British Secret Service During the Great War Part 1

British Secret Service During the Great War.

by Nicholas Everitt.

FOREWORD

There is something so mysterious and thrilling about Secret Service that the subject must inevitably appeal to the public, and especially to the more imaginative section of it. Secret Service is the theme of Mr.

Nicholas Everitt's book, in which he describes the exciting adventures that he met with whilst in quest of information of use to his country during the Great War.

In carrying out his task he proved himself to be a keen observer and a man of resource. His experience gives point to the old saying that a man's ability is shewn less in never getting into a sc.r.a.pe, for _humanum est errare_, than in knowing how to get out of one! There is perhaps no vocation in which it is easier to get into a tight corner and more difficult to get out again than in the Secret Service, where the sword of Damocles often hangs over one's head.

Besides giving an account of his adventures, Mr. Everitt devotes no small part of his work to criticism of the Foreign Office and its overseas branches--the Diplomatic and Consular Services. He draws attention to what he conceives to be their defects and suggests how they might be remedied.

While not concurring with everything said by the Author in regard to politics and politicians, I am sufficiently in agreement with the main features of his book to recommend it to the British Public, because I believe that publicity is the most potent instrument of Reform.

NORTHCLIFFE.

_February, 1920._

INTRODUCTION

This book is not published with the sole idea of increment to its builder; it presumes to venture beyond.

When old machinery is continued in use year after year with no thought for wear and tear, no effort to repair defective parts, and no attempt to modernise or keep pace with the times, a smash usually follows.

The British Consular Service is a concrete example of such short-sighted folly. It is so glaringly defective in its all-British efficiency that a thorough and complete overhaul, with drastic reforms, should be put in hand without further delay.

The British Diplomatic Service is little better. Its highest positions are filled by men appointed (in many instances) by influence and not by merit.

The exaggerated dignity, arrogance, and egotistical self-importance of some ministers abroad is such that the mere mention of trade sets their teeth on edge, the name of money is too vulgar for their personal contemplation; while if any matter arises in which their authority or actions are questioned they tender their resignations like sulky, petulant children spoilt beyond measure by misguided parents.

Attached to each Chancellery abroad should be a business or commercial expert, paid a fair and reasonable salary, who should make a study of British trade interests and who should control the whole consular service in the country to which he is attached. He should make it his special business to see that every consul is a born Englishman and that each is paid a salary commensurate with his position and duties.

Secret Service (if it is to be continued) should be a fully authorised and recognised department having a real business minister at its head with absolute control of its organisation, work, and finances. Service men would naturally be appointed for each separate service department, whilst civilians should be utilised in useful spheres. Such a reorganisation would do much to stop the friction which arises when military, naval, air-service, and other interests overlap, clash, or are required to work in double harness. The pitiable jealousies with which Whitehall is saturated have to be seen to be believed. Among the rank and file this canker-worm has no existence. The affection of one arm of the service for another is overwhelming, but the higher one investigates upward in rank and officialdom, the more deep-seated are the roots of the pernicious evil found to be.

At home our politicians have ever been much too interfering. Our Government has for all too long been overridden by a mult.i.tude of lawyers who have pushed aside the more efficient business man, while they interfere with, and attempt to control, colossal matters which they do not and could not properly be expected to understand, and which ought to have been left entirely to experts whose lives had been devoted to the attainment of efficiency therein.

That the Navy should have been deliberately prevented from making our so-called blockade really effective throughout the war is as unjustifiable as it has been exasperating to the British Public, whilst it has been detrimental to the interests of the Empire. More than half the nation believe that had this matter been treated with a firm, courageous hand, the war would have been over in eighteen months at least. Almost the entire nation believed that the war would continue to drag its disastrous weary course until the Blockade was made really effective.

Part of this book is devoted to this most important issue.

The public of the whole world believe we have a thoroughly active and efficient Home Secret Service Organisation, working as a separate independent unit. That is just what we ought to have had and for which there has ever been an urgent want. This omission is a defect in our armour which has been directly responsible for the undoubted loss of valuable lives and the destruction of vast property.

Much too much is left in the hands of the police. It is true our British Police Force is the best, the most efficient, and the least corrupt in the whole world. But it is not fair to place upon it more than it can properly attend to; whilst in any event its powers should be enlarged and a more elastic discretion extended. In comparison with the police of other nations, words quite fail the author with which to express his admiration for our n.o.ble and exemplary police administration. Yet its work could be made more effective if we had a separate and properly organised Home Secret Service branch, working conjointly with the police, which could at a moment's notice send down its agents, drawn from any station in society, with full powers to act and to commandeer all and every a.s.sistance that occasion might require.

Take a simple example in order that the matter may be the better understood. It is admitted that for many years our East Coast had been overrun with spies. There are places where two or more counties meet. A member of the police force for one county has no power, authority, or discretion enabling him to enter into and to act in another. Thus he cannot follow a suspect over the county border. In 1916 a certain female, whose cleverness was only equalled by her personal charms and powers of fascination, started a tour of our great camps along the Eastern seaboard. Her movements were reported by non-authorised observers. Such a case was obviously one requiring delicate investigation. Owing to lack of the necessary department under notice, the case automatically devolved into the hands of the police. Our lady fair is watched and followed. It matters not to her; she can gaily slip over the county-border by automobile. Long reports have to be made out and pa.s.sed through slow and devious channels before the police in the next county can act. By the time this becomes operative, the elusive one has returned to the county she left, or she has entered another one--an evolution which could happen several times in a very short period and much mischief be done under the nose of authorities absolutely powerless to act--until too late. It is not difficult to imagine how a home Secret Service agent, with a private motor-car, would handle such a case; more particularly when working in conjunction and perfect harmony with the police generally.

Take another case.

On April 13th, 1916, the author wrote to Whitehall as follows:

"In a certain Naval Base of considerable importance on the East Coast in the autumn of 1914, a complete plant of wireless installation was discovered in the private house of an English merchant who was known to have business connections abroad, which plant was forthwith removed.

Some months after, a second visit was paid to the same premises and further parts of wireless telegraphy were found and taken away, and an a.s.surance was given that everything in any way connected with wireless had been handed over.

In the month of March, 1916, the premises were once more visited and another complete plant was found to have been installed, which was immediately removed.

In April, 1916, a fourth surprise visit was made upon the same premises, when a very ingenious and complete portable wireless plant was discovered.

My information records that the latter of these respective plants controlled a radius of only about twenty miles, that they were in perfect order and that they had been repeatedly used.

The man and the occupiers of this house are said to be still at large! These facts have given me much food for reflection.

"Yours, etc."

The Powers-that-be took a _whole week to consider_ this report, the result of private enterprise; then they suggested a meeting with the author at any convenient time, for which they added there need be _no hurry whatsoever_.

Meanwhile on Monday, April 24th, 1916, the manipulator of these terribly dangerous and unlawful instruments arrived at another naval base--Lowestoft--_on the eve of its bombardment_ by the German Fleet, _actually staying at the Royal Hotel, which overlooks the whole sea-front_ and which was occupied by most of the officers in command of the base.

Private agitation alone seemed to account for this gentleman's eventual removal from the East Coast; but it took an unpardonably long time in its successful accomplishment.

Another ridiculous muddle, which was undoubtedly dangerous to the welfare of the nation, was the Petrol Fiasco.

Such people as rag-and-bone merchants of possible alien extraction were permitted petrol in such quant.i.ties that they could dispose of it at good profit, whereas the police, even those in control of big and important areas, with enormous added responsibilities piled upon their too willing shoulders, were actually cut down to unworkable limits (one tin per week, equal to about forty miles)--not enough to cover a journey of consequence. Furthermore the author was informed by the Head of our then Secret Service that "he himself was quite unable to move in the matter." His supply appeared to have been insanely limited.

No one ever doubted but that we should successfully pull through the war, or that our heroic, unconquerable and magnificent Active Service man would prove victorious in spite of all the mistakes, the clogs on the wheels, and the disastrous blundering of interfering politicians--those Grand Old Muddlers who so persistently blocked their ears to the motto, "It is never too late to mend," and who so obstinately declined to "get a move on" until positively spurred into seemingly reluctant action by the patriotic Northcliffe Press voicing the fierce indignation of the long suffering British nation.

I venture to predict that Lord Northcliffe will go down in history as the one man amongst men who has done most towards the winning of the war and the safeguarding of the future welfare of our beloved British Empire.

Regarding the chapters in this book which recount actual experiences of Secret Service work, I can a.s.sure my readers that nothing has been divulged which touches even the fringe of the important secrets that every Secret Service agent would proudly guard with his life. Those things are sacred and would never be intentionally divulged. On the other hand the records of adventure are not mere efforts at fiction.

They are actual experiences, faintly tinted, maybe, in _couleur de rose_ to raise bald facts into readable narrative. They are also scenes which are enacted every day on the stage of Life's Theatre, often much nearer to the circle in which the reader moves than he or she may realise, imagine, or dream about. They are given in order the better to excite interest, to exemplify the work which has to be done, and which in the future may still require attention.

Needless to add that a book of this description has not been permitted to go to press without difficulties. Much more has been left unsaid than is said. Much has of necessity been omitted, not only for the sake of the maintenance of the glory of one's own beloved land, but also for the sake of the personal future safety and well-being of others besides oneself.

Some of the readers of the MS., through whose hands it had to pa.s.s before publication, have commented upon the political amalgam which has been introduced into the book as not being strictly within the scope of its t.i.tle. If any apology is due under this head the author can only plead justification by reason of his deep and earnest desire for reform both abroad and at home. In his humble opinion the evils that he exposes or hints at could not have been brought home to his readers had he confined himself entirely to the perhaps more interesting narrative of individual adventure.

So far as the statistics given regarding the blockade leakages are concerned, he feels they are important enough to carry historical interest, and should therefore be collated and put on permanent record.

Secret Service agents devoted much time and attention to these details, and our then Government was or should have been fully alive to the fact that the so-called blockade was only a ridiculous sham, long before the _Daily Mail_ campaign opened. Why our Government made no effort to checkmate, stop, or divert these extraordinary supplies going direct into the enemy country, is left to the judgment of my readers.

Twice, between Christmas 1914, and Midsummer 1915, I entered German territory from Denmark and from the sea. After my second visit I was warned that a head-hunter was looking diligently for me in the hope of securing a reward which the Germans had secretly offered. This enterprising individual I sought out, and for a day and a half helped him with another in the hunt for myself, arguing in my own mind that it was my safest occupation at that particular time and in that particular locality. During this short partners.h.i.+p a quarrel ensued regarding the division of the spoils before they were secured, when I learned that the sum at first offered had been 10,000 marks but it had then recently been increased to 25,000. Some compensation remains to me in being able to look back at this attention on the part of the Hun as a compliment of some value to my personal activities.

In the spring of 1916, during our military operations in Belgium, a deep and crafty Alsatian of violent disposition, and of German descent, was captured by our Tommies, and to save his own skin admitted he had been employed in the German Foreign Secret Service since the outbreak of war.

Much valuable information was thus obtained; by way of test evidence he stated that _inter alia_ he had been ordered to endeavour to hold my trail (I was known to him) during my Baltic wanderings in the late autumn of 1914; and that although he had persisted in various disguises he had been led a terrible dance and had been compelled to abandon the task as hopeless. I was able to corroborate this.