German Spies in England: An ExposureLe Queux, William
History
German Spies in England: An Exposure
Le Queux, William
Secret service -- Germany; Spies
A sinister side of the profession is also revealed; grave risks are run
by the spy even from his own side. A woman named Olga Bruder, whose
death in a hotel on the Russian border was described as suicide, is
said to have been poisoned; a Lieutenant von Zastrov was compelled to
fight duels until he was at last killed. They knew too much, Graves
declares, and the death sentence came from their own employers. One can
well believe it, for the records of German espionage show that in their
own interests the Germans stick at nothing.
One episode which Graves relates concerns a famous dancer, still
living, whom the Germans believed to be a Russian Government spy. They
suspected that she had an "affair" with a young officer in the Potsdam
garrison, and one night they became interested in a gold "vanity bag"
which the young officer had given to her; they believed it contained
some secret military intelligence. How they got possession of it was
very clever.
The dancer was at supper at the Ice Palace in Berlin, and her bag lay
on the table. A "clumsy" waiter upset a glass of champagne on the
cloth. Instantly the cloth was whipped off, and, with the bag inside
it, was taken away. A moment or two later back came the waiter with
the bag and many apologies. The waiter was a clever spy, and in the
moment or two that he had been absent the incriminating letter had been
secured. The bag was offered to the dancer, who at once opened it, and
finding the letter had disappeared, promptly said the bag was not
hers. But she was put over the frontier just the same.
Many more cases might be cited to show the ramifications of the German
spy system in England, but I have selected the foregoing as typical,
and most of the others follow more or less the same general outline.
They all point to the same conclusion: that the number of German agents
in England is endless, that they are to be found in all places and
in all ranks of society, that they are clever and daring to the last
degree, and that nothing is too large or too small for their attention.
Many of them, no doubt, have been interned; many of them, no doubt, are
still at work, risking everything in their ceaseless efforts to bring
about our undoing. There is only one effective protection--_to make
a clean sweep of all Germans and Austrians, naturalised or not_, and
confine them in the concentration camps until the war is over. Treat
them properly, by all means, but put them out of the way of doing us
harm.
This drastic measure, it is true, will not protect us against the
traitor within our gates, but it would at least do much to remove the
greatest source of peril.
CHAPTER XI
27,000 ALIENS AT LARGE IN GREAT BRITAIN
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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