WAR WILES OF WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

WAR WILES OF WOMEN.

HEROINES' WORK FOR BRITAIN. POOLING THE GERMANS. There is now i n London Leonie van H°utte, the girl who with Louise de Jiettigmes, whose monument has just been unveiled at Lille, performed the greatest services that were ever rendered to the British forces during the war. ® Known as "Charlotte"— Mile, de Bettignie* was "Alice"— Mile, van Houtte collaborated with her chief in learning almost daily the number of reinforce°menta sent by the Germans to the Western front, the position of batteries, ana other invaluable information. In the performance of this task they organised a corps of over 100 informers. The reports of all those agents had to be collected, sifted, rewritten, and smuggled into Holland. "Charlotte" and ~r took most of the reports across the Dutch frontier themselves, usually tra\elling about as lace and cheese merchants. The reports were written on flimsy Japanese paper with fine mapping pens and Indian ink. The writing was in itself a fine art, as many as 3000 words appearing on a piece of paper no larger than an eyeglass. The papers were then rolled into pills, and these the women hid in their corsets, umbrella handles, and underneath the candles of cart lamps. A German agent at La Grenouille instead of opening one of the women's handbags, where there was sufficient evidence to endanger their lives, took a sausage from her provision box, and sliced it in wafers in vain. Mile .van Houtte was the first to be to e «iP 0n ' n^orrna tion supplied who ltt.™ 3 b r a Belgian woLan, remorse air 9 committed suicide in Mlle " van Houtte Utter Ca L<mise de Bettig'■B *°°n afterwards condemned to i e / e afterwards but