Evening Star Newspaper, March 30, 1930, Page 107

I ashington Officials Laughed at “Spies” Until They Found Themselves Trapped Continued from Eleventl: "are with lovely brown hair and eyes, graceful, chie. In fact, she was so good-looking that cymical secret service men muttered: “Humph! Enter the fascinating weman spy.” But others might be less suspicious, and she was chosen for an important job in Switzerland. Fashionable resorts like St. Moritz were to be her hunting ground. There was a slip before she left Paris, unfor- tunately, and this time a slip probably not feminine but masculine. As result of it, Estelle was inevitably spotted at the frontier as a lady aspiring to espionage, not only by the Swiss secret police, but by the Master's German or- ganization then flourishing. She got into Switzerland, but that was all the good it did her. She did her best, some say, but the cards were stacked agaimst her. Speculating later on what might have been done to eamoufiage her, she said: “Palse reports could have been fabricated of me in allied intelligence offices in France, ru- mors spread through suspect circles that I was having trouble with the authorities. I would then have goné to Switzerland presumably to get away from allled surveillance. Once in Switzerland, more ‘secret’ reports might have been sent about me, to the effect that I was dangerous to the United States Government, a pacifist propagandist, with a German husband in the Unmited States Army whom I was going to help desert. These ‘secret’ reports could have been allowed to leak out to the enemy. Omee in Switzerland, with the exception of one eor tweo confidential persons, no one should have knewn about me amd Americans should have been allowed te think that I was a ‘suspect,’ possibly working for Germany.” Recognized ruses of secret service. Whether or not they would have worked in the case of Estelle, who can say? Some say she failed less because of insufficient camoufiage than he- cause she fell in love! Further, some say, he was a German agent put on her trail. Who- ever he was, they add, with emphasis, he was lucky. Anyway, Bstelle’s exit from Switzerland confirmed Gen. Nolan in his defermination to keep all her sisters out of American secret service activities eontrolled by him. Some other branches of American seeret service in Europe employed women, mostly for counter-espionage. Some came from the United States, some were French. The fate of one of the latter was pathetic. She lost her figure in the American service. Loaned by the Deuxieme Bureau after a thrilling and successful spying career, she found American pay and especially American candy a little too good. As her weight waxed, her efficiency waned. NTELLIGENCE suspeeted an Austrian baron of vielating his parole and doing some guiet spy work for the central powers. Shadowing about New York showed him engaged in sev- eral intrigues, to be sure, but not the sort sus- peeted. The haren was a ladies’ man. It was decided to put a woman on him. “She’s got to be a good looker,” th: shadows reported. “He's some picker.” Where search for good lookers but in the chorus? Especially as a well known New York theairical producer was a valuable member of the intelligenee forces. He produced a girl whom the shadows pronounced a good looker. They arranged for her to meet the baron, then told her what to de. She was the blonde type, sufficiently upholstered, that would appeal to & Teuton. She was to tell the baron she was of German descent, worm her way into his confidence and find out what he was doing for Austria. { first week passed without news. “Probe second week passed and a third. No reports. Then this nete: “The baron and I were married this mom- ing. Thank yeuw.” He was a real baron. Explaining, perhaps, why girls go on the stage and into secret service. Th- greatest center for that game in this country was, of course, war-time Washington. There was nothing imaginary about the pres- ence there of agents and friends of Germany eager to pick up precious nuggets of informa- tion and forward them across the oc:an, usually by South Ameriecan countries and Mexico. In Mexico City was a German spy @#nter not un- familiar to the,German legation that sent more than one agent to the United States. One was the famous Pablo Waberski. Another was a dangérous woman spy, who, unlike Pablo, was not caught until she had worked for some time in Washington and nearly done very serious harm. One of the most important Government de- pariments guarded closely its many secrets. In a special camotflaged safe were kept papers, drawings, letters whose possession would cer- tainly mean thousands of lives and millions of marks to the Germans. The safe had a guardian, who almost alone knew its secret and how to open it. He had an excellent record as,_ a Government servant and was trusted. But does secret service entirely trust any- body? The safe’s guardian was watched from his getting up in the morning until his retiring at night, and it is lucky he was. He I spending his evenings with a beautiful dark woman of Spanish type, unknowing that every- thing he did was hoted. Infatuated, he became not alone indiscreet but disloyal. To their amazement, the shadows beheld the woman and this trusted officer enter a certain apart- ' The meént house on a quiet Washington street. shkdow$ knew that in that house was a small apartment, osténsibly that of a bachelor busi- ness man, actually conducted by a branch of the' Government as a hidden rendezvous for - confidential interviews. The shadows tele- phoned their chief: . - PORIPRNCETRY: “He's taken her up to the apartment.” THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 30, 1930. “Grab them both!” the chief exploded. And they did. THE third degree revealed that the beautiful dark stranger was from the German spy center in Mexico City, and that she had begun to weave around her intended victim a web of blackmail from which he could have escaped only by giving up the secrets of the safe. At least, so the intelligence officers believed She got off easily, as did Mexico. ‘They went over the guardian of the safe with & fine tooth comb, from head to foot, from birth 10 present. They asked all about his wife, from whom he was separated, and who lived in 21 Europe. He described her minutely, appear- ance, mannerisms, the four languages she spoke fluently. Then they showed him a sort of “gen- eral alarm” circular, a blacklist, received from the French, naming and describing 20 men and 4 women. “These are the most dangerous German agents of whom we know,” said the circular in effect. First of the four women was the American’s wife! Soon afterward she was caught in Rome with a high Army officer, and barely escaped with her life. The guardian of the safe said he did not know that she was a spy, but—he was no longer guardian of the safe. A hard task of secret sgervice in Washington was to proteet high Government officials against Notes of Art and Artists. “Iris,” @ water color exhibited at the Arts Club. It is contained in the weork of Frances Hungerford Combs. Continued from Nineteenth Page during the month of April it will be on in the museum of the Rhode Island of Design. its place, opening a week from today, will from April 6 to 26 an exhibition of Violet Oakley, N. A, including “The Holy Experiment,” “The Opening of the Book of Law” and the Geneva drawings exhibited -* annual meeting March 21, at which time the following officers were elected: Willlam H. Holmes, honorary president; A. H. O. Rolle, president; Benson Moore, vice president; Eliza- beth Evans Graves, secretary, and Eleanor Parke Custis, treasurer. The following were elected members of the board of managers: Roy Clark, Edith Hoyt, Lona Miller Keplinger, Prances H. Combs and Elizabeth Muhthofer, AN exhibition of water eolors of the Canadian Rockies, France, Italy and Corsica by Fred Pye is announced by the Yorke Galleries, 2000 S street, opening March 31 and ¢comtinuing to April 12, Mr. Pye is an BEnglish painter now living in New York. He received his artistic traiming in Julian and Colarossi Academies, in Paris, and has exhibited twice im Paris. Several of Mr, Pye’s marine subjects have been purchased by the French govermnment for placement in the Luxembourg. Mr. Pye has exhibited several times in New York, most recently at the Ander- son Galleries. He is also a frequent contributor to Canadian exhibitions, having lived for a number of years in Canada. HE exhibition of plintings by Hildegarde Hamilton which has been shown during the past week in the mazzanine of the Carlten Hotel, under the auspices of the Art Promoters’ Club, will be continued umtil Friday, April 4. Reviews of the New Books. Continued from Eighteenth Page EVEN SARA. By Gladys Blake. New York: Appleton, - - THE ONE HOUR SERIES—AN HCUR OF AMERICAN DRAMA. By Barrett H. Clark, author of “A Study of the Modern Drama,” etc, Philadelphia: Lippincott. EARLY TRADITIONS ABOUT JESUS. By J. P. Bethune-Baker, DD, F.BA. New York: MacMillan. MRS, GRUNDY IS DFAD; A Code of Eti- quette for Young People, Written by Them- selves. - Edited by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins. New York: Century. PIPER SPINS A YARN. By Hiram E. Piper. Tlustrated. Boston: Meador. ANiMAiE By George P. MY LIFE WITH Morse, former director Boston Zoological Park, etc. Drawings by Don Nelson. Chi- cago: Thomas S. Rockwell. ARYAN BLOOD IN MODERN NATIONS AND THE HOWELLS. By Fleming Howell, M.D, Boston: Christopher. THE DEVIL; An Historical, Critical and Medi- cal Study. By Maurice Garcon and Jean Vinchon. Translated by Stephen Haden Guest from the sixth French edition. New York: Dutton. HUNTSMAN IN THE SKY. By Granville Toogood. New York: Payson & Clarke. SHATTERING HEALTH SUPERSTITIONS; An Explosion of False Theories and Notions in the Pield of Health and Popular Medi- cine. By Morris Fishbein, M.D., editor of Hygeia. New York: Horace Liveright. WITH MORGAN ON THE MAIN, BEy.C,. <Mt Dgpaett, .author..of; TMutiny - Island,qs etc. New York: Dutton. —— SSEmEm——— e espionage, which irked some of the great ones who would have it that “this spy stuff is the bunk.” NE such, whose name appeared daily in newspapers during the war, proved sus- ceptible to a dashing Levantine woman of somewhat hazy past, who was so suspeet that secret service became violently upset. They set a watch upon the lady, which she dis- covered, and told her admirer. But they also put a dictograph in his office,. whére he re- ceived her, which neither of them discovered. So one day those listening at the dictograph, after certain endearing passages heard the pub- lic man say this: “Come over to the window, darling. See that short fat fellow down there—the one smoking the long cigar? He’s an intelligence man. The damn fools have started shadowing me, 100! %«% A dictograph was silent but principal acter in another little spy drama of war-time Wash- ington. The dictograph was planted by an offi- cial of an allied government, one of whese duties was to keep his eyes open for German intrigues, in the apartment of a woman of con- siderable social position, whom he suspected of being responsible for leakage of information. Men called upon her, some of whom held high positions in the Government’s war-making or- ganization. One particularly had information of the highest value, for he had the confidence of the President, with whom he conferred fre- quently. He was ideal prey for a woman spy-- and of all the callers he came oftenest, stz ed longest. Whatever they said the dictograph recorded, and the inquisitive official accumulated a col- lection of records. They showed that the high- placed caller was being indiscreet, very—but whether the indiscretion was of a kind and degree to justify his removal was more than some Americans who heard the record of the conversation could determine. There was no question of his loyalty. They put that up to President Wilson him- self. He heard the record of the conver- sation read, but he was suspicious. It might be a Republicarr plot, he said, to make trouble for the administration. He would take no action. But others did. They enlisted the adept co-operation of a woman well known in Washington, of ancient American family. So skillfully did she drop a word here and a hint there that shortly the Government official ceased to call upon his inamorata. Does this narrative seem unfair to woman spies? Perhaps, after all, it is to women’s credit if they do not make good spies. The failures among them, of course, come to the surface, the suecesses remain often hidden. To right the balance there is one more story, to Americans perhaps the most touching story of all. Unfortunately it must be told briefly and without official authority. T seems that there was one American woman spy who piayed for a great stake, won and died. ; It was in Austria-Hungary where American secret service accomplished more than is gem- erally known. The former dual monarchy was for various reasons a better field for American agents than Germany. One of these American agents was a woman, who, some say, had been in Austria-Hungary before the war, and others say, got in through the efforts of that unusual personality, Capt. Voska, and operated partly with the amazing Czechoslovak secret service. In the early Fall of 1918 she decided upon her great coup—to hasten the downfall of Austria-Hungary, then imminent. She was not in Vienna, but in another large city, possibly Prague. On a concealed printing press she printed thousands of counterfeit bread tickets, Then she distributed them to many agen some knowing, some ignerant of what she was doing. There came a rush on provision steres that siripped them, throughout a province at least. . People who for years had not eaten their fill went on a food drunk. Then came the cry, “There is no more!” Now real famine threatened, and that threat, the story rums, hastened the formation of the Czechoslovak republic. But the fabricator of the false food tiekets had been traced, arrested and, woman or mo woman, executed with short shrift. She knew, of course, that that would be her fate if she were caught. Yet she did her bit to end the war. How that woman died, where she was buried, under what name, who were her family or friends, the writer does not know. The story he has told comes from three sources, all reliable, none official. Surely somewhere there must be a clue that would enable the American people at least to kmow who was their Werld War heroine whe lies in an unknown grave. Mr. Johnson tells inside stories of codes, trick devices for seeret communication—and he tells a new and amazing story about the famous Zimmerman note in the magazine of next Sun- day's Star. (Copyright 1930.) Position of Granite Industry, DESPITE the recent spectacular use of gran- ite, as in the erection of the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the bridge comnecting Philadelphia and Camgden, N. J, the granite in- dustry of the Southern seaboard faces a dif- ficult task in staying on a paying basis. The Arlington bridge stone came from North Cave- lina and the Philadelphia stone from Georgis. The greatest potential future for granite lies in its use for curbing and paving block, but the increase of concrete and asphalt have seri- ously cut this market. The granite is more costly, but the industry has a talking point in | the durahility,of the, material,, A survey of the i:{t;lnwomm heen condueied by the Bureau of es. ‘0