Another time his landlady was bullied by the police into making a daily report on her tenant’s movements, but the honest woman soon proved unequal to the task, and told him all about it. Twice in his absence were his apartments ransacked for incriminating material that did not exist, and on each occasion the search, though conducted with great secrecy, was made so clumsily that he immediately saw what had occurred.
More to be feared than the German police were would-be coadjutors whose zeal outran their discretion. Our friend was not infrequently approached by British officers, military as a rule, who were spending their leave in Germany and were anxious to do a little independent intelligence work. They were not acting under instructions, but before leaving London they had visited ID headquarters, and had been told where they could find this particular agent.
He, however, by no means relished the role of guide, philosopher, and friend thus thrust upon him. His visitors were almost always very young, very indiscreet, and blissfully ignorant of the elementary rules governing intelligence operations. They were, in fact, a constant source of embarrassment and even danger. Either they would sit in cafés or other public resorts and babble cheerfully of what they intended to do at Kiel or Wilhelmshaven, or – what was still worse – they would move about like stage conspirators, converse in whispers, with furtive glances over the shoulder, pass little notes written in what they fondly believed to be indecipherable code – one habitually used the Greek alphabet! – and generally comport themselves in a manner calculated to arouse the instant suspicion of the most purblind policeman.
‘The dear boys made my life a burden,’ said our informant:
To this day my hair stands on end when I think of some of their antics. In a weak moment I let one of them accompany me on a visit to Kiel. I went there only to make a few general observations, for when serious work was in hand I preferred to be on my own. But after the first day or two my bright young companion got bored, and went off by himself. He returned to the hotel in the evening, full of excitement and very pleased with himself.
He had spent the day prowling about Gaarden, on the other side of the harbour, where the Krupp-Gcrmania works and the imperial dockyard were situated. He actually presented himself at the main gate of the yard, where a small crowd of visitors were waiting for admission; but learning from the casual remark of a bystander that identity papers had to be shown, he wisely decided to withdraw, and did so rather hurriedly. In a café near by he met two German bluejackets, entered into conversation with them, and found that one of them could speak English. After treating them to several beers, and learning that they belonged to a destroyer undergoing repair in the dockyard, he was invited to visit the boat next day, one of the men promising to meet him at the yard gate at 10 a.m. to escort him inside. My innocent young friend had promptly accepted, and was fully determined to go.
I explained to him, however, that he would be walking straight into an obvious trap. The two sailors knew him to be English – he had, indeed, told them as much – and they must have known also that casual foreigners were never allowed to visit any German naval establishment. To me it was perfectly clear that the men would report the matter to their superiors; that one of them, acting on instructions, would be waiting at the dockyard entrance at the appointed time, and that as soon as my friend passed the turnstile he would be arrested on a charge of espionage.
But I had the utmost difficulty in convincing him of all this, and finally had to threaten to send a strongly worded protest about his indiscreet conduct to the War Office. Most fortunately he had not given his Kiel address to the bluejackets. Even so, I judged it advisable to remove both him and myself from the neighbourhood without delay, and we left Kiel on the next train, thus almost certainly avoiding one of those ‘incidents’ that the German authorities knew how to exploit so well. Admiral von Tirpitz is credited with the remark that every English ‘spy’ captured was worth a cruiser to him – meaning that the Reichstag was always more willing to vote money for new ships just after a case of alleged espionage.
A few months after this incident another British Army officer came to me with an introduction. He was a captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery, and was spending a fortnight’s leave in Germany. Sitting in the lounge of the Hotel Bristol in Berlin, he outlined his plans to me. He had in his pocket a map showing the defences of Kiel harbour, namely, the batteries at Friedrichsort, Möltenort, and Laboe, with the supposed number and calibre of the guns marked thereon. His intention was to visit these forts in person and check the information on the map.
Quite apart from the extremely hazardous nature of the enterprise – which to my knowledge was, in fact, impossible – I saw at once that he was entirely the wrong sort of man to undertake work of this kind. He was garrulous, excitable, and temperamentally indiscreet. Often I had to check him when he was beginning to discuss matters that ought not to have been mentioned except behind locked doors.
He rather resented my attitude, and this made him obstinate when I tried to persuade him to abandon his hare-brained scheme. I pointed out that while his safety was purely his own concern, his inevitable capture – if he persisted in trying to visit the Kiel forts – would not only embarrass the British government, but would also put fresh difficulties in the way of our regular intelligence men, who were already finding the German authorities far more vigilant as a result of these frequent, if always futile, attempts by amateurs to do the work of professional secret service agents.
But all my arguments fell on deaf ears. My companion had made up his mind to go to Kiel, and to Kiel he was going on the morrow. In these circumstances I not only refused to have anything to do with the business, but mentally resolved to put a spoke in his wheel, for the sake of all concerned, his own included.
An hour later a lengthy telegram was despatched, by indirect route, to a certain address in London. The following morning my visitor had a wire, cancelling his leave and directing him to rejoin his regiment forthwith. He was naturally much puzzled and rather angry, but had no suspicion of my connection with the affair. I saw him off by the Hook of Holland express. To this day – assuming him to have survived the war – he is doubtless ignorant of the fact that my cipher telegram to London in all probability saved him from a long term of captivity within the depressing walls of Glatz or Wesel.
After these experiences, which were but two among many of a similar kind, I made strong representations at headquarters as to the imprudence of giving even the mildest official encouragement to amateurs, and, above all, of putting them into touch with me. My own position in Germany was quite precarious enough, and I simply could not afford to incur any risk additional to that which my own work entailed. This protest must have been effectual, for I was not troubled again by indiscreet visitors.
This particular agent had the distinction of becoming an object of special interest to no less a personage than Baron von Kühlmann, the German Chargé d’Affaires in London during the last two years before the war. Acting, no doubt, on instructions from Berlin, the Baron made extensive inquiries in certain circles where he hoped to find people who were personally acquainted with the agent, and who might be persuaded to disclose his whereabouts. These inquiries, however, were conducted with so little finesse that they led to nothing.
One illuminating example of Herr von Kühlmann’s diplomatic methods may be cited. He made the acquaintance of a well-known London journalist, invited him to dinner, and there introduced him to two German naval officers, who were visiting England.
‘These friends of mine,’ he told his guest, ‘are very anxious to meet “X” (mentioning the British agent’s name), who is believed to be living somewhere in Germany. He seems to be a most interesting person. Do you happen to know where he is to be found?’
This naive gambit immediately put the guest on his guard, and he was careful to give no information whatever. In view of Herr von Kühlmann’s reputation for diplomatic astuteness, this incident is worth putting on record.
In pre-war days the German press frequently made more or less overt attacks on members of the British diplomatic corps in central Europe, hinting at illicit activities on their part in the domain of naval and military intelligence work. We have the best authority for declaring these charges to have been utterly baseless. Not only was the conduct of our naval and military attachés at all times scrupulously correct, but for reasons of policy they did not always take advantage of the official facilities for obtaining information that were open to them. They neither met nor corresponded with any intelligence agent, nor did they aid or abet such agents in any way whatsoever.
It would be interesting to know whether all the members of the German diplomatic suite in London during the last pre-war years had an equally impeccable record. There is, at least, strong evidence that not all of them were active in promoting good feeling between the two countries and allaying mutual suspicion. In his well-known book, The Two White Nations, Commander Georg von Hase records a conversation he had at Kiel, in July 1914, with the German naval attaché in London, Commander Erich von Müller. This gentleman took Commander von Hase aside, and said to him:
Be on your guard against the English: England is ready to fight. We are all on the brink of war. The sole object of this naval visit (of the British Second Battle Squadron) is to spy out the land. They want to get a clear picture of our fleet’s readiness for war. Above all, tell them nothing about our submarines.
Commander von Hase adds that, while this view coincided entirely with his own, he was nevertheless ‘astonished to hear it expressed so bluntly’.
It is an interesting fact, not previously divulged, that both France and Russia maintained a number of naval intelligence agents in Germany. The Russians were the more numerous, and they are understood to have collected a good deal of useful information. There is more than hearsay evidence that several employees of the imperial dockyard at Danzig were Russian agents. If this be true, it would explain the copious and generally accurate data on German submarines that the Russian naval staff possessed on the outbreak of war, for up to that time Danzig was the principal centre for U-boat construction.
Russian agents are also known to have supplied minute details of the German coastal defences in the Baltic, particularly those that guarded the approaches to Königsberg and Danzig. Had the Tsarist fleet been stronger and better led, it might have made good use of this intelligence. But where the Russians really shone was at counter-espionage, some of their achievements in this sphere being noted in another chapter.
As an Irishman might say, the best Russian agents were Poles. Our own intelligence men in Germany sometimes employed Polish helpers, and, as a rule, found them useful and trustworthy. The work attracted them, less on account of the material rewards it brought than of the opportunity it gave them of doing an injury to the power that they regarded as the hereditary oppressor of their distressful country. German-born Poles were invariably the most bitter against their Prussian masters.
Photography, it need hardly be said, plays an important part in intelligence work. The camera often detects details that have escaped the keenest eye and, for this reason, our agents in Germany did their utmost to secure photographs of every new ship at the earliest possible moment. Sometimes as many as a dozen views were obtained, all taken from different angles. One of our agents succeeded in getting snapshots of the battlecruiser Derfflinger as she lay on the building slip, and these revealed certain features of her underbody that had hitherto been unsuspected.
It is safe to say that we had detailed photographs of every German warship afloat in August 1914, the pictures being filed at ID headquarters in chronological sequence, so that the changes in rig and general appearances, due to dockyard refit, could be noted at a glance. In this way the admiralty draughtsmen were able to prepare meticulously accurate silhouettes of every German fighting craft, thereby facilitating their identification if met with at sea.
Not long before the war a solitary German ship, the Blücher, was fitted with a tripod foremast of British pattern. Within a week after emerging from dockyard with her new mast she had been photographed, and the existing silhouette of the ship corrected accordingly.
Incidentally this mast was responsible for the death of many German sailors in the Dogger Bank action, for when the Blücher was sinking she was mistaken by a Zeppelin for a British ship, and bombs were dropped. This attack compelled our destroyers engaged in rescue work to draw off, with the result that hundreds of Germans in the water had to be left to their fate.
Those who have been associated with intelligence work are the first to appreciate the profound psychology of Poe’s ‘Purloined Letter’. Alike in concealment and detection, the simpler the methods employed, the greater the probability of success. Elsewhere we have paid a tribute to the effectiveness of the censorship that Germany imposed on naval news as a retort to Lord Fisher’s ‘hush’ policy. But while it is true that this censorship kept us in the dark for several years, the elaborate secrecy in which the Germans sought to cloak every naval development, important and otherwise, often had an effect the reverse of what was intended.
Time after time our intelligence agents were put on the track of some highly important event by the ostentatious measures taken to conceal it. Cases in point were the Blücher-Elsass gunnery experiment, and the building of the first German 15-inch gun. We got wind of the latter even before it had been tested on the Krupp proving grounds at Meppen, simply because of the almost theatrical precautions with which it was surrounded.
Precisely the same thing happened in connection with the engines for U-19, the first submarine to be fitted with Diesel machinery. Their construction at the Krupp-Germania works in Kiel would have remained unknown but for the fact that the particular shop where they were being assembled was barricaded off from the others and plastered with notices threatening trespassers with dire penalties. Inevitably, therefore, it was soon spread about the whole works that something of a highly secret nature was in progress, and as the firm employed 6,000 hands, the news quickly circulated throughout Kiel. Being thus provided with a definite clue, one of our secret service men followed it up, and eventually obtained full details of the new engine.
In February 1912 the Kaiser’s speech at the opening of the Reichstag clearly foreshadowed new legislation for increasing the navy. It was very important for this country to learn what was impending, for at that date British naval policy was necessarily governed to a great extent by developments across the North Sea. Although the new bill was not presented to the Reichstag until 14 June, its substance was communicated to British ID headquarters early in May. This was the work of an enterprising agent who secured, by very simple means, a set of proofs from the establishment where copies of the bill were being printed for distribution to the Reichstag deputies.
It is not surprising that the disclosure caused a sensation in London, for the new legislative measure was designed to raise the German fleet to a level of strength far above anything previously anticipated. Provision was made for an eventual establishment of forty-one battleships, twenty battlecruisers, forty light cruisers, 144 destroyers, and seventy-two submarines, or more than twice as many modern fighting ships – barring destroyers – as Germany possessed in 1914. These figures, we may observe in parentheses, should leave no doubt as to the reality or the gravity of the German naval menace in the days of which we are writing. Looking back at that period, it is amazing that so many people in England, including some of our most intelligent public men, should have remained blind to the numerous and unmistakable portents of war that were crowding on the horizon. If Armageddon caught us partly unprepared it was not for lack of warning.
CHAPTER 7
WHY JUTLAND WAS INDECISIVE
IT IS USELESS to pretend that the British nation was wholly satisfied with the naval operations of the Great War. There still exists a widespread belief that the incomparable resources we possessed, both personal and material, for the conduct of sea warfare w
ere neither sufficiently exploited nor always employed to the best advantage.
No doubt the great mass of the British public failed to appreciate the peculiar and, indeed, unique conditions that governed the naval campaign. Having unbounded confidence in the navy – a confidence that never stood higher than in August 1914, despite the ‘panics’ and the professional controversies within the service itself, which were so marked a feature of the decade preceding the war – it looked for a succession of brilliant victories at sea, worthy to rank with the most glorious achievements of the Nelsonic era.
Instead, there came reports of indecisive actions, and, more than once, of actual defeats at the hands of an enemy who was known to be greatly inferior in strength. Almost the only major events of the war at sea that roused the nation to enthusiasm were the spirited raid on the Bight of Heligoland on 28 August 1914, the annihilation of Von Spee’s squadron off the Falklands a few months later, and the heroic attack on Zeebrugge on St George’s Day, 1918.
True, the Dogger Bank action in January 1915 was a victory so far as it went, but subsequent information left no doubt that a great opportunity had been missed.
Jutland was for the British public the crowning disappointment. Here, for the first time, the Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet came into contact and fought a pitched battle. Strategically it was indecisive, except in so far as it confirmed the command of the sea surface that Great Britain had exercised from the beginning of the war. A whole library has been written about this engagement. Scores of German authors have attempted to prove that Jutland was a signal triumph for their fleet. On the British side there has been endless controversy, some writers maintaining that we scored a victory more or less decisive, others that it was a drawn battle with honours evenly divided, and a few who refer to it as a ‘disaster’.
Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service Page 8