Part 43

“There have only been twelve spies shot since the beginning of the war, but hundreds are either in penal servitude for life or serving shorter sentences. The actual number was not known to the official who talked with me on this topic—with the distinct understanding that I should not mention his name or title. He is the acknowledged authority on the spy evil. Not far from where we sat, in a formidable cabinet which looked as if it held other interesting documents, the papers taken from von Papen were carefully locked.

“‘No woman spies have been shot in England and only one among the feminine lot—a bad lot—who are serving sentence could possibly lay claim to being a “beautiful lady” spy. This woman had all the hall-marks of the fiction and cinema character, charming in manner, well gowned, having plenty of money, traveling about luxuriously, and was finally nabbed with the incriminating papers on her. But the popular conception of the feminine secret agent rarely exists outside of sensational stories because only women without moral sense can take up this profession, and when a woman is devoid of moral sense she is sure to be devoid of the other qualities that might make her work efficacious.

“‘There are, of course, numberless men and women who would be spies if they had not been interned, and, among the 30,000 Germans who are at this moment so confined, there are doubtless several who treasure the belief that they would have been of inestimable use to their country; but as they will never get a chance to prove themselves wrong that poor solace is permitted them.

“‘We have,’ continued my informant, ‘a great number of “cherished spies” with us. These are the spies who go about plying their profession and believing themselves the personification of that cleverness the Germans demand for this work. That is why we have dubbed them “Our Cherished Ones.” They are carefully watched. We let them go on doing bad work because it is much better to keep a bad spy doing bad work than it is to take him and perhaps have a spy who might do good work sent in his place.

“‘We would hate to lose our “cherished spies.” We don’t intend to!

“‘America has the job of the century. I wouldn’t know where to tell her to begin. Spies that were there and have left had plenty of time to lay their plans before the unrestricted submarine warfare began.

“‘With 8,000,000 Germans in America, what you have to find out is whether or not a German has been denationalized, a process that can only be gone through in Germany. It is not enough to know that he has been naturalized and that he claims to be a good citizen to your country. The fact that he has become a naturalized citizen does not free him from the call to fight for his own land. If he is denationalized as well as naturalized you are then safe, but not before. In England we had only a very small number who were found to be denationalized, a fairly negligible unit.

“‘I should say that the rush by foreigners immediately after the declaration of war in America was not because before they had been indifferent or hostile, but because they feared to be called upon to fight for their own countries. You will probably find that many of the Germans had been denationalized and were finishing up the process.’”

AMERICA’S HIGH-CLASS SPIES

America had a monopoly of the so-called high-class spies, according to this authority. The average German spy was described as a man who has one or more convictions hanging over his head—an unsentenced criminal—and these men were paid only about $250 a month. The statement continues:

“‘The last spy we caught was only a day or so ago. We had been after him for some time and he was traveling with a perfectly good American passport.

“‘The high-class spies with you are responsible for the sabotage, for the strikes on the docks and in the factories. They are pacifists, anticonscriptionists. It is a situation terribly serious for you. They are going to delay what they can not prevent. Don’t flatter yourselves that the important spies have been driven out. If I had been a spy in America and the warning had been given to me so long in advance, I would have laid my lines very well. Look out for those lines; you may trip.

“‘What should be done with a spy in America? He should be shot as soon as his espionage has been proved. No weakness should be permitted because he has many affiliations there.

“‘I was in Germany eight years ago. Everywhere I was asked, “Are you ready to fight America?” That was the pretty little German game. Even then they were dying to rub into us the fact that America was our enemy. In the beginning, when the commercial party—Herr Ballin and his clique—were in power, they pretended a great affection for you. It was contrary to their desire that the submarine warfare became so terrible—not because they hated its brutalities, don’t make any mistake about that, but because they thought it a diplomatic blunder. Then and now they have a press which harps on the unfriendly feeling that exists between you and us. That often reiterated phrase that “America is fighting Great Britain’s battles for her” was made in Germany.

“‘I’m not such a fool as to think that America loved us in the past, but that she ever hated us as the Germans have said and that we have hated her as they still say in subtle, indefinable ways in some of your papers, is unbelievable by either of the parties concerned. Nations have faults as do individuals. We’ve made mistakes. We may have talked a little too much about the _Shannon_ and _Chesapeake_ and you too much about Bunker Hill and that tea-party in Boston Harbor. Let’s have an end to it—it all helps Germany too much. Take away the text-books from your children which teach them to hate us. If you try it, the German school-teachers will try to keep them, see if they don’t.

“‘America ought to love us now if she has not in the past, if national love is founded on respect, as it should be. We can point to ourselves with pride. We have given up in this war the thing we most believed in—personal freedom. We have made untold sacrifices and we are ready to give up everything—everything. Anything in your press that makes you see these facts in a distorted way is false, spy-work of the subtle, underground, submarine mentality sort that the Germans excel in.

“‘Look out for it. It isn’t the work of the “lovely lady spy” or that of the man with a conviction suspended while he does their dirty work that you are in danger from. It is just where I have pointed out.

“‘You asked me a while ago what England would do in case Germany won. I will tell you and you can draw from it the lesson of spy—and other German effort.

“‘If Germany should win, there won’t be any one here when it happens to know anything about it.’”

EDITH CAVELL’S BETRAYER

A Traitor of Belgium Posing as an Allied Soldier Served the Germans

The basest of the spies in the German Service of whom there is any account probably was Gaston Quien, the betrayer of Edith Cavell. He was a degraded moral type, and had been convicted of various minor offenses before the war, being a “bad citizen.” He was at St. Quentin when the Germans arrived there, and according to testimony he at once placed himself on familiar terms with them. He was nicknamed “Doublemetre” (Two-yarder) because of his great stature. The Germans saw that they could make use of him, and proceeded to do so.

The circumstances of his employment were about as follows:

In 1915 the German commanders in Northern France and Belgium were angered at the fact that hundreds of Belgian and Allied soldiers hidden in various villages were eventually smuggled through the lines into Holland or France by an organization known to have its headquarters in Brussels.

Quien opportunely arrived in Brussels and posed as an Allied aviator who had been obliged to alight behind the German lines, and, after burning his plane, had evaded capture. Along with several French soldiers, he was hidden for a time at the château of Prince and Princess Crouy. There Louise Thuliez, the school teacher decorated early in 1919 with the Legion of Honor, secretly passed him on to Brussels, by way of Mons. At Brussels he was lodged for several days in Miss Cavell’s nursery. Finally an engineer named Capiau and Mme. Bodart accompanied him and a group of Allied soldiers to the Dutch frontier, where, by payment of $15 a head to smugglers, they were conducted into Dutch territory.

Once at The Hague, Quien made no further effort to get into France. Instead, he returned to Brussels and betrayed to the Germans the entire organization for helping Allied soldiers out of Belgium.

Miss Cavell was tried and executed soon afterward. Miss Thuliez also was sentenced to death, but pardoned. Princess Crouy, Mme. Bodart and Capiau were sentenced to twelve years at hard labor. An architect named Bauco, also betrayed by Quien, was shot at the same time Miss Cavell met her fate. Quien continued in the employ of the Germans in various capacities, finally establishing himself in Interlaken, where he worked with their most noted spies. After the armistice he was arrested and tried for treason in a Belgian court. He was found guilty, but was not executed, pending an appeal.

EDITH CAVELL

_By_

George Edward Woodberry

The world hath its own dead; great motions start In human breasts, and make for them a place In that hushed sanctuary of the race Where every day men come, kneel, and depart.

Of them, O English nurse, henceforth thou art, A name to pray on, and to all a face Of household consecration; such His grace Whose universal dwelling is the heart.

O gentle hands that soothed the soldier’s brow, And knew no service save of Christ the Lord! Thy country now is all humanity! How like a flower thy womanhood doth show In the harsh scything of the German sword, And beautifies the world that saw it die!

By permission of _Scribner’s Magazine_ and author.

THE SPY MILL

It Did Not Wait for Winds to Swing Its Arms for German Guidance

In a book, recently published, called _Espions, Espionnage_, one story has to do with a windmill: “Celebrated along the whole Aisne front, there existed at Craonne a mill boldly designated, ‘Mill of the Spy.’... The miller, devoted to the interests of our enemies, had found the means of informing them of the movements of our troops by disposing the arms of the mill in different positions.” The French has a beautifully final sound—“the miller, devoted to the interests of our enemies.” “But to tell the truth, neither the miller himself nor the actual information which he was able to impart, made a great deal of difference in the fighting. What it was, that made, or almost made, the difference, I believe, has never been satisfactorily ascertained. The miller at least was not there, then. Of course he may have had confederates, but if so, the destruction of the mill was so sudden, so complete, that there was left no trace of them.”

The information given by the mill to the Germans was almost entirely negligible, and would have penetrated to them anyway through the medium of the spies with which both lines were always swarming. Of course, at first, before they realized the agency of the mill, the French were not a little troubled and disconcerted by the amount of data the Germans seemed to possess, and the speed with which it was acquired. For instance, for a while the Boches amused themselves with knowingly greeting each regiment as it moved up to take its turn in the front line trench. There was a measure of clairvoyance implied in the big white board with black lettering that would go up on top of the German barbed wire as surely as there was a change of guard on the French side: “Bonjour, 77e!” or the number of French trench casualties: “Morts ——,” “Blessés ——.” And so it went on day after day.

A week of this, in dull, rainy weather, was enough to set nerves on edge, but then they caught the miller, whose execution put, it was thought, the quietus on the mill. And upon the morning of the 27th of November, they moved forward stealthily to the surprise attack.

Then a poilu looked back. It was a miserable, gray, shrouded morning, when the shadow cast by any object is merely a blur around that object—the whole a blot upon a cloudy plain. The mill stood, a black, spectral shape in the fog, on a slight eminence, the most commanding point in the surrounding country. As he looked, suddenly a long, black arm fell, abruptly, while the corresponding one, lighter in color, rose a foot or two. Besides the troops, it was the only moving thing in that breathless landscape. “Sacré-bleu!” a poilu exclaimed. As one and another began to gape behind them at his sudden start of surprise, slowly the whole motion was reversed. Light arm down, black arm up. Nothing more occurred. The mill was as motionless as they, though afterwards some of them declared that they had been able to see Tom Bene himself, hanging, with a ghastly face, athwart the arms, as men are sometimes hung to the spokes of a wheel. Then, as a sound came from the German trenches, as with one impulse, the men rushed—back toward the mill, which they literally, by means of fire and bombs, tore shred from shred. Then they turned to meet the Germans, who, warned by this extraordinary wigwagging, by whatever agency or agencies, had instituted a counter-attack. The French were not driven, but they stood the attack in their own trenches. “Afterwards, to those who had been there to see, more vivid than the angels at Mons, more vivid than the vision of the Little Corporal, to those who thought they saw it, was that gray morning, the foiled attack, and this malevolent motion of a secret intelligence in a dream landscape.”

ALOIS THE SILENT

He Planned to End the War by Slaying Its Instigator and Failing—Died

One of the hero-martyrs of Belgium was Alois Van Keirsbilk, a well-to-do citizen of Thielt, beloved of his townspeople, a man of family, and a zealous patriot. He did what he might to serve, and many, they say in Thielt, were the services rendered. But there came a day when the rumor went round that the German Kaiser and his entourage were to visit Thielt, and Van Keirsbilk suddenly conceived a great project for the salvation of Belgium, for the liberation of the world from the nightmare of war. Egbert Hans tells the story of Alois Van Keirsbilk and it was first published in its completeness in the _New York Times_ of Sunday, June 22, 1919. But a little abbreviated, it is here reproduced as Hans told it:

“Thielt was the headquarters of the Fourth German Army and sheltered the Commander-in-Chief with a staff of hundreds of officers. Alois Van Keirsbilk was chief conductor on the railway between Thielt and Bruges. Also he was the chief of a secret organization which had only one object—‘help to our boys and death to the enemy.’ The organization was in communication with the Belgian army through spies who made regular trips into Holland across the ‘cable of death,’ and many a German plan originated at headquarters in Thielt failed, thanks to the activity of Alois and his men.

“It was not long before Alois saw his chance for a big stroke. The Kaiser was coming to Thielt on the first of November. A desperate attack was to be made against the Belgian forces along the Yser and from there on against Ypres and Dunkirk, and Wilhelm II in person was to inspect the preparations.

“Kill the Kaiser and the war will be over, was the firm conviction of Alois and his friends, and they set to work. Alois acquired all the information that his organization could procure as to the movements and schedule of the imperial visitor, and sent all the details to his agents in the Belgian army, with the request that airmen be sent at the opportune moment ‘to kill the Kaiser!’

“Only one of the three messengers who were sent out reached the other side of the electric cable, for at that time the guards were doubled. But one was sufficient, and when the first of November came Alois felt confident that something would happen.

“THE BEST LAID PLANS”

“The big dinner at which the Kaiser and his staff were to gather around the table, and for which all the best silver in town had been requisitioned, was to begin at 2 o’clock. At that moment anxious eyes watched the sky toward the west. Would they come, the airmen with their bombs to do the deed that would finish the war? Would they be in time?

“At 2.15 there was a speck in the blue sky. It grew bigger and bigger, and bigger, and soon the watchers distinguished three flying machines. In haste Alois communicated with his friends. Barely had those who were warned taken shelter when the first explosion was heard. Then for a few minutes the town of Thielt shuddered as bomb after bomb exploded.

“It was a well-managed raid and the daring airmen escaped in safety, but it was all in vain. There had been a sudden change in the Kaiser’s schedule and the war lord had left Thielt at 2 o’clock sharp. During the bombardment his motor cars were speeding along the road to Bruges and his life was safe.

“But the commander of the Fourth German Army raged in his private office at the _kommandatur_. The secret of the visit had plainly got out. The Kaiser, the idol of 70,000,000 Germans, had barely escaped death. The guilty had to be found and punished.

“A contra-spy system was organized at once and large sums were promised for any bit of information. Slowly but surely Alois was drawn into the net woven by a most minute and complete investigation. On Feb. 2 he was summoned to the _kommandatur_ and taken prisoner. Already three of his coöperators were there.

“It was then that Alois Van Keirsbilk showed the courage which won for him the name of ‘the Silent Hero.’ He knew that one word spoken lightly might betray the whole of his organization, and his last word to his friends who were still free had been, ‘Do not let my absence or death scare you; but keep up the work that we have been doing.’ After his arrest nothing could induce him to speak even a word. All devices, old and new, were tried by the _kommandatur_—tortures as well as promises, the menaces of a cruel death, and the promise of life in luxury. It was all in vain. Perhaps Alois thought of the many lives he had in his hands. Anyway, he remained silent.

“He was condemned to death on Feb. 25, and then the Germans created and applied as devilish a scheme of mental torture for a human being as could be devised. Alois had two children, and a third was to be born soon.

“‘On the day that new life enters your home your life will end unless you speak,’ said the German inquisitor. Undoubtedly Alois thought of his wife, who would be calling for him that day more than ever. Perhaps he thought of the new baby also. Nevertheless he was still true to his name, ‘the Silent.’

“On the 5th of April a little girl was born in the Van Keirsbilk home. It might seem unbelievable, but evidently the Germans had waited for the event. On the same day they sent official word to ‘Madame Van Keirsbilk’ that if she desired to see her husband still alive, she could see him that day at 3 o’clock in the prison at Ghent. A merciful neighbor nurse saw to it that the message did not reach the mother, then nursing her day-old baby. Instead the eldest girl, 10 years old, was sent to the prison to see her father. Full of joy, in her happy ignorance, she exclaimed:

“‘Oh, father, you must come home with me. We have a little sister, and mother wants to show it to you. Come, father!’

“But father could not come. He pressed his little girl in his arms. He could not tell her she would never see him again, for he wanted to spare the mother, who had to live for the children. Not a word did he say. One kiss, and the big prison gate closed after the child, while her father prepared himself to die.

FACED DEATH A HERO

“His end came next morning at half-past five in the _cour_ of the prison. Four Belgians were to fall that day. When Van Keirsbilk arrived at the place of execution three were already lying dead against the wall. For some unknown reason he went to the muzzles of twelve German rifles alone.

“He refused to be blindfolded. ‘Let not a German hand touch me in this solemn moment when I die for my country. I have no fear of your bullets,’ the Belgians heard that he said, and erect he waited for the moment when his agony would come to an end. A few seconds later his body, with those of his comrades in death, was thrown into the ditch.

“In the afternoon of the same day a German soldier knocked at the door of the ‘Widow Van Keirsbilk’ and delivered a parcel to the devoted neighbor who was caring for the new baby and its mother. The woman opened it, and with horror found that it contained the suit of clothes of the unhappy master of the house. That was the German announcement of his death.

“Loving friends managed to keep the news from the widow for several days, although the continual absence of her husband plainly made her fear. But one morning she was looking through the window into the street, when the church bells began to ring for a funeral service. The people attending looked up at her and nodded with sympathy. None told her, but perhaps the unhappy woman read the pity that was in the eyes of the passers-by. Nobody knows, but suddenly a terrible look of suspicion came into her eyes. She rushed downstairs, where the neighbor nurse was preparing the meal for the children, and, seizing her by the arms, cried out:

“‘Who is dead? For whom are the bells ringing? Is it for Alois? Tell me, or I will run out into the street and find out. I must know where Alois is. I must know it if he is dead.’ Then and there the sad news had to be broken, and the widow of Alois began a time of lonely misery only broken by the struggle to keep her three children fed and clothed.”

Egbert Hans concludes his story of Alois the Silent: