point fifty miles north
of New York, Norwalk, where there was a safe crossing of the Sound into
territory occupied by British forces. Dismissing his companions at
dawn on 15th September, and exchanging into the brown civilian dress
and Quaker hat common to that period, Hale ferried across the narrow
water, instructing his retainers at the last moment to await him at
the same spot with a boat on 20th September. Reaching Huntington Bay
on the other side, he assumed the character of a schoolmaster who,
disgusted with the course of the Revolutionary cause, had come to
pursue his profession in surroundings more congenial to his political
and social tastes. His appearance and speech both carried conviction
to all with whom he conversed; he was made free of the British lines,
visited all the camps on Long Island, making observations openly
and drawing up memoranda, written in Latin, as well as plans, in
the privacy of his room. In the meantime, the British had invaded
Manhattan and captured New York, so that as far as the penetration of
the designs of English commanders was concerned, Hale had really made
his excursion to little purpose beyond what he had achieved in the
gathering of military information on Long Island. Having heard of the
British success, he retraced his steps in the direction of Norwalk, and
on 18th September, at sundown, found himself again at Huntington Bay,
where he had first landed on his mission. Wearing coarse shoes with
loose inner soles, under which he was able comfortably to conceal his
drawings and memoranda, and still in the plain dress of a middle-class
citizen, he felt secure in the disguise which had already carried him
so happily through the perils of many British camps. Accordingly he
entered a famous tavern "The Cedars" and asked for a night's lodging.
At his entrance, a number of persons were in the lounge, and one of
them, a man whose face he seemed to recollect, suddenly rose and left
the place. Hale spent the night at the hostelry and at dawn left for
the waterside in quest of the boat which he had ordered to be ready.
Agreeably surprised to find his supposed boatman so punctual, he gaily
saluted an approaching skiff which was carrying several men. Hastening
to the beach in expectation of meeting his friends, he discovered to
his dismay that the boat was manned by British marines. Flight was
impossible; he was seized, taken aboard and conveyed to the British
guard-ship _Halifax_. His capture, it is said, had been brought about
by the stranger whom he had recognised the previous night at "The
Cedars," a distant cousin of disreputable habits, who had betrayed him
to the British. Proper warrant is, however, lacking for this part of
the story. Inevitably his captors found full proofs of the purport of
his adventure and he was conveyed to the headquarters of General Howe
who, on the evidence of the concealed papers, summarily condemned him
to death by hanging.
In the presence of Howe Hale frankly admitted his rank and mission. "I
was present," wrote a British officer who was an eye-witness of the
closing scenes, "and observed that the frankness, the manly bearing and
the evidently disinterested patriotism of the handsome young prisoner
sensibly touched a tender chord of General Howe's nature; but the stern
rule of war concerning such offences would not allow him to exercise
even pity."
As might be expected from such a man, Hale met his doom with the iron
firmness of one who is convinced of the righteousness of his purpose.
His last requests to Cunningham, the provost-marshal who supervised the
execution, were refused, and even his poor, hurriedly written letters
to his mother, his sisters and his youthful betrothed, Alice Adams,
were ruthlessly destroyed before his face. There was, indeed, a real
nobility about the whole person and demeanour of Hale which, as is
commonly enough the case, called forth the brutality and coarseness of
the completely opposite nature of Cunningham, who jeeringly requested
the doomed youth to make his dying speech. And Hale replied, in words
which still ring in the spirit of the Independence Fathers:
"I only regret that I have but one life to give to my country."
VI
MACK AND THE MOLLY MAGUIRES
James M'Parlan, a North-of-Ireland man, must be ranked among the most
successful spies in modern times and for the good reason that he was
mainly instrumental in breaking up one of the most lawless and terrible
conspiracies against public order and private liberty which any state
has yet been called upon to suppress. Its home was Pennsylvania, its
name the "Molly Maguires," and to find a parallel to its iniquitous
arts and methods one must go to the Klux Klan, the Corsican Vendetta or
the White Veil society of the Middle Ages in Italy. As the discovery
of gold in Australia and California in the middle of the nineteenth
century led to the commission of a vast amount of crime by reason of
the peculiar character of the masses of adventurers who soon overran
the gold-bearing regions, so also the discovery of anthracite coal in
Pennsylvania led to the assembling of great camps of speculators and
prospectors, wealthy capitalists and common labourers for whom the
word Law meant next to nothing at all. The comparatively unorganised
condition of new towns which had sprung up as if by magic in the
anthracite zones made Pennsylvania in those days a likely jumping-off
ground for any man who possessed good physique, a brutal bearing, a
disregard of private rights and the ability to impose his ideas upon
a band of men of his own kind and kidney. Knowing what we know of
the enterprising courage of many types of Irishmen and their talent
for the business of pioneering, it is not difficult to imagine that
they swarmed to the valuable coal regions of the Quaker State in
legions proportionate to the vast immigrant hordes of their countrymen
that were then flowing into every port of the United States. Great
settlements consisting only of Irishmen sprang up at once in the
mining districts of Pennsylvania and this new Irish colony separated
automatically into as many divisions as there were counties in Ireland
itself, each section carrying with it all the local pride, prejudice
and other characteristics which had marked it within its geographical
bounds in the old home. In fact a New Ireland sprang up in Quaker State
hardly differentiable from the Old.
Most people who have read the story of Ireland divested of that halo
of cloistral romance, sentiment and song, which presents Erin in the
mellow light of a land of untroubled repose, are well aware that in
all its recorded ages, paying due credit to its title to religiosity,
it has been a country which for inter-racial animosities and political
divisions is comparable only with that aggregation of states which
until historical research and record had presented them as they truly
were, once bore the half-sacred name of Greece. In Ireland the man
of the North differs from the man of the South and rarely likes him,
the people of the West do not understand the masses of the East and do
not want to; we have the stout Men of Munster who scorn the Scottish
Huguenots of the North as alien intruders, while the Gentleman of
Leinster affects to despise his hard-working and thrifty countryman
from Connaught. In a land like this it is not hard to imagine that
those who possess a talent for prospering by the promotion of political
intrigue and secret societies find themselves at once in an element
which is entirely congenial to themselves and their schemes, as well as
fruitful of profit in every sense of the word. Their objects, too, are
made all the more easily attainable by reason of that peculiar trait
in the Irishman's temper which makes him regard an act of treachery
to the covenants of any secret organisation, no matter what its
objects, as the most hateful of all traitorous acts. It has been well
said, indeed, that in Ireland "to inform of a crime is nearly always
considered as bad as the crime itself, and to such an extent has this
feeling developed that it has become a part of the Irish character
and is universal in its application." In a large measure owing to
this contempt of the informer by Irishmen, all manner of crime has
at all times and in all places gone undetected in every part of the
world where Irishmen have developed large Irish settlements, and it
was precisely for the foregoing reasons that the great Molly Maguire
Conspiracy was, in the first place, able to come into existence and,
in the second, able by the black secrecy attending upon its criminal
operations, to mystify the authorities of a great State of the Union
for more than a generation. The long series of murders committed by
this infamous body in the Pennsylvania coal regions were revolting
and brutal to the most cold-blooded degree, were entirely without
the barest elements of justification, and for the most part were
perpetrated for grievances of a wholly childish and imaginary kind,
based mainly on mere personal dislike or other trivial reasons of the
sort.
The iniquitous exploits of "Boycott" propagandism in Land League days,
which possessed at least a semblance of political motive underlying
them, were respectable when compared with the foul and wanton killings
of the Molly Maguires in America—a body, it may here be said, which
derived its peculiar name from the fact that to every warning its
agents addressed to an intended victim there was invariably attached
the generic signature "Molly Maguire." An unfriendly attitude towards
the Mollies, the least suspicion of being anxious to uproot them,
common race feeling, and, as we have said, simple personal dislike
were each and all sufficient to bring upon any man visitation from
the band in the form of a card bearing the fateful name. Private and
public denunciation and the dispatch of threatening letters invariably
preceded the killing which was not only not to be denounced, but which
was to be treated by all who knew of its commission as if it had never
taken place. The mangled Molly Maguire corpse came, accordingly, to
rank in a class by itself among all other corpses, enshrouded as it
usually was with a general and sacrosanct mystery regarding the manner
in which life had come to leave it. Murders were commonly committed
during the dinner-hour of the miners who, so frequent was a crime,
would go on calmly eating their meal while a fellow-man was being
dispatched to a happier world than this not fifty yards away; and if
his bloody passing called up a feeling of pity in the breast of one
of the diners, it was only to be squelched at once with the chorus
"Shure wasn't the man war-rned"—meaning that a man might be warned of
possessing too ambitious a wife, or the fact that he was "putting on
th'airs iv a jintleman," or that he may have been trying to ingratiate
himself into the favour of a capitalist who happened not to be in
sympathy with Irishmen, or, indeed, perhaps that he had been seen "iv
a Sunda' wearin' peg-top throusers, no less." On receipt of a card
bearing the signature of doom, if the recipient did not desist from
"anny of the said coorses," he had only himself to blame if a band
of Mollies visited him one fine night and bludgeoned his body into
releasing the soul.
One of the chief shareholders of a great coal-bearing area, Franklin
Goven by name, decided, to his lasting credit and with the support
of all right-minded Irishmen in America, to subsidise from his own
pocket a movement to destroy this band of chartered assassins. Acting
in concert with important public men in Philadelphia, he applied to
the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency for the assistance of an expert
in tracking the organisation to its original sources and destroying
it for good and all. After full preliminary inquiries, the Agency
decided that the ramifications of the secret organisation were so
complex and so comprehensive that the real truth as to the operation
of its methods could only be reached by planting a spy amidst the
very band itself. To this end were enlisted the services of M'Parlan,
who under the name of M'Kenna set about the destruction of one of
the foulest criminal societies yet known to the world. Mack, as he
became known ever afterwards, accordingly began, in 1873, his almost
hopeless task of tracing the source of the perpetration of some hundred
murders which had taken place within a few years preceding, to make
no mention of hundreds of maimings, mutilations and other horrors
which were to be attributed to the same propagandism. From the outset
it was discovered by Mack, in the course of preliminary goings and
comings in the coal country, that connected with the Ancient Order
of Hibernians, a well-established benefit society chartered by the
Legislature of the State, there was an inner movement composed of
members of the Hibernians who were subsidising a criminal organisation
of wide-reaching power and influence, not unlike the Italian Black
Hand society of our own day. It was clear that at the head of the
society was an open and properly constituted body, and connected with
it was a secret and criminal movement. Mack began his subsequent sleuth
work in approved Irish fashion by becoming a regular customer at one of
those low-class Pennsylvania coal-town drinking shops—"speak-easies"
they are called by the police, who are well aware that many men who
visit them are not the sort loudly to advertise the methods by which
they make their living. Here he entered on friendly terms with the
landlord, Patrick Dormer by name. Mack, it was certain, was a gifted
soul and in every sense what your American so expressively terms "a
good mixer"; could sing a rowdy song, foot it to the moving music and
"cough up" the ready yarn when it came to his turn. Moreover, he could
"keep his end up" when it meant replenishing the convivial glasses,
while his passion for what is known as being in the thick of a purely
personal mix-up soon made him the most popular Irishman in the coal
zones. Most important of all, in view of his especial business, he was
what is known among Americans as "a cold soak"—that is to say, he could
saturate his system with fire-water and still command his intellect.
While his boon companions washed their sodden brains publicly in their
beer, Mack, always affecting to be easily susceptible to the effects of
Old Crow, was quietly taking mental notes. Accordingly it was not long
before he discovered that his friends, when under the influence of
Bacchus, were apt to give up certain secret pass-words. Having listened
to one of these several times, he carefully learned the exact phrase,
and soon after, finding the landlord alone, he invited him to take a
drink. Leaning mysteriously over the counter he repeated the mystic
pass-word.
"What," cried the astonished landlord, "are _you_ one of them
things?"—meaning a Molly Maguire.
"Troth, that's what they call me," replied the North-of-Ireland man.
Dormer unsuspectingly began from that day to treat Mack as one of the
insiders, taking his word that he had been in the Hibernian Order at
Buffalo, but had been obliged to leave on account of a serious crime.
He was now, he confessed, in hiding, and consequently became an object
of sympathy and solicitude to the Irishmen. When it came, however, to
introducing Mack to genuine Hibernians, matters advanced less smoothly,
since the self-styled Molly did not understand the "grip" and had
only one single pass-word to back his claim. And so it happened that
on the occasion of his being presented to one Cooney, a Molly of note
and standing, the latter, having made certain signs which remained
unanswered, jumped from his toady-chair declaring that Mack was an
elemental liar. The spy brazened the matter out, boldly called the bar
for drinks and pretending to have drunk too deeply fell in a stupor
to the floor. His enemy thereupon proposed to disintegrate the spy
by jumping on him, but the "bunch" vetoed this proposal, Mack being
admittedly a good fellow. Again Cooney took up the frenzied word,
crying:
"I wouldn't take his oath to it acrast his mother's corp. No—not till
he brung me a card from his body-master."
To Mack, still prone upon his vertebræ, this was good enough
information. He was getting into it by degrees. The Mollies, then, had
grips, pass-words, toasts, likewise body-masters; and as he snored, he
also registered the facts. Cooney then "quit," and strangely enough
Mack, so far from being molested by anyone, was actually taken to the
hearts of the Mollies as one of themselves. Thereafter there remained
but the inner ring to conquer and Mack, plentifully supplied with
money—the result, he pretended, of nefarious tradings and misdoings—set
about improving his position. By violent and reckless talk he soon won
the confidence of his fellows and as he boasted of having borne a hand
in crimes which had actually been perpetrated in years gone by, and
of which, as a detective, he must have known the details, the local
Mollies began to reflect that in Mack they possessed a "hunch"—that is
to say, a man over whom they held a sword and who was at the same time
in intelligence, intrepidity and means incomparably above his fellows.
He was described about this time: five feet eight inches high, broad
forehead, chestnut hair and of very genial aspect. Accordingly Mack
was chosen to be an active Molly. Subsequently and in the course of
the judicial proceedings which finally broke up the Brotherhood, Mack
was able to show that he had never once engaged in the commission of a
planned crime and that by cipher and especially prearranged telegrams
he was able in many cases to prevent the further commission of murders
in the coal regions.
That the double-dealing duties which fell to Mack were of a perilous
nature may be realised from the fact that after a few months in
residence among the Mollies all his hair had fallen off, he had lost
his eyebrows and his sight had become impaired. During this time his
duties compelled him to make unwilling love—the lady was _exigeante_,
worse luck—to the sister of a high-placed Molly in order to extract
special information. And as for the quantities of vile whisky he had
found himself forced to swallow round the low bars he frequented,
Mack, commonly a sober soul, declared afterwards that this was in many
ways the hardest part of his business. A period came, however, when
suspicion began to throw its red eye upon him and his death, on general
principles and as a possible spy, was finally decided upon. Other men
might have excusably enough fled the place, but this was too brave a
man to fail his employers just as he was on the point of penetrating to
the mystic shrine of the organisation and finding out where "killing
orders" came from. One Kehoe, it was, who suspecting Mack for a spy,
called a number of Mollies together and advocated the summary murder of
the man. Evidently Kehoe knew something, for at this meeting he adjured
his brethren to take rapid action. "For God's sake," he cried, "have
him killed this very night that ever was, or half the countryside will
hang."
Accordingly it was decided to put Mack to death and men were detailed
to do the deed. On that evening, it was known, the spy was to arrive
at the Shenandoah railway station, whence a long stretch of lonely
roadway led to the townlet of that name. Mack arrived, the sole
passenger, and, to his surprise, was met by none of the Brotherhood.
This was a bad omen; but he decided to go on, and made his way to the
hotel of one M'Andrew, whom he still considered to be his friend.
Affecting the usual cordiality, he entered the house and parlour;
but conversation becoming at once strained, he realised that serious
business was in contemplation; two sentinels were placed outside the
house, one Sweeny remaining in the room; he too got up dreamily and
left, telling the landlord he was going home. Presently, however, he
returned with a piece of snow which he carelessly threw at M'Andrew's
feet, where it melted. This meant that time was short and nothing was
being done—an established sign. M'Andrew looked at the spy, gave a
groan and said: "My feet are sore, I must take off my boots," another
sign which conveyed that as men were not coming in sufficient numbers,
the business of murdering Mack would have to be postponed. Mack,
who, like all Mollies, was well armed, accordingly left the place,
making for his lodgings by the highway. Once at home he spent the
night in self-defensive vigil and on the morrow, early, two Mollies
from a local camp called upon him. With true Irish trust to chance and
the possible ignorance of the other man, they declared they had come
from Scranton by rail and Mack was well aware that no train arrived
at such an hour from that town. These were, however, the men who had
been chosen overnight, and after the last failure, to remove him. The
spy, always on his guard, told the men boldly he was going straight to
Kehoe's house to ask why they had placed him under suspicion. Marching
from the house, he made for the hotel of M'Andrew, whom he induced to
accompany him to Kehoe's by sleigh. The other two men decided also that
they would accompany Mack to Kehoe's and hired a second sleigh. On the
journey several stops were made at intervening pot-houses, where the
victim-to-be treated his would-be murderers to all they desired in the
way of drink—and then some. At Kehoe's the master of the house was
preparing to celebrate the slaying of Mack with a dinner to a score
of Mollies, and when the man who was already supposed to be a "corp"
walked up to the house with a front of brass, followed by his appointed
murderers, both sorely besotted, Kehoe began to pinch himself to see if
he might be dreaming. In the front parlour, where the spy knew they
would not dare to murder him, were a dozen Mollies all celebrating his
slaughter in Old Crow, most of them already on the blink. Mack entered
the room after Kehoe and did a bold thing: "Boys," he said, "you are a
band of foul murderers to seek to take the life of the truest Molly in
the whole bunch. Give me the whisky." They handed him a glass filled to
the brim and the spy drained it. "Kehoe," he demanded, "what is it you
have against me and why do you want my life?" "Father O'Connor knows
all about you," retorted Kehoe. "He knows you for a spy." Mack looked
at his watch and brazened it out. "Well then," says he, "'tis Father
O'Connor himself I will have here, and by God I'll go and fetch him."
Passing from the house he met Mrs Kehoe, with whom he was a favourite,
and telling her how her husband and his friends had put him on the
mortuary list, Mack reached his sleigh, M'Andrew following him. At
the priest's house, he was informed that Father O'Connor had gone to
a neighbouring town. Under pretext of sending him a wire the spy then
drove to the station, reflecting wisely at this somewhat overdrawn
point that his mission was now really at an end. He had timed his
arrival well but still had a few minutes to wait for the noon train.
In the short interval Mack feigned to be busy drawing up his telegram
to the priest. The train arrived to the minute, and Mack, waiting till
the moment of its departure, threw down the prepared message as the
cars were drawing clear of the platform, boarded the last carriage and
vanished for good from the coal regions. His next appearance was made
in the witness-box at Philadelphia, where his evidence incriminated
the leading spirits of the Conspiracy, who were sentenced to long
imprisonment, the Molly Maguires passing thereafter into the history of
evils that had been.
VII
MAJOR ANDRÉ
When the psychology of the Spy comes to be expounded by some master
thinker, one wonders if he will emphasise the fact that, more often
than not, there is that in the pedigree and antecedents of the
agent of stealth which clearly suggests a mongrel breed. Was it not
Tacitus who wrote of the half-caste races who swarmed the Roman
Suburra, describing them in the memorable words: "Despectissima pars
servientium"—the most despicable of the slave tribe? It was among this
class that Marcus Crassus was wont to go in quest of recruits for that
grand army of touts, quidnuncs and informers who, by bringing him
first-hand intelligence of fires, burglaries, murders and kindred daily
occurrences in Rome, most of which were pregnant with the possibilities
of profit of some sort, helped to build up the monster fortune that
made him one of the most important men of antiquity. Your Stiebers and
Schulmeisters, too, all in some vague way convey an impression that
they are beings who are not quite human, although not wholly brute;
living things which seem to come from an unracial stock without stamp
or tradition. To a man who has been accorded the honour of a monument
in Westminster Abbey these reflections do not, of course, apply.
Nevertheless they suggest themselves, and when one reads in the life
of John André that "it was not known whether the place of his birth
was London or elsewhere in England," one feels disposed not to care
particularly whether or not he ever had a father, or if his mother
ever changed her name. André, too, was by origin a Swiss, and there
is invariably lacking in the inhabitants of Switzerland a specific
national cachet or clear racial type. His sire had been born in Geneva,
while his mother was a Frenchwoman called Girardot, who in 1751 gave
birth to the unfortunate British spy.
To add to the complexities of André's particular case, no one seems
to be very certain where he passed the early years of his education,
though it seems correct that the best part of his academic training
was obtained in that always very cosmopolitan University of Geneva. We
are assured that there he mastered several European tongues, that he
became an adept in the social arts and possessed an acquaintance with
the best classical literatures. It is only, however, in 1769, the year
of his father's death, that we really begin to locate him, and then we
find him living at Clapton, where his father, a merchant, resided in
the local manor-house. At the time of this gentleman's death, André was
eighteen years of age and his precociousness seems to be established
by the fact that in those days he was paying his addresses to the
daughter of a clergyman named Seward, the lady being several years
older than himself. Not only that, but Anna Seward was, it appears,
a poet and the leader of a _salon_ of sorts at Lichfield, where many
well-known literary lights of the day were wont to assemble and discuss
the trends of literary and artistic thought and action. Evidently Miss
Seward did not take her gallant too seriously, for we hear of him
shortly afterwards as a worshipper at the shrine of Honoria Sneyd, who
was afterwards to become the mother of Maria Edgeworth. Romance, it is
certain, entered generously into the youth of André.
It is clear also that the counting-house of a London merchant's
establishment was not at all to the taste of the young man. He had
always thirsted for military adventure, and it is not surprising
to hear that in his twentieth year, he purchased a commission as
under-lieutenant in the Royal English Fusiliers. It may be noted in
passing that this was a period in which commissions in the Army—since
become an easy enough achievement—were practically the monopoly of men
who were far superior by birth and social position to the sons of even
the most princely merchants, and there is nothing to indicate that
André's father was at all a man of more than moderate means. The point
is interesting, however, inasmuch as it points to the psychological
tendencies of the young man's mind. His commission duly obtained, André
repaired at once to Berlin, where he received considerable insight
into the military arts. Berlin, it may be parenthetically observed,
was in those days probably the best-organised centre of a vast system
of spies, for had not the collector of the famous giant-regiment
of Potsdam Guards passed that way a generation before, and was not
Frederick the Great still boasting that he had only one cook and a
hundred spies? Some authorities incline to the belief that young André,
while in Berlin, was already an active spy of the British Government.
It is clear at any rate that when after a few years' residence in
Germany he returned to England, he became known to prominent officers
as a man not only more than usually well informed on all matters of a
military kind, but also as a soldier who had fitted himself by very
special study for the business of probing the military secrets and
plans of other countries.
To the man's personality justice must, however, be done, for it is
agreed on all hands that a more captivating or picturesque officer
had never worn King George's uniform. Unlike Wolfe, also a man of
literary parts, though a somewhat dark and silent person, André was a
conversationalist of such fascination and sparkle that his presence
in a drawing-room proved sufficient to attract the larger portion of
both sexes to its immediate vicinity. Even his male contemporaries
all declare that a more lovable being had rarely crossed the social
stage, while the number of women of note and fashion with whom the
young officer was said to be on that footing which the French so
expressively describe by the term _au mieux_, can hardly have been
inferior to that which favoured handsome John Churchill in a former
age. Great facial beauty, a splendid presence, romantic courage,
a reputation for brilliancy in an age which was far from being a
superficial one—all these were qualities which we expect in the pages
of fiction, but which are only occasionally to be met with in actual
experience. They are qualities, nevertheless, which have been the
possession of most of the distinguished adventurers of history and it
is obviously the consciousness of possessing such gifts that turns your
born adventurer towards a life to which he has no definite social or
traditional right.
It is often pointed out in the way of evidence of André's particular
mission as a spy having been officially forecast for him, that on
leaving England for Quebec, where his regiment was stationed, the
young officer travelled thither by the very roundabout route via
Philadelphia. Here he arrived in September 1774. His experience as a
man who had seen much of the military spy system of Frederick and who
was in any case an acute observer of all things were facts of which
General Carleton, the Governor-General of Canada, was well aware. That
officer, coincidently enough, left England about the same time as
André, the twain travelling however by different ways. It is assumed,
by Americans generally, that Carleton, who foresaw the imminence of
the Revolutionary conflict, had directed his subordinate to visit
Philadelphia in the capacity of a commissioned spy, in order to learn
all he might regarding the condition of public affairs, the temper
of the people and, above all, to obtain some clear idea as to the
intentions of the leaders of the American forces. Halting a short while
and for the accomplishment of his purpose in the old Quaker City,
André subsequently passed to New York and Boston, ever observant,
everywhere transcribing, always on the alert. At Quebec he arrived
early in November 1774. On the outbreak of the war André was one of the
first British officers to be captured by the enemy and for over a year
remained a prisoner in several Pennsylvania cities, where his charming
personality and accomplishments gave him among the enemy the footing of
a privileged guest rather than a captive. He was exchanged at the close
of 1776 and rejoined the Army at New York, then commanded by Howe. To
that officer André came like some visitor from Fortune herself, for
during his late captivity, in the course of which he held practically
_carte blanche_ to move about the outlying country, the young soldier
had always done so with his professional instincts set and with the
result that he was able immediately to present Howe with more accurate
information as to the military effective, disposition and plans of
Washington than the regular Intelligence service could have procured
him in three years. A vacancy falling due on the staff of General Grey,
Howe procured its reversion to André, giving him the rank of Captain.
At this time the British Army was moving on Philadelphia.
Literature dealing with the story of Philadelphia in that age presents
us with the picture of a city of perennial pageant. The British Army
was in occupation in the winter and spring of 1778 and revelry ran
long and high in every phase of the social life of Quaker City. Our
André was here in his very element and among the acquaintances he
formed was that of Margaret Shippen, who afterwards became the wife
of Benedict Arnold. "No one," wrote Mr Winthropp Sergeant in 1861,
"seems to have created such a pleasing impression or to have been so
long admiringly remembered as André. His name in our own days lingers
on the lips of every aged woman whose youth had seen her a belle in
the royal lines.... He is described as of five feet nine inches in
height and of singularly handsome person—well made, slender, graceful
and very active, a dark complexion with a serious and somewhat tender
expression; his manners easy and insinuating.... If the serious
business of life was a part of his lot, there was yet ample scope
for the exercise of those elegant arts in which he excelled. His
infirmities, if any there were, sprang like Charles Townshend's from
a noble cause—that lust of fame which is the instinct of all great
souls; and his comely person, his winning speech, his graceful manners
procured him universal acceptance, while his freedom from the grosser
passions of his fellows was especially observed." The universal gaiety
which prevailed throughout Philadelphia was not without its effect on
the Army as a whole and the inevitable demoralisation of all classes of
society followed. It remains a lasting tribute to the attractions of
the fair maids of Philadelphia that the number of irregular marriages
which took place among the lower ranks of the Army alone was so large
as to necessitate the organisation of special pickets with the object
of preventing the wholesale depletion of regiments through long absence
or desertion. As Benjamin Franklin declared at the time: "Howe has not
taken Philadelphia, Philadelphia has taken Howe," and it is written
that on the evacuation of the city by the British forces, 18,000
strong, at least 1000 privates deserted, returning to their sweethearts
and lately married wives in Quaker Town. General Howe himself proved
far from a shining example to his subordinates or soldiery, indolence
and sensuality being his chief characteristics, while there were not
wanting those who accused him of malversation of military funds. "He
returned to England richer in money than laurels," while Americans are
wont to thank him for having given them America, as they put it. His
relations with André hardly seem consistent with what we know of that
officer's usual discernment. In his honour, André, now a major, had
composed and stage-managed a kind of allegorical tourney entitled the
_Mischianza_, which was enacted to honour a general who was already
under sentence of recall to England. Howe was in due course succeeded
by Sir Henry Clinton, to whom André, on the departure of General Grey
in 1778, became chief aide and secretary, a position in which he
so clearly proved his ability that in 1779 he was appointed deputy
adjutant-general to the British forces in America with headquarters in
New York.
We have seen that during his earlier stay in Philadelphia the young
officer had formed a close friendship with Margaret Shippen, daughter
of a wealthy resident. By 1779 this lady had become the wife of
Benedict Arnold, one of the leading Revolutionary generals who was
appointed military governor of Philadelphia on its evacuation by the
British. Arnold, it was well known, maintained a sumptuous style of
living which was wholly out of keeping with his means or position.
A princely retinue, a lavish table, extravagance in all things were
sufficient, once the British ascendancy had given way to the staid
Quaker rule and custom of Philadelphia, to make him an object of
distrust among a naturally suspicious community. Nor was Arnold at all
a man of high character, whether domestic or public. Already in 1780 he
was formally accused of peculation and, though exonerated on inquiry,
was reprimanded by Washington for "imprudent and improper conduct."
Arnold, who fully expected a complete vindication by his superiors,
never forgave them the last implied stigma on his character. He was
suspected even then of disloyal conversation with the enemy under
adopted names, and his present wrath was not calculated to weaken
any predisposition he may have felt towards the commission of an act
of supreme treachery. It seems clear that André, an unusually astute
judge of character, had fully taken the measure of Arnold and perhaps
had already learned something when, on 16th August 1779, he wrote to
the General's wife at Philadelphia a rather whimsical letter offering
to do some "shopping" for her in New York—a somewhat inconsequent kind
of offer if its object was not to discover the condition of the lady's
purse. Shortly afterwards a communication was addressed from the Tory
side—the Whigs were the Revolutionaries—sounding Arnold and his general
disposition, and it is now well established that the correspondence,
which ensued thereafter between Clinton and himself, partook of a
treasonable character on the part of the American General, who wrote
in a disguised hand and assumed the name of "Gustavus" for the purpose
of his communications, Clinton not then being aware of the identity
or the importance of his correspondent. It seems clear, however, that
André, as Clinton's secretary, was well aware of that identity and we
may suppose the Major to have suggested the transference to himself of
the duty of keeping up communication with the traitor, a transference
which accordingly took place. Major André continued therefore to keep
in touch with Arnold, himself writing under the name "John Anderson" in
a slightly disguised hand. It is not implausibly maintained by some
that in the "shopping" letter which André had addressed to Mrs Arnold
in August 1779 he had used a disguised handwriting with the object of
making clear to her husband—reasonably certain to see the letter—the
identity of John Anderson. Shortly after André had taken a hand in
the intrigue, Arnold began to importune his superiors to give him the
command of West Point near New York, urging the costliness of keeping
up his position in Philadelphia. The request seemed reasonable and
was granted by Washington, Arnold assuming the command at West Point,
already, it is certain, resolved to surrender that strong fort to the
British who were lying some fifty miles below in New York, and for whom
the possession of the Point meant a free communication with Canada.
Up till the contemplated treachery of Arnold, the ascendancy of the
British had been well maintained on the American Continent. Charleston
had fallen and here André had twice risked his life disguised as a
spy; the South was in British possession; Gates had been beaten at
Camden and Manhattan was in their army's occupation. Arnold astutely
chose the proper moment for his act of treachery, certain in that dark
hour to produce a strong moral reaction upon the Revolutionaries. In
September 1780 the American General forwarded to André a letter asking
for a personal interview within the American lines, the Major to
disguise himself as John Anderson. André refused to enter the danger
zone and the meeting was arranged to take place at Haverstraw—neutral
ground—on 21st September. Thereafter it became a matter of somewhat
dangerous rumour that André, whose daring men well knew, was about
to undertake a perilous enterprise, a successful execution of which
must swiftly end the war. A baronetcy, a brigadiership, a large sum
of money—these were the rewards Clinton is said to have promised his
young Adjutant. It is generally agreed that André faced his present
mission with anything but that imperturbability which had marked his
departure on similar expeditions. He was saddened, it was said, by an
indefinable presentiment of death and impending disaster, and left
New York to keep his appointment with Arnold, sailing up the Hudson
in the British sloop _Vulture_. Arnold had agreed to send a boat to
the sloop at midnight, 21st September, in order to take off the Major,
who, on his landing, was led by a friend of the former to the secret
tryst on neutral ground. The interview was long, Arnold haggling
desperately over the terms of settlement; dawn had already begun to
shadow the eastern hill-tops and still the bargain was not square.
By five o'clock, however, the men had come to terms, and Arnold, who
had horses in waiting, suggested the completion of the details in
documentary form at the house of a local farmer, Smith his name. André
consented reluctantly, well knowing the house in question to be within
the American lines. By ten o'clock the deeds were drawn up and signed;
André was in possession of all necessary information concerning the
post to be surrendered. Arnold was to make a show of resistance on the
arrival of the British on 25th September, while Washington himself was
to be delivered into the hands of the enemy on his return that way on
September 27th. Benedict Arnold was to receive some £6500 as a reward
for his treachery, a sum which was eventually paid though the surrender
of West Point never took place.
On leaving Smith's residence and bidding adieu to Arnold, the Major
discovered to his surprise that the _Vulture_ had disappeared. The
sloop had been cannonaded during the night and compelled to drop down
the river. As the Major considered his difficult position, the vessel
returned to its previous moorings and André requested Smith to convey
him aboard. Smith refused, pleading reasonably enough that he was
afraid of the consequences to himself of rendering such a service.
No bribe being sufficient apparently to move the farmer, André found
himself forced to remain where he was and to his undoubted peril,
until nightfall. Smith offered to provide the Major with an American
uniform, but finding it impossible to procure one, gave him instead
an old-fashioned coat of the cavalier style, purple in colour, with
faded gold lace. A melancholy beaver hat completed the strange attire
of the British officer who covered the whole with an ordinary surtout.
Contrary to express instructions from Clinton, André took away the
papers which Arnold had given him at the farmhouse, concealing them in
his top-boots—an entirely senseless as well as purposeless proceeding,
which eventually led to his undoing. Accompanied by Smith and a negro,
André crossed the Hudson at King's Ferry on 22nd September, rode boldly
into the American lines, spending, indeed, a night at another farmhouse
in the midst of the enemy. On the 23rd, bidding his companions adieu,
the Major, following directions given him by Smith, made for so-called
neutral ground which swarmed with Tories and where he might feel
reasonably safe. Mistaking a turn, however, in the old Tarrytown Road,
along which he rode his horse slowly and with some hesitation, he came
suddenly upon a group of farmers who were ranging the countryside in
quest of suspicious persons. One of them, Paulding by name, wore a
Hessian surtout given him by a friend. When André came in sight the
company was playing cards, and on the Major's approach, Paulding,
the master spirit of the gang, stepped to the front, musket in hand,
commanding the traveller to halt and account for himself. Seeing the
Hessian coat—a garment peculiar to King George's troops—André stopped
his horse.
"My lads," he said, "you belong to our side, I see."
"What side?" asked Paulding.
"The British side," André replied.
"We do," answered Paulding.
André was momentarily taken off his guard. "Thank God!" he exclaimed.
"I am a British officer out on particular business. I am glad to be
among friends once more and I hope you will not detain me."
"We are Americans," cried Paulding, "and you are our prisoner."
Assuming as much composure as he could, André drew Arnold's passports
from his pocket permitting "Mr John Anderson to pass the guards to
the White Plains," only, of course, to confirm the suspicions of the
farmers, who thereupon dragged him from his horse, searching him from
head to foot, duly to find the incriminating documents which clearly
proved their captive a first-class spy. The Major began by offering
them in turn, cash, his gold watch, one hundred guineas, and finally
made a promise of one thousand guineas, saying he would remain a
hostage in their hands till one of the party should return with the
money. "We would not let you go for ten thousand guineas," shouted
Paulding, and André's doom was spoken. He was taken to the nearest
American post and delivered to the commandant, Colonel Jameson, under
his name John Anderson. André at once requested that General Arnold
should be notified that his friend "Anderson" was in custody, and the
Colonel, an unsuspicious soul, concluded that he could best serve his
superior officer by returning the captive to Arnold, under a guard of
four troopers in charge of Lieutenant Allen, who was also entrusted
with a letter in which the Colonel mentioned that he was "forwarding
certain documents found on Anderson forthwith to Washington," and this
was accordingly done. André, to his joy, set out with his escort on
the return journey to Arnold's lines. Before the party had progressed
many miles towards West Point, a messenger arrived with orders for
their return, and André found himself a captive once more in Jameson's
lines, the Colonel, on a subordinate's advice, having decided to refer
the whole matter to General Washington. In the meanwhile Allen, of his
own initiative, had proceeded to Arnold's headquarters with the private
letter and report from Jameson to the commander at West Point. For this
blunder your true American has never forgiven the simple-minded Colonel.
On 24th September, the day following his capture, Major André, of
whose real name and rank the American officers were still ignorant,
indited his famous letter to Washington, full of rhetoric and
self-justification, in which he advanced several considerations for
his release from captivity. Mentioning his name and military rank,
he only wrote, he said, to vindicate his good fame, not to solicit
security. He was not, he vowed with a strange distortion of actuality,
accustomed to duplicity. He justified his negotiations with "a person"
(Arnold, unnamed) who was to give him intelligence which should
prove serviceable to British arms, a fair ruse of war, he thought.
Having concluded these negotiations, he proceeded, he was conducted
without his knowledge into the American lines. He had thus become a
prisoner and was justified in his endeavour to escape by all means
available, and having reached neutral ground, through a disguise, he
had been arrested by irregulars. There were gentlemen at Charleston,
he concluded, in a half-menacing and highly impolitic phrase, whose
rank might be set in exchange for his; in any case they were persons
whom the treatment he received could not fail to affect. Washington
received this communication after the flight of Arnold who, learning
from Jameson's letter, duly delivered by Allen, how perilously matters
stood for him, had taken refuge on board the British vessel _Vulture_.
The American commander-in-chief gave immediate orders for the transfer
of André to West Point, where he arrived on 26th September, under the
care of a strong escort commanded by Major Tallmadge, the officer who
had advised Jameson to countermand the first order sending the prisoner
to Arnold. It was to Tallmadge that André made the memorable confession
that he had engaged in the adventure "for military glory, the applause
of his King and country and perhaps a brigadiership." The Major asked
the American in what light General Washington was likely to regard him.
"He will regard you," replied Tallmadge simply, "just as the British
regarded my old comrade and schoolfellow, Nathan Hale. Your fate will
be the same as Hale's."
It is not difficult to understand the fierce indignation of the
Americans at this critical time, when the black treachery of a
commander on their own side is considered, and it was, from the very
first, written in the stars that André should receive no mercy,
although, indeed, a strong effort was made to exchange him for Arnold
whom, in all probability, the Americans would have preferred. In
General Washington, above all, there was an elemental severity of the
early Roman type which would leave nothing to chance, although the plot
had, happily for his own arms, totally miscarried. Nevertheless, with
that ideal sense of justice which was found later in his illustrious
successor, Lincoln, he convened a military board with the object of
making careful inquiries and reporting their "opinion of the light in
which the prisoner ought to be considered and what punishment ought
to be inflicted." The court consisted of six major-generals and eight
brigadier-generals. It was held at Tappan, where Washington had his
headquarters. Inevitably André was held to be "a spy from the enemy and
only death could satisfy his crime." Washington stood by the verdict
and sentenced Major André to be hanged as a spy on the second day of
October at four in the afternoon.
At four accordingly on the second day of October 1780, Major André
was executed upon an eminence near Tappan village, in the presence of
a vast concourse of people. He was dressed in full military costume
and white top-boots. A large procession of officers preceded him to
the gallows—a cross-piece between two trees. The prisoner's step was
firm nor did he falter until he saw the gallows, realising then that,
despite his appeal to Washington, he was to die as a felon and not as a
soldier. His hesitation was only momentary, however. A baggage-wagon,
in which was laid a plain pine coffin, had been driven under the
gallows, a grave being dug near by. Into this wagon the prisoner
stepped, and taking the rope from the hangman adjusted it to his neck,
tying also a white silk handkerchief over his eyes. The Major was then
told that he might speak if he wished. Lifting the fold lightly from
his eyes and bowing courteously, André replied in a firm voice: "All I
request of you, gentlemen, is that while I acknowledge the propriety of
my sentence, you will bear me witness that I die like a brave man." And
taking his last look at the sky, he replaced the bandage on his eyes.
The wagon was driven swiftly from under him, and in a few minutes he
was no more.
VIII
BRITISH SECRET SERVICE
Under the euphemism Secret Service, we describe in England our system
of espionage. In common with other countries, espionage has always
prevailed in England as essential in some degree to most conditions of
our political, social, diplomatic and commercial life, all of which are
conducted on the most comprehensive and complex lines. The story of
England has, however, revealed but little of the spy in any class and,
indeed, next to nothing at all when considered in proportion to the
vastness of its national and international relations and commitments,
a happy state of affairs which is attributable to the fact that our
constitutional liberties represent the nearest approach to the ideal in
respect of the completeness of their guarantees. Going back to early
periods, it is only in the case of prominent figures like Alfred—who
did his own spying, it will be remembered—or the seventh Henry, or
Wolsey, that we find there was anything like the beginnings of an
organised secret service system. The father of King Harry, through the
agency of his lawyers Empson and Dudley, undoubtedly spied out the
financial conditions of the territorial nobles as well as the monastic
properties, and by doing so, certainly facilitated the seizure of the
Abbey possessions when the Reformation took place in the next reign.
The agents employed in the case of the wealthy landowners were usually
chaplains who also exercised secretarial functions for their patrons,
while in the monasteries renegade monks were always to be found willing
at a price to put Henry's financial sleuths in the way of obtaining
correct information. The Lord Cardinal, there is no doubt, spied on
the goings and comings of Campeggio when that legate was in England,
and neither is there any doubt of his having spied successfully, and
much to the irritation of the monarch, on King Henry himself who
retaliated, however, more than once by informing the Chancellor as
to certain romantic but very unpriestly trysts of the Cardinal which
had come within the royal cognisance. In royal circles, of course, we
may be sure that spying has always been the custom, all the more so
since household officers justify their persistent attentions on the
ground that the safety of the royal person requires that it should
be perennially shadowed. Did not Fouché once surprise Napoleon, who
was boasting of the superiority of service rendered by his own _corps
d'espions_, when he informed the Emperor regarding every detail of a
nocturnal outing which Majesty had made through Paris in company with
Murat, and in the course of which visits were paid, in turn, to a low
music-hall, a lower night-house and a cheap restaurant?
To find the first definite shapings of organised secret service we
must come to the time of Elizabeth when the Intelligencer and the
Spy were well-known characters in the society of the period. The
Intelligencer proves highly interesting as a study of the purely
parasitical life. In general, he started in life as a man who made it
his business to learn what was going on at all the main centres of
public and private life, trading off the items to men of business,
politicians and diplomatists for the best price he could obtain. He
corresponded very closely to the Roman quidnunc with whom the Satires
of Horace made us all familiar in our schooldays. Who can forget
the picture of that oily Nasidienus—what a nose for news the name
holds!—whose chief title to dine with Mæcenas depended on the fact that
he constituted in his own person a kind of central news agency upon
which all the gossip and intelligence of Rome was sure to converge.
For indeed, the famous quidnunc had his own corps of reporters whom he
employed to scour the City in quest of tittle-tattle for his patron.
The Intelligencer or private newsmonger of Elizabeth's age was, it is
recorded, looked upon as a highly respectable member of the workaday
classes until, to use a journalistic Americanism, he began to "put
it over" on his patrons—meaning to say, when he began to supply them
with the news that was not, drawing good money in exchange for false
intelligence. Like the free-lance of our own day, the Intelligencer
had first of all to build up a connection, as the phrase goes, the
same being remunerative, or the reverse, in proportion to the man's
energy and reliability. Since in those days he invariably dealt with
principals, it happened not so seldom that he effected a permanent
way into the good graces of a wealthy patron, rising afterwards to
positions of honourable importance. It is, nevertheless, a fact that
the majority of these men deteriorated, and for the simple reason that,
deeply versed as they became in the sordid architectonics of life of
all kinds, social, political and commercial, they quickly shed their
ideals. Their previous experience and knowledge of ways and means had,
however, fitted them in a peculiar manner for the business of watching
other men and they were invariably sought out by personages of wealth
and position to exercise the trade of spy, or common informer. And,
accordingly, when Burleigh and his congeners were looking around for
plausible excuses for killing off Mary of Scotland, they fell back on
the services of an informer who had originally made his bow before the
public as an Intelligencer. It is not necessary to go into the story
of the mysterious "J. B.," whom one Delbena, an Italian adventurer,
had introduced to the English Ambassador in Paris, Poulet, as a man of
good birth, but desperate in all enterprises and a traitor to the last
fibre of his spinal column. The records of Elizabethan days would seem
to indicate either that Burleigh and Walsingham were not very astute
judges of the common spy, or else that "J. B." was devilishly apt in
extracting large sums out of credulous statesmen and diplomats, for
it is written that having raised many thousands from Poulet on his
simple promise to capture an agent of Mary Stuart, whose papers were
certain to incriminate that Queen—why, the rascal failed to deliver
goods, to use another expressive newspaper Americanism. Then there was
the informer Gifford whose early training as a priest enabled him, in
his clerical capacity and with forged credentials, to spy on the great
Catholic families of his time, in all cases transmitting false yet
incriminating information to Burleigh. His nefarious activities brought
at least a dozen men to the execution block in those days. In two years
another of the species, one Thomas Phillips, also an ex-Intelligencer,
had contracted to the Crown a debt equal to the large sum of £60,000
of our own money on account of infamous work done for its ministers,
mostly political, be it said. Indeed, the record of the Elizabethan spy
constitutes one long chronicle of the bloodiest treachery in the whole
history of secret service, since the Tower, if not Tyburn, invariably
figured as the last scene in the life of the unfortunate who fell into
the hands of the Queen's sleuths. Treachery seems, for all the halo
which surrounds our notion of the "good old days," to have played a
part in the whole social fabric as universal as it was sinister, nor
can the fact be wondered at, seeing that the promiscuous distribution
of the confiscated estates of murdered men, which often in a day
rewarded poor men with vast lands, was an ever-present incentive to the
cupidity of the adventurer.
Cromwell, if we may judge by diaries and records of his day, was the
best-informed man in England. He had an undoubted faith in the value
of secret service and was ably served by the many agents he employed,
not only at home, but also abroad, where their activities helped to lay
the broad foundations of that foreign policy which is based upon the
principle known as the Balance of Power. It was the Protector's custom
to invite to his table men whom he well knew to be what the current
vernacular of the time termed "trimmers" and what the American calls a
"mugwump"; these men he invariably surprised with the correctness of
his information regarding the variety of their political friends and
relations, as well as of the dangerous company which they frequented,
advising them always in a friendly way to beware. The Protector was
one of the few statesmen in Europe who remained a perennial puzzle
to Mazarin, during whose large ascendancy on the Continent, Cromwell
strengthened the foundations of that naval power which has given
England for so long a paramount voice in Europe's councils. His
successor Charles II. distinguished himself above all other English
monarchs by receiving into his intimate court circle a paid spy of
Louis XIV. in the person of Louise de Kérouaille, on whom he conferred
the title of Duchess of Portsmouth. This lady, as Duchesse d'Aubigny
in France, was at the same time drawing a ducal revenue from the
coffers of Louis XIV., while it remains a matter of statistical record
that in the year 1681 she took in perquisite from the English Exchequer
the sum of £136,000—equal to more than half-a-million sterling of
our time. There can be little doubt that the capacity for political
intrigue of the Duchess, as well as her complete ascendancy over
Charles and her own greed of money, contributed at a later stage to
swell the indictment which ultimately led to the banishment of the
Stuarts. In her Life of the Duchess, Mrs Colquhoun Grant takes a view
generally accepted by historical writers, to wit, that the favourite's
character was neither vicious nor depraved, that her conduct was not
immoral according to the notions of the age, that she was a woman of
immense political capacity, while of a tender and affectionate heart.
Her political correspondence, in which she exercised her specific
rôle as informer to the French court, was carried on with Madame de
Montespan, who is memorable as one of the splendid favourites of Louis.
[Illustration: The Duchess of Portsmouth]
Passing over to Georgian times we find that the employment of spies was
common in all departments of life, and there can be little doubt that
the Hanoverians brought to England many men and women who had learned
the arts of espionage at the best of all possible schools—namely,
Berlin. The history of England of those days shows us nothing in the
way of pre-eminent exponents of the business, nor can espionage be
said, in its political aspects, to have reached to that excellence of
organisation which it attained later in the times of Pitt, whom the
ever-present activities of Bonaparte compelled in the interests of our
security to develop a secret-service system the operations of which
were inferior to none in Europe. It remains a matter of record that in
the days of the French Revolution certain political leaders in England
were in the pay of the Committee of Public Safety presided over by
Robespierre. This fact was communicated to Pitt through his own spy, a
professedly violent Jacobin, who by means of cipher and anagrammatic
correspondence, carried on with a relative in Italy, was transmitting
by that roundabout route the most minute and accurate accounts of the
Committee's proceedings to the English Premier. The sums paid for such
dangerous work, while never, of course, disclosed, were undoubtedly
very large, seeing that the all-observant Saint-Just was moving at
the time through Revolutionary circles. The failure of the French
invasion of Ireland in December 1796 is also set down to an act of paid
treachery on the part of the captain of one of the French vessels,
the story being that he took advantage of prevailing foul weather to
decline approaching the Irish coast for several days, and since the
general commanding the expedition was on board, the brave venture
became a foregone failure. Charles Lever, who, it will be remembered,
acted as British Consul at Spezzia and Trieste, introduces us on
more than one occasion to a kind of consular or ambassadorial spy, an
individual who in those days was as regular a member of a chancellery
as its archivist is in our own.
In the time of Napoleon, Charles James Fox, an admirer and friend
of the First Consul, found himself, all unconsciously, caught in
the vast woof of the Fouché-Talleyrand system of intelligence, thus
becoming an unwitting agent in communicating to the French Government
certain of the designs of the British Government for the destruction
of Bonaparte's Continental policy. The fact that Fox was a desperate
gambler, and ever in debt, was not of course allowed to escape
the notice of his few, but bitter, enemies, who in this case were
obviously moved by malice rather than by anything they really knew. The
cleverness of Canning in procuring private information regarding the
secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit between Alexander of Russia and
Napoleon is commonly regarded as among the greatest achievements of
diplomacy in all time. How the British foreign minister obtained this
information will probably remain a secret for ever; but the momentous
results of his cleverness are indisputable, since they led to the
seizure of the Danish fleet and broke up the northern confederation
of powers by which Napoleon still hoped to invade England, and some
analogy to which is found at our own time in the occupation of
Belgium by the Germans, England having been the main objective in
both cases. Conjecture is, of course, not wanting as to the means
which placed this intelligence in the hands of Canning. According to
one writer, a certain Lady Sarah Spencer, in a letter addressed to
her father at Althorp, declared at the time that "Lord G. L. Gower
had got possession, for £20,000, of the original treaty of Tilsit
and that one of the secret articles stipulated that the Danish fleet
should be employed against us, which induced Ministers to adopt such
measures." It is declared by a member of the Mackenzie clan that one
Colin Mackenzie, who perfectly understood and spoke French, disguised
himself as a Cossack and was one of the attendants chosen to accompany
the Russian Emperor to the raft on which the interview with Napoleon
was held—a story which does not, it must be said, meet with very
cordial acceptance. Again it is asserted that the famous Launay, Count
d'Antraigues, obtained the treaty from a friend in Russia, a version
which seems disproved by the fact that the Count was at that time in
disgrace in England. On Sir Robert Wilson has also been conferred
the distinction of discovering the secret understandings of Tilsit,
while the tradition of the Foreign Office is that the information came
indirectly from the Emperor Alexander and was given publicity through
some blunder on the part of the Russian Ambassador in London—most
probably the correct facts.
The enactment of the Union between England and Ireland led in its
time to the commission of untold treacheries. Until within a score
of years ago there stood in the private offices of Dublin Castle two
iron-clamped chests filled to the top with papers relating to pre-Union
days. These chests bore the Government seal and on them was inscribed
the legend: "Secret and confidential—not to be opened." For close upon
a century, these chests remained unexplored until, leave having been
given for their examination, hundreds of betrayals and treacheries
leapt to light. Men of the highest names, says Dr Fitzpatrick, in
effect, were found to have been spies of the Government and practically
_agents provocateurs_, although to the outer world they bore themselves
as high-souled patriots of unimpeachable honour. The various causes
in which these men served were not less filled with the foulness of
secret crime than outwardly they proved to be fraught with deliberately
constructed outrage and injustice to a whole nation. Coming down
to more modern days, we seize upon the story of Major Le Caron.
This man's adventure among the open and admitted enemies of England
shows us the meagre extent to which our Government is prepared to
subsidise its agents abroad. Le Caron is not singular in his criticism
of the British authorities who, by a consistent policy of paying
starvation pay, have reduced the secret service to the proportions of
a vanishing quantity. Le Caron warned the authorities of their fatal
and improvident parsimony in his time. "Some day," he said, "a big
thing will happen about which there will be no leakage beforehand
and then the affrighted and indignant British citizen will turn on
his band of thirty secret-service men and rant and rave at them for
their want of capacity and performance. The fault will be the want of
a perfect system of secret service, properly financed. If plots are to
be discovered in time, they can only be discovered through information
coming from men associated with them. If it is to be made worth their
while to speak, then the price offered by the British Government must
be higher than that of the other paymasters." Le Caron's words are
clearly based on the assumption that men enter into revolutionary
movements rather for what there is in them, than from any spiritual or
ethical motives. Until far more evidence than we possess is afforded
us, we fear that the spy must be held to be right, for the tortuous
path of political agitation is a path which is ever crowded with
self-seekers and one on which the altruist is always the loneliest of
pilgrims.
In the course of the trials of Captains Trench and Brandon at Leipsic
in 1910, the public prosecutor emphasised his view that British gold
had bought up the services of hundreds of agents scattered throughout
Germany, all of them engaged in the business of transmitting important
information to the British Admiralty and War Office. Visitors to what
is known as the Black Country of Westphalia will recollect, too, how
ordinary English tourists who arrive at towns in the neighbourhood
of Essen, the home of Krupp, such as Bochum, or Wesel, or Elberfeld
invariably become the objects of police attention from the moment of
their arrival at local hotels. It is certain that espionage on the
part of the foreigner excites more real concern in Germany than is
the case in England, a fact that we must put down to her geographical
position which leaves her, despite vast armaments and preparations, an
ever-possible object of attack to heavily armed nations which surround
her on all sides. Even, however, if it be the fact that England has
held her spies within Germany itself, few will be found to argue that
it is not a legitimate use of secret service funds, as well as a
matter altogether apart from the infamy which attaches to the person
who accepts money in return for the betrayal of fatherland. It is,
nevertheless, very questionable if any information really worth having,
in the military sense, ever escapes the record of duly appointed
military attachés, whose official existence dates from 1864 and whose
admitted business it is to keep themselves professionally posted as
to the resources of a possible enemy. In regard to Germany, it may be
said that in the business of spying, she occupies a class by herself,
since professional espionage is not looked upon by the people as in
any way degrading or underhand. An easy tolerance of this kind towards
a trade which is in itself intrinsically base cannot, it must follow,
be without a corresponding reaction on the common mind in regard to
spying for the benefit of foreign powers, and we may reasonably assume
it to be the fact that in such cases the British authorities go far
less frequently in quest of native spies, than the native spies come
in quest of British gold. A sum of less than £40,000 is annually set
aside for the purposes of the British Secret Service, according to
official books. The smallness of the sum must clearly be some index of
the limits of our secret-service operations, although no one is asked
to suppose that the amount in question covers the entire expenditure
made on account of useful information given up. Germany, it is known,
makes a public appropriation of, roughly, £1,000,000 sterling for the
secret-service system. Russia's budget for the same object amounts to
£500,000, while that of France is less than £200,000, as far, in all
cases, as public figures are available. The public appropriations do
not, of course, reveal anything like the entire sums expended, the
facts as to which could be realised only by a survey of the various
accounts of consular offices and embassies throughout Europe.
Much ink has been spilt and many public utterances have been made
with the object of showing that the British Government had taken
but perfunctory measures in order to fight the system of espionage
which was preparing England for invasion, even as France had been
prepared for invasion in 1870. Writers in the daily Press and
members of Parliament had declared, by the end of August 1914, that
anything more inadequate than the British system of what is known as
counter-espionage—that is to say, the organising of spies to watch
and report on Germans who were obviously overrunning the country in
quest of information of military value—was inconceivable. After all,
results afford the best test of the precautions taken, and it is on
record that the ease and rapidity with which the authorities rounded up
over 14,000 German and Austrian potential spies, within a few weeks of
the outbreak of the war, came as an illuminating shock to the German
Secret Service authorities themselves who had based their warlike
decisions largely upon the hypothesis that England was still asleep.
A well-known authority on such matters at the Home Office informed
the writer in September 1914 that even the so-called "incendiary
points"—that is to say, localities which had been marked out as
suitable for the setting fire to houses, in the event of aerial raids
on London—were being gradually and completely scheduled by vigilant
officers of our Secret Service, and in such a way that nothing was
left to assist the operations of possible spies who have succeeded
in eluding enumeration by our somewhat silent and unofficious, but
nevertheless eternally wakeful police. As we have said in another
place, the German organisation of spies, internal and external, had
been raised to a point under Stieber, beyond which, given the present
conditions of the world and mankind, it was practically impossible
to go, and since for the past twenty years and more, we have been in
possession of the technical details of Stieberism, we may rely on it
that the authorities, on their side, have not read in vain. Shortly
after the outbreak of the Great War, and in order to allay the anxiety
created by critics of such departments as are charged with the duty of
watching the enemy in our midst, the Home Office issued the following
statement dealing with measures which had been undertaken with a view
to counteracting the operations of foreign spies scattered throughout
the Islands:—
"In view of the anxiety naturally felt by the public with regard to
the system of espionage on which Germany has placed so much reliance,
and to which attention has been directed by recent reports from the
seat of war, it may be well to state briefly the steps which the Home
Office, acting on behalf of the Admiralty and War Office, has taken
to deal with the matter in this country. The secrecy which it has
hitherto been desirable in the public interest to observe on certain
points cannot any longer be maintained, owing to the evidence which it
is necessary to produce in cases against spies that are now pending.
"It was clearly ascertained five or six years ago that the Germans
were making great efforts to establish a system of espionage in this
country, and in order to trace and thwart these efforts a Special
Intelligence Department was established by the Admiralty and the War
Office which has ever since acted in the closest co-operation with
the Home Office and Metropolitan Police and the principal provincial
Police Forces. In 1911, by the passing of the Official Secrets Act,
1911, the law with regard to espionage, which had hitherto been
confused and defective, was put on a clear basis and extended so as to
embrace every possible mode of obtaining and conveying to the enemy
information which might be useful in war.
"The Special Intelligence Department, supported by all the means which
could be placed at its disposal by the Home Secretary, was able in
three years, from 1911 to 1914, to discover the ramifications of the
German secret service in England. In spite of enormous efforts and
lavish expenditure of money by the enemy, little valuable information
passed into their hands. The agents, of whose identity knowledge was
obtained by the Special Intelligence Department, were watched and
shadowed without in general taking any hostile action or allowing
them to know that their movements were watched. When, however, any
actual step was taken to convey plans or documents of importance
from this country to Germany the spy was arrested, and in such case
evidence sufficient to secure his conviction was usually found in his
possession. Proceedings under the Official Secrets Acts were taken by
the Director of Public Prosecutions, and in six cases sentences were
passed varying from eighteen months to six years' penal servitude.
At the same time steps were taken to mark down and keep under
observation all the agents known to be engaged in this traffic, so
that when any necessity arose the Police might lay hands on them at
once, and accordingly on August 4, before the declaration of war,
instructions were given by the Home Secretary for the arrest of twenty
known spies, and all were arrested. This figure does not cover a large
number (upwards of two hundred) who were noted as under suspicion or
to be kept under special observation. The great majority of these were
interned at or soon after the declaration of war.
"None of the men arrested in pursuance of the orders issued on August
4 has yet been brought to trial, partly because the officers whose
evidence would have been required were engaged in urgent duties in
the early days of the war, but mainly because the prosecution, by
disclosing the means adopted to track out the spies and prove their
guilt, would have hampered the Intelligence Department in its further
efforts. They were, and still are, held as prisoners under the powers
given to the Secretary of State by the Aliens Restriction Act. One of
them, however, who established a claim to British nationality, has now
been formally charged, and, the reasons for delay no longer existing,
it is a matter for consideration whether the same course should now be
taken with regard to some of the other known spies.
"Although this action taken on August 4 is believed to have broken
up the spy organisation which had been established before the
war, it is still necessary to take the most rigorous measures to
prevent the establishment of any fresh organisation and to deal with
individual spies who might previously have been working in this
country outside the organisation, or who might be sent here under
the guise of neutrals after the declaration of war. In carrying
this out the Home Office and War Office have now the assistance of
the Cable Censorship, and also of the Postal Censorship, which,
established originally to deal with correspondence with Germany
and Austria, has been gradually extended (as the necessary staff
could be obtained) so as to cover communications with those neutral
countries through which correspondence might readily pass to Germany
or Austria. The censorship has been extremely effective in stopping
secret communications by cable or letter with the enemy; but, as its
existence was necessarily known to them, it has not, except in a few
instances, produced materials for the detection of espionage.
"On August 5 the Aliens Restriction Act was passed, and within an
hour of its passing an Order-in-Council was made which gave the
Home Office and the Police stringent powers to deal with aliens,
and especially enemy aliens, who under this Act could be stopped
from entering or leaving the United Kingdom, and were prohibited
while residing in this country from having in their possession any
wireless or signalling apparatus of any kind, or any carrier or homing
pigeons. Under this Order all those districts where the Admiralty
or War Office considered it undesirable that enemy aliens should
reside have been cleared by the Police of Germans and Austrians, with
the exception of a few persons, chiefly women and children, whose
character and antecedents are such that the local Chief Constable, in
whose discretion the matter is vested by the Order, considered that
all ground for suspicion was precluded. At the same time the Post
Office, acting under the powers given them by the Wireless Telegraphy
Acts, dismantled all private wireless stations; and they established
a special system of wireless detection by which any station actually
used for the transmission of messages from this country could be
discovered. The Police have co-operated successfully in this matter
with the Post Office.
"New and still more stringent powers for dealing with espionage were
given by the Defence of the Realm Act, which was passed by the Home
Secretary through the House of Commons and received the Royal Assent
on August 8. Orders-in-Council have been made under this Act which
prohibit, in the widest terms, any attempt on the part either of
aliens or of British subjects to communicate any information which
'is calculated to be or might be directly or indirectly useful to an
enemy'; and any person offending against this prohibition is liable to
be tried by court martial and sentenced to penal servitude for life.
The effect of these Orders is to make espionage a military offence.
Power is given both to the police and to the military authorities to
arrest without a warrant any person whose behaviour is such as to give
rise to suspicion, and any person so arrested by the police would be
handed over to the military authorities for trial by court martial.
Only in the event of the military authorities holding that there is no
prima facie case of espionage or any other offence triable by military
law is a prisoner handed back to the civil authorities to consider
whether he should be charged with failing to register or with any
other offence under the Aliens Restriction Act.
"The present position is, therefore, that espionage has been made
by statute a military offence triable by court martial. If tried
under the Defence of the Realm Act, the maximum punishment is penal
servitude for life; but if dealt with outside that Act as a war crime
the punishment of death can be inflicted.
"At the present moment one case is pending in which a person charged
with attempting to convey information to the enemy is now awaiting
his trial by court martial, but in no other case has any clear trace
been discovered of any attempt to convey information to the enemy, and
there is good reason to believe that the spy organisation crushed at
the outbreak of the war has not been re-established.
"How completely that system had been suppressed in the early days of
the war is clear from the fact—disclosed in a German Army Order—that
on August 21 the German Military Commanders were still ignorant
of the despatch and movements of the British Expeditionary Force,
although these had been known for many days to a large number of
people in this country.
"The fact, however, of this initial success does not prevent the
possibility of fresh attempts at espionage being made, and there is no
relaxation in the efforts of the Intelligence Department and of the
Police to watch and detect any attempts in this direction. In carrying
out their duties, the military and police authorities would expect
that persons having information of cases of suspected espionage would
communicate the grounds of the suspicion to local military authority
or to the local police, who are in direct communication with the
Special Intelligence Department, instead of causing unnecessary public
alarm, and possibly giving warning to the spies by public speeches
and letters to the Press. In cases in which the Director of Public
Prosecutions has appealed to the authors of such letters and speeches
to supply him with the evidence upon which their statements were
founded in order that he might consider the question of prosecuting
the offender, no evidence of any value has as yet been forthcoming.
"Among other measures which have been taken has been the registration,
by Order of the Secretary of State, made under the Defence of the
Realm Act, of all persons keeping carrier or homing pigeons. The
importation and the conveyance by rail of these birds have been
prohibited; and, with the valuable assistance of the National Homing
Union, a system of registration has been extended to the whole of the
United Kingdom, and measures have been taken which it is believed will
be effective to prevent the possibility of any birds being kept in
this country which would fly to the Continent.
"Another matter which has engaged the closest attention of the police
has been the possibility of conspiracies to commit outrage. No trace
whatever has been discovered of any such conspiracy, and no outrage of
any sort has yet been committed by any alien—not even telegraph-wires
having been maliciously cut since the beginning of the war.
Nevertheless, it has been necessary to bear in mind the possibility
that such a secret conspiracy might exist or might be formed among
alien enemies resident in this country.
"Accordingly, immediately after the commencement of hostilities,
rigorous search was made by the police in the houses of Germans and
Austrians, in their clubs and in all places where they were likely to
resort. In a few cases individuals were found who were in possession
of a gun or pistol which they had not declared, and in one or two
cases there were small collections of ancient firearms, and in such
cases the offenders have been prosecuted and punished; but no store of
effective arms—still less any bombs or instruments of destruction—have
so far been discovered.
"From the beginning, any Germans or Austrians who were deemed by the
police to be likely to be dangerous were apprehended, handed over
to the military authorities, and detained as prisoners of war; and,
as soon as the military authorities desired it, general action was
taken to arrest and hand over to military custody Germans of military
age, subject to exceptions which have properly been made on grounds
of policy. About 9000 Germans and Austrians of military age have been
so arrested, and are held as prisoners of war in detention camps, and
among them are included those who are regarded by the police as likely
in any possible event to take part in any outbreak of disorder or
incendiarism."
IX
FRENCH SECRET SERVICE
Napoleon it was who once expressed the view that if not impossible,
it was rare to find a Frenchman who could really put his heart into
the business of spying, whether military or civil, and it was his
custom, as far as possible, to employ in either capacity men of that
cosmopolitan or unnational type of which we have spoken. The Emperor's
view would hardly seem, however, to fit in with the preconceived
notion entertained by most of us. Regaled as we have long been with
the fantasies and fictions of modern French writers and their inspired
master detectives, we find ourselves almost invariably crediting
the French system of secret service with being, in respect of its
excellence, an exemplar to all other kindred bodies. No satire, so
far as we know, of the stolen-white-elephant type has ever yet been
written with the object of pointing out the futility of its processes
or the imbecility of its methods, and in any case, it is a matter of
statistical record that the amount of undiscovered crime in France is
twenty per cent. lower than that of any other country in the world.
Here, it must be admitted, we seem to be confusing the business of
the detector of crime with that of the secret-service agent; in
most countries, nevertheless, the two departments work largely in
conjunction, and it may be, in general, fairly presumed that a service
which is likely to provide a good corps of detectives is also capable
of producing an able body of spies. It would seem that in no age in
French history was the system of organised spying so complete as during
the ascendancy of Richelieu, when clerical influences, supported
by a vast network of espionage, were everywhere overwhelming, and
again during the times of Napoleon's military empire, a contrast in
conditions which suggests the idea that governments which are based
on autocratic or non-representative principles invariably require the
help of intrinsically corrupt and vicious influences to enable them to
maintain their existence. For all the lauded excellence of the imperial
German organisation of spies, that of France may be said, when we take
into consideration the lighter political and social machinery of a
Republican country, to be hardly less comprehensive, as well as quite
as effective in its results.
Paris is, of course, the centre of the French organisation. Here it
works craftily and silently and though rarely coming into contact with
the work of the President or his Cabinet, is permanently in touch with
departmental officials in all the great public offices. It is declared
on the authority of a now-retired divisional chief of the French secret
service, Saint-Just, that even the Prefect of Police in Paris only
rarely hears of the business details of his own department, though it
is very doubtful if such a statement could be made about M. Méline,
whose omnivorous activities and private information during his tenure
of that office are said on more than one occasion to have extricated
the Republic from a difficult international impasse. As a rule the
divisional chiefs of t
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