SCHOOLS FOR SPIES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 195, 31 May 1938, Page 3

SCHOOLS FOR SPIES

TRAINING IN EUROPE. YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN. In many countries in Europe earnest young men and women are studying to lie spies, says a writer in the Adelaide “Chronicle.” Since the French War Ministry started a “college’’ for training spies in connection with its secret 2nd and 3rd Bureaux, schools of espionage are known to have been founded by the Governments of Germany, Italy, and R ussi a.

No man or woman may enter the French Secret' Service without first taking a course at this school. They have to pass a technical examination in that branch of military activities which they intend to “.investigate” abroad. Those who will root out the air secrets of foreign Powers must understand every aspect of aviation ; they must be able to recognise any make or type of aircraft and estimate its speed. Each learner-spy is trained in the use of long-range cameras and in map-making. A special political training enables them to tell at a glance the strategic or diplomatic importance of any document. Germany has a similar school in an annexe behind the War Office in Berlin’s West End. • Here are trained the spies whom Germany needs for its efficient world-wide espionage system. Not all its spies, however, start at a school. Many of them “graduate” there, first being given such simple jobs as supervising the activities of fellow-Germans in foreign countries. Of the 20,000 Germans resident in England, 400 are estimated to be doing this sort of work. Not all these “secret police” will become professionals at the game, probably very few of them have any ambition to enter the Secret Service itself. Most of them are ordinary low-paid workers—domestic servants and typists—who arc in privileged positions from which they may observe refugees and examine their correspondence. Mr Winston Churchill has drawn the attention of the House of Commons to the matter, and the Home Office is reported to have considered the question of criminal proceedings. Little known to • the general public is the system of industrial and commercial espionage which has been intensified in 'Europe and America since the depression. Often it- is promoted by Governments, occasionally by industrialists anxious to keep abreast with new development in rival factories. Ait one time this form of spying was particularly active in Germany; to-day industrial spies may be found in the factories and laboratories of America, England, and the Soviet. Few new inventions and chemical processes capable of use in war-time escape this attention. The success of Soviet methods in this connection was shown when a Moscow newspaper congratulated the German Army on the results of a secret demonstration of a new gun.

• Much of modern espionage is devoted to detecting spies. “Set a thief to catch a thief” is not enough. The public, too, must learn to help, to recognise the sinister purport of apparently innocent questions of strangers. During the Great Afar Germany succeeded in placing spies throughout the eastern departments of France as hairdressers, agricultural workers, commercial travellers, teachers, domestic servants, and shop assistants. “Next time” the Irench public will be trained to look out for enemy agents and .restrict conversation to the weather.

The Soviet Government believes the man and woman in the street can play a big part in spy-detection. And not by any “hush-hush” methods. The bookstalls in the streets and railway stations of Moscow and Leningrad advertise pamphlets “On Certain Insidious Methods of Foreign Intelligence Services” and “On Certain Methods and Ways of Foreign Spying Organs and Their Trotskyite-Bukharinite Agents.” These have proved immensely popular, and 125,000 copies of the first- were sold iu a few weeks. Hundreds of Soviet citizens receive booklets and courses by post to help in the drive against spies. The radio broadcast “spy stories” to encourage amateur spy-hunters. They were told recently of a Soviet frontier-guard, who spotted some bears playing among the trees. On fetching his binoculars, lie found the “bears” to be spies from a neighbouring country!