Evening Star Newspaper, April 6, 1930, Page 95

. S THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL 6, Were British Responsible for Exposing Zimmermann Note? Radio’s Part in Nipping Plot Against United States Proved a Risk in Secret Communica- tion by Wireless A Belgian priest was one of the few who successfully used the radio for spy messages. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of true World War spy stories. In some instances the author has used intentional inaccuracies to protect American secret agents; otherwise the information is authenticated by fact or by word ®/ participants STREAM of dark memory is the ! Scarpe flowing through No Man’'s , Land of the great battle-fields of northern France—a Styx that many souls have crossed. Doubly sinister, it was suspected once of being a hidden chan- nel of the secret war, bearing to the German lines reports from their spies among the Brit- ish. At night agents would launch upon the noiseless current a log, a box, anything that would carry a hidden message. Through the British lines it would glide unchallenged across No Man’'s Land into the German lines, to be taken from the water by those who waited. Discovering that trick, British spy-hunters stretched across the Scarpe nets that took a strange and sometimes gruesome haul. That early war incident was prophetic. Al- lied and American spy-chasers scanned broader waters and spread a net of counter espionage with meshes reaching over Europe. The net was cunningly devised, close-knit, to catch German spies, or prevent their moving about or communicating with one another or with their masters. Communication is one of the most important aspects of secret service. A spy who cannot communicate his news in time is about as use- ful as no spy at all. The French might as well have had no spy at a German headquarters to warn them of the big German attack of May 27, 1918. His warning message was received June 6. It is often easier to get a spy in than to. get his repcrt out. N the World War, if allies and Americans could have solved that problem satisfacto- rily. their secret services would have been twice as deadly. They tried innumerable ways to enable their agents in German territory to get information over in time to be of use. One by one, inexorably, German counter-espionage dis- covered and frustrated most. The Germans had the same trouble. Near the end of the war, allied scientists, including Americans, were put to work to devise some system of visual signaling, perhaps infra- red rays, both certain and safe. The Armistice came before they had succeeded. Since then, probably all the great secret services have been experimenting with concealed radio. In the secret war the intensest struggle is between, the spy and spy-messenger trying to pass on their information rapidly enough to To get the message through on time! That was the job of the visible ink, of course. harm the enemy and the ‘counter-espionage service of that enemy trying to catch the spy. Every one’s hand is against the spy. Who would nrot fear a stab in the back more than a blow in the face? The spy is one of the most dangerous weapons in modern war’s arsenal. Like the criminal, he is hunted by all. All soldiers and civilians were urged to silence by ' large signs. Every ex-doughboy remembers the French exhorfation, “Taisez vous! Mefiez vous! Les oreilles ennemis- vous ecoutent!” or its American translation, “Keep your mouth shut!” The counter-espionage idea was ‘Controle everything,” meaning in English “supervise,” “check up on,” everything. So France, from sea to front, lived under controles, port controle, frontier controle, road controle, mail controle, telegraph controle, wireless controle—the meshes of the net of spy controle. No wonder the spies were dangerous and gamy. All too often they wriggled through. N a cafe in a Swiss city near the French frontier an inconspicuous looking man sat eating. His green Alpine hat hung on a peg. To his table came a second, shabbily clad, who hung on the same peg the same sort of hat, ordered luncheon, then leaned forward apolo- getically. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “where is num- ber 15 on this street?” “Certainly,” the first replied. is very near you.” He took from the peg a green Alpine hat and walked out. Soon the second man also left the cafe and was lost i the crowd. In a darkened room nearby the first man greeted another who had awaited him and removed his green Alpine hat. “We met all right,” he said. “He had the password, and his hat the right crease.” With a knife they split carefully the quill of the hat's jaunty feather, disclosing a tight- rolled spill of thinnest paper upon which a message had been cleverly photographed. That method was comparatively safe once the messenger had crossed from France into neutral Switzerland, but suppose he could not cross? How to get his information to the many Swiss forwarding stations that would speed it across still another border into Germany? “Number 15 HE spy-chasers at the French frontier sta- tions at Pontarlier and Bellegarde had noses worthy Cyrano de Bergerac. They smelled out many things, examining, questioning those who traveled back and forth, no matter how authentic their passports, how innocent their luggage. One sensitive nose trembled as its owner thrust it into a baggage car. “Nom d'une pipe!” he exclaimed. smell, an odor, a stench!” But carefully acquired habit warned him— “Better see what % is.” He followed his pro- testing nose to where lay the carcass of a hare, sent, according to the tag, by a good French- woman in Besancon to another in Geneva. “But why, do you figure,” the counter-spy asked himself, “should any one send any one a “What a World War secret agents. They even wrote messages on the skin of a courier—in in- By Thomas M. Johnson. (Famous War Correspondem.) 1930. ~ Queer Spy Tricks to Outwit the Enem hare so evidently long deceased? Alors, one will investigate this malodorous hare. “C'est pour la France!” Bravely, he passed his hand over the unruffled fur, once, twice—what was that—a little lump? With his knife he cut the skin—and brought forth a tight-rolled spill of thin paper. “Clever,” exclaimed the spy-chaser. “But they took too much time doing it—especially this hot weather. And now about that dear French lady of Besancon.” ; ONE trick took far longer to discover. A German spy in Belfort, near the American zone, used it to get his most important mes- sage to a forwarding agency in Switzerland. On the French side of the frontier he would board one of the through trains that included a dining car. At the first Swiss station a con- federate entered the car and maneuvered so as to take a designated seat, just left by the first after picking his teeth leisurely. Presently the confederate would spill wine on the table cloth, in embarrassment cover it with his napkin, then continue eating. The first spy got off at the frontier and returned to Belfort. But before he got off he had written his message on the table cloth with invisible ink contained in his toothpick. The second had developed the message under pretense of spill- ing wine, read it, then covered it long enough for it to fade again. How catch such spies and spy messengers? How plug the stealthy holes they bored, against the trickle of vital information? In answer, counter-espionage made spying more danger- ous in this war than ever before. Usually there was a rogues’ gallery, photo- graphs of known enemy spies and agents— which explains why spies do not have their pictures taken at Christmas, or any other time. Knowingly, that is. Some photographs that were plainly enlargements had stories thrilling or amusing. The originals had been taken, perhaps, as the spy enlered a known secret - service office in Germany by allied agents car- rying concealed tiny cameras. In Belgium and occupied France these snapshots were made by children apparently innocently playing, ac- tually photographing all who entered such places as Fraulein Doktor’s spy school in Ant- werp. These photographs the allies inter- changed, and our G-2-B contributed with pleas- ure a picture of Otto Preiss, the former Amer- ican soldier believed in German secret service in Spain. Sometimes German spies’ pictures appeared on circulars like police general alarms, dis- tributed to allied spy-chasers. SUSPECT lists were important meshes of the net, like criminal records of “previous con- victions” tripping the old-timer. Many were on the vast naval list already described, with its 100,000 names furnished by every allied se- cret service and by counter-espionage forces in the Unitéd States that Mr. A. Bruce Bielaski of the Department of Justice estimated at 700,- 000. An American secret service officer once attended a Washington dinner, of half the | German submarineswere thick off the French coast, picking ‘up messages—until the Amer- ican dollar outbribed them with fisherfolk. guests of which were on that list—and some were Government officials. Perhaps it was too all-inclusive, numbering some who had merely corresponded with well known Germans. But intelligence preferred too much information rather than too little, and when Secretary of War Baker asked Gen. Churchill if the secret files contained much about him, Gen. Churchill replied that they did. But Mr. Baker was no suspect. The G. H. Q, A. E. F. suspect list contained a comparatively modest 15,000 names, and per- haps even a few of those got there like that of a certain newspaper executive, who, when he . tried to enter France, went through a terrific examination because his name was on the sus- pect lists of three countries. A former news- paper man turned I. P. had put it there to get even with the man who had walked into the city room one day and remarked: “You're fired!” . THE cross-questioning he went - the port did not end things for a although it seemed to. He might think he passed with colors flying, but upon the port returned to him with bows would be den tiny marks that meant to every fu allied examiner that the holder was still a sus- pect. That was only one of many tricks of a port controle. G-2 of the American services of supply investigated 10,388 applications for pass- ports, and refused visas to 323. It had data on . 140,900 persons, including all the 8,400 Amer- icans living in Prance. . . Near ports the Americans used—Brest, Bor- deaux, St. Nazaire—the net was spread thickly. The fact was not advertised, but our naval in- telligence found German naval spies thick on the French west coast. Landed by night from submarines on lonely shores, they tried to Lribe French fishermen to signal news of what Amer- ican transports were doing, or, failing that, they themselves did the signaling. 5 So for good American dollars, groups of French fishermen were hired, who thereafter sometimes sold fish to the German submarine crews and otherwise kept such good tabs on them that naval intelligence figures showed & ° falling off in submarine activities around Amere . ican ports in France. Harder than port control was frontier com~ . trol. No matter how strong the barrier of barbed wire, sentries and police dogs, it was difficult to prevent spies sneaking into France through woods and bypaths from Spain or Switzerland. Using many disguises, many in- ventions, German spies were not lacking in cold ° courage to run the allied gantlet. séiigg A WELL known German spy, Koenigs, once . crossed the frontier disguised as a jockey, with a saddle under his arm and a Longchamps contract in his pocket. Many pretended to represent Swiss watch firms, with credentials and business cards, even sample watches. All had passports. An allied woman spy found out how they got them, using the familiar weapon, drink, to make Leonardy, an Austrian operating from Switzerland, boast that the Aus- trian legation at Bern would supply any pass- port he wanted, for any country. Every Teu- tonic agent in Switzerland had at least three - passports, one German or Austrian, one Swiss, one of the allied country where he intended going. ; “False passports” were often real ones, ale tered. Many were takén from allied civilians interned in Germany. Submarines took them . from crews of neutral ships. One German's entire job in Switzerland was to buy passports, but the Germans made their own, too, in a cellar in Geneva. A group of Russian Jews in Christiania would sell a passport for any couns try for as low as $10. When the famous Ford peace party reached Christiania, these business Continued on Twenty-first Page