A WOMAN SPY

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 November 1935, Page 12

A WOMAN SPY

INTRICATE “ALICE SERVICE” Since the publication of a volume of spy “memoirs” which proved to be on tho author’s own admission, fictitious., books describing the exploits of secret agents during the War have been regarded with a wary eye. The difficulty is that, by their very nature, the activities of spies cannot always bo cross-checkqd; one must take them largely on trust. This applies to Major Thomas Coulson’s biography of Louise de Bcttignies (Tho Queen of Spies), which recounts the experiences of a young Frenchwoman '"’ho, under tiro name of "Alice Dubois,” built up such an intricate spy system in and around Lille that it became known as the “Alice Service.” Louise Mario .Jean de Bcttignies was born in 1880 at Saint Armand, in the north of France, of a noble family. She considered devoting her life to religion, but was “too active, too tumultuous” do find enduring happiness in the cloister. She therefore went to England, crammed foifr years’ study into two years at Girtdn, continued her studies in Italy, and found employment in tho household pf Count Mikieskyin Lemberg, Poland, where she learned to speak fluent Gcrihan. ( She was living in Belgium at the outbreak of the war. When the Germans invaded Lille she and her elder sister Germaine, ■ instead of -fleeing from tho city, worked in the military hospitals, and helped the destitute townspeople. To ensure communication with the outside world a clandestine “Family Rost” was organised. Louise became'tho first courier. She smuggled letters from tire Belgians in tho occupied territory across the frontier, and later made her way to England. The British aiithorities. were so 1 impressed with her resourcefulness that they induced her to smuggle herself back and become a secret service agent. ASTONISHING; STRENGTH That was the genesis of “Alice Dubois,” of whom Major Coulson says: — Louise had nothing in. common with tho prevailing picture of the woman spy Placed among the more spectacular women spies like the’glamorous “Mata Hari,” the Maria Lesser of legendary fame, or the demoniacal Irma Staub, the slender, modest Louise might' be overlooked as ' insignificant

It is in accordance with tradition that every woman spy is glamorously beautiful. In this respect Louise is a bitter disappointment The fil’st impression one ..got. of her was that she was far too fragile for the exacting work she was performing. It required close personal acquaintance' to recognise that her body was like fine tempered , steel, of astonisliing strength. At the outset she was suspected by a German officer because she carried an English letter. This was a recommendation to the Brussels representative of the “Cereal. Company”, for employment and assistance, a company oittwai'dly bona fide, and doing actual business, but really a secret service Organisation with headqiiarters in Flushing and agents distributed over Holland and Belgium, who. included some of the more famous German spies. Many mushroom firms Of the kind sprang up early in the War, Major Coplson states; some even established branches in Germany. Loyise, by tact and tenacity, bluffed her way through to Lille and began organising a secret band of workers. As a “cover” she could produce evidence of dealing in car-loads of cheese, potatoes, and canned goods; she became dressmaker, teacher.. ,of languages, or saleswoman as occasion demanded, and dwellers along the country lanes soon became familiar With her demure little figure as she tramped bravely along with a basket of needlework on her arm. Her secret journeys and visits to agents in the occupied territory make thrilling and absorbing reading, for they were punctuated by astonishing escapes. In Lille itself Louise collected her agents’ missives from a few reliable points to which ■ they were brought from shops and cafes used as “letter boxes.” Twice a week she waited until after curfew hour, when risk of visits from ot|ier residents . ended, then sat half or all the night behind a carefully shielded window summarising the information in the service code in microscopic writing on a specially thin paper.

SMUGGLED TO ENGLAND The report was then handed to a courier —Mlle. L’Hermite, Louise Thulicz, Marie Van Houtte —who would smuggle it over the Dutch frontier, and so to England; or in special cases Louise would take it herself. A silk paper was employed, rather smaller and thinner but tougher than an ordinary cigarette paper. . . . On one of these delicate morsels of paper Louise could write, in special ink and with a fine pen, as many as two thousand words. The message was written in code so that the minimum number of words needed to be employed and so that the meaning would be obscure in case of seizure. Invisible ink was often used. Once, Major Coulson states, a message in invisible ink was conveyed over a long distance on the butterfly headgear of a Sister of Charity; it did not reach its destination because a stubborn Protestant police officer ordered her to return to her convent. Willet and another expert, Geyter, devised a transparent film, which later became the commercial cellophane, of such fineness that it could bo super-imposed on it family photograph without exciting suspicion, though it contained invisible writing. One agent, held as a suspect, carried two pellets of paper—messages from Louise and the stationmaster at Ath — in a. hollow artificial eye. She was eventually caught, smuggling a. woman confederate past the police post at Froyennes, between two German zones, without a. passport, subjected to a tormenting inquisition, condemned to death as a spy, reprieved, and sent to a prison near Cologne, where she died aften an operation for a tumour on September 17, 1918.