GUARDIANS OF THE GREAT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 41, 18 February 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

GUARDIANS OF THE GREAT.

WARTIME PLOT OF MASS MURDER. GERMAN ATTEMPTS TO CAUSE UPRISING OF INDIA—REVOLUTION SCHEME UNMASKED — WORLD'S LEADING STATESMEN AND SOLDIERS MARKED TO DIE —KAISER'S LETTER TO INDIAN PRINCES INTERCEPTED—FAMOUS OLD ARMCHAIR OF SCOTLAND YARD—WHEN VON PAPEN MADE HIS DISMAL BLUNDER.

(By EDWIN T. WOODHALIi.—AII Eights Eeserved.)

Life in the Special Branch of New Scotland Yard is the most exciting occupation in the world, just one adventure after another. In war-time this atmosphere of thrills was doubly intensified. Starting ■work in the morning, the detectives never tnew what fresh crop of surprises the day might bring forth. It was as though the little rooms in the granite building in Westminster were stages to which etrange actors came to play etrange parts for a Tv-hile, then vanish—for to Scotland Yard in war-time came the captured spies, the suspected spies, and the secret agents of the Allies.

September, 1915, was an outstanding month. It brought to the notice of the Special Branch the great flood of forgeries of the "G" series of British Treasury notes, the capture of J ;he Austrian dispatches from the United States which were found in the custody of an American journalist, and the great Indian assassination plot. From information received, the Special Branch knew that a gang of Indian revolutionaries were operating in the neutral territory of Switzerland, working in conjunction with the Germans upon plans for the simultaneous murder of all the leading men in the Allied countries. revealed that the actual assassinations in Messrs kept to the safe territories of the enemy. Details of Plot Confirmed. IMS ,1 SKrif S'S?dK.J £?» thxoSgh 'Afghanistan, I cannot -discover.

Kaiser's Letter To Indian Princes. •The Germane still kept »?»* aasnTiS s K°aSe? d t? a i a Euf j fffiS in India, which had been photoIShed down to the eize of a postage stamp and enclosed in a tiny tube to be concealed by the bearer. /;. Just as Britain had "9 Colonel LaWrence to negotiate with the Arabs, eo Germany had its aces of espionage to conduct counter-intrigues in the Orient. Some of these German agents, had succeeded in producing a hostile. spirit to the Allies among the tribes in Tripoli, notably with the Senussi tribe, who captured and held as prisoners a number ot Jiritisn eallore who were tlie survivors of a Wrecked warship. These prisonera were Sel by the Duke of Westminster who was conducting a guerrilla warfare against the Turkish army and the hostile tribes with his fleet of armoured cars. '. Scotland Yard had occasion to suppress a daily newspaper in England only once during the war. Sir Basil Thomson, chief of the special .branch, personally conducted the raid. The newspaper was "The Globe," which had helped the police on one or two occasions, but which blundered badly by Publishing the false Statement that .Lord Katchener had tendered his resignation to the King, while the true facts were that he was leaving the country on an important mission which had been kept secret. Such in action by ".The Globe" was contrary to public policy, and a warrant for the instant suppression of the newepaper was drawn up. Raid On English Newspaper. Sir Basil Thomson says: "I was not •ufficiently acquainted with the mechanical details of newepaper production to be able to instnuct the detectives as to what part of the machinery should be eeized to render it useless. We entered the premises between 5 and 6 p.m. Newsboys were hurrying in and out. The inspector showed the warrant to the manager, and the machines were stopped. Going downstairs I found a very obliging wan, who must have thought I was a distinguished visitor who wished to be phown over the plant. I said to him, 'Supposing you wanted to take away some part of the machinery which would make it impossible to run the machines until it was restored, and yet do no damage to the plant, what would you take?' 'Oh, that is easy/ said the man, and led me to a certain engine, from which he took a piece of machinery that I could hold in my hand. I took it, thanked him and carried it away!" That was how "The Globe" was suppressed nntil the time when the British Government came to an arrangement with the proprietors and allowed it to resume publication. There is in Scotland Yard an armchair an which every spy, real or suspected, sat down to face the examiners, and the average number of sitters was 28 in -each sveek of the war. Most of the suspected 6pies proved to be harmless, but the police net caught a lot of genuine enemy agents. The first master spy to be arrested by the "Yard was Carl Lody, alias "Mr. Charlie Inglis." a very brave man, who did not flinch'when he faced the-firiDg.squad,

Colonel Von Papen, who, in June, 1932, was appointed German Chancellor, helped the Allies quite a lot during the war— unintentionally, of course—by his blunders as a spy. He was the German military attache at Washington, D.C., U.S.A., and by bad luck or bad management most of his secret dispatches inevitably came into British hands. Von Papcn's Bad Blunder. On January 10, 1916, a Dutch steamship called at Falmouth and was boarded by naval officers. Von Papen and Captain Boyed, the naval attache at Washington, were both on board. The boarding officer insisted on looking through their papers. Von Papen vigorously insisted that his papers were inviolate by the "safe conduct" that had been granted by the British Government. He was told that the safe conduct applied to his own person but not to his bags and papers. On examination, damning evidence was discovered, for his cheque-books gave us a wealth of information. He had made large payments to men who were known to have committed acts of sabotage in U.S.A., and there were records of payments to Anton Kupferle, the spy who committed suicide in Brixton Prison, and other captured German spies. Bernstorff, in charge of the German Embassy at Washington, had solemnly declared that no member of his staff had any connection with sabotage and espionage, but as such men as Von Papen were exposed, the American Government decided to take drastic action. One of the strangest men who ever came to Scotland Yard during the war was an educated Jew who had been associated with Djemal Pasha, the Commander of the

9th German Army in Palestine. This Jew said ha was a native of Haifa, in Palestine, and was therefore a Turkish subject. His parents came from Rumania. He had taken a course of scientific research work in Berlin, before the war, and became Director of the Jewish Agricultural College -in ; Palestine. Djemal Pasha—whom he disliked—used him to gain advice on agricultural and economic matters. The Jew told the Special Branch chiefs of great friction between the Turkish and German Armies, and the loss of moral am'ong the men. He said he had been trying to get out of the country for a long time, and in the end induced Djemal Pasha .to let him go to Berlin, en route for Denmark to study economic conditions. From, Denmark he escaped to England. The Old Armchair of Scotland Yard. He went out to the deserts of Egypt, as agricultural adviser to the Zionists, and bored for water with amazing success. He revealed that his attention had first been called to the water , by reading in the .Bible of Josephus, who describes Caesarea as being surrounded by gardens for eight hours' walk in any direction, whereas at the present day it is a sandy desert right up to the walls of the town. He said the old springs must have been covered up by the encroachment of the sand, and that if only the British engineers would bore deep enough the water would gush forth and the desert again "blossom like the rose." So the spies, suspects and informers came to the old armchair at Scotland Yard. What secrets that chair could reveal if only it could speak. < Mata Hari eat in it, and rose with a grim warning ringing in h.er ears. She disregarded the warning and paid the penalty with her lif/».