Britain's Deadly Peril: Are We Told the Truth?Le Queux, William
History
Britain's Deadly Peril: Are We Told the Truth?
Le Queux, William
Secret service -- Germany; Spies; World War, 1914-1918
Is every enemy alien known, I ask? Let us examine a case in point, one
in which I have made personal investigation, and to the truth of which
a dozen officers of His Majesty's service, and also civilians, are
ready to testify.
Investigations recently made in certain German quarters in London,
notably in the obscure foreign restaurants in the neighbourhood of
Tottenham Court Road, where men--many of them recently released from
internment-camps--and women meet nightly and toast to the Day of
Britain's destruction, revealed to me a startling fact. Here, posing
as an Italian and a neutral, I learnt facts regarding the movements
of German aircraft long before they were known either to our own
authorities or to the Press. For several weeks this fact, I confess,
caused me considerable thought. Some secret means of communication
must, I realised, exist between the enemy's camp and London, perhaps by
wireless, perhaps by the new German-laid cable, the shore-end of which
is at Bacton, in Norfolk, and which, eighteen months ago, in company
with the German telegraph-engineers, I assisted to test as it was laid
across the North Sea to Nordeney. In the archives of the Intelligence
Department of the War Office will be found my report, together with a
copy of the first message transmitted by the new cable from Norfolk to
Germany, a telegram from one of the Kaiser's sons who happened to be in
Scotland at the time, and addressed to the Emperor, which read: "Hurrah
for a strong navy!"--significant indeed in the light of recent events!
I was wondering if, by any secret means, this cable could be in
operation when, on the afternoon of February 23rd, an officer of the
Naval Armoured Car Squadron called upon me and invited me to assist in
hunting spies in Surrey. The suggestion sounded exciting. Signals had
been seen for a month or so past, flashed from a certain house high
upon the Surrey hills. Would I assist in locating them, and prosecuting
a full inquiry?
Within half an hour I was in a car speeding towards the point where
mystery brooded, and which we did not reach till after dark. A
gentleman living three miles across the valley, whose house commanded
full view of the house under suspicion--a large one with extensive
grounds--at once placed a room at our disposal, wherein we sat and
watched. In the whole of these investigations I was assisted by an
officer who was an expert in signalling and wireless, a signaller of
the service, two other officers equally expert in reading the Morse
code, while I myself have qualified both in Morse and wireless, and
hold the Postmaster-General's licence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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