EUROPE'S SCHOOLS FOR SPIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 27

EUROPE'S SCHOOLS FOR SPIES

•; : In many counties in Europe earnest

f. young men and women1 are studying = \ to be spies, says a writer in the Ade- .' laide "Chronicle." Since the French War Ministry started a "college" for training spies iri connection with its secret 2nd and 3rd Bureaux, schools of espionage are : known to have been founded by the Governments of Germany, Italy, and ".Russia. X 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 i", I'make or type of aircraft and estimate T its speed. Each learner-spy is trained .in the use of long-range cameras If and in map-making. A special politi- «<■ cal/training enables them to tell at a »jglance the strategic or diplomatic importance of any document. ■ X Germany has a similar school in an '■'/. :anne'xe behind the War Office in BerV lin's West End. Here are trained the ■ v 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 are., 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, occasionally1 by industrialists anxious to keep abreast with new development in rival factories. At one time this form of spying was particularly active in Germany; today 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 hr ; 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 War 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 French 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 in a few weeks. Hundreds of Soyiet citizens receive booklets and courses by post to help in the drive against spies. The radio broadcasts "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, he found the "bears" to be spies from a neighbouring country!