British Secret Service During the Great WarEveritt, Nicholas
History
British Secret Service During the Great War
Everitt, Nicholas
Secret service -- Great Britain; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Great Britain
On June 2nd, 1916, the London Press wailed over the enormous supplies of
grain entering Germany through Roumania, which she was enabled to
purchase by exchanging goods made from the raw material permitted so
kindly by England to leak through the blockade.
In April one consignment of 1,500,000 eggs passed from Holland to
Germany in two days only. Indeed, so vast was the drain of Germany upon
Holland that the Dutch people complained in June that they were being
stinted of their proper food supply. Norway continued to supply nickel,
fish, copper, fish oils, and many other things, although England at last
awoke in the spring of 1916 to the advisability of purchasing part of
the Norwegian fish harvests. In this deal, however, her lawyer
Government had not the sense to consult the best export fish merchants,
who are essentially business men. She went to work in the usual
amateurish way, which spelt reckless waste and extravagance; paying £5
to £7 per package for what could have been previously arranged for at
about 10s. or less.
The English Government throughout the war had the Norwegian fish trade
absolutely in its own hands. Yet one of its own Consuls supplied Germany
wholesale in 1914; it supplied coal and salt to assist the Germans to
garner in practically the entire harvest of 1915; and it was not until
the middle of 1916 that some English sluggard in power woke up and paid
through the nose for what could have been purchased practically on our
own terms.
Sweden continued to supply almost everything and anything that Germany
required, openly when possible, smuggled in by all manner of tricks and
dodges should any difficulty of transport be likely to arise.
At the end of June, 1916, a Liverpool merchant contributed some
remarkable facts and figures to the _Liverpool Courier_, proving that
England was helping Germany to obtain what she required at the expense
of the home consumer in England. The net result of his arguments was
that our shipping and home ports were congested for several months by
Dutch imports through private arrangements between Holland and England,
whereby Holland was supplying Germany to a colossal extent and
frustrating the supreme purposes of the so-called blockade. In
conclusion, he plaintively besought the nation to adopt the
strangle-knot of Mr. Hughes by so tightening the blockade that Holland
would no longer be able to provide the Germans with food for her peoples
and materials for the manufacture of guns and explosives to slaughter
our sons.
The tables of figures quoted showed in glaring contrast the usual
enormous increases of imports upon pre-war returns which the British
reader had grown quite accustomed to see. To give but one example: the
shipments of margarine from Holland to Germany during 1915 showed
thirteen times greater, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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