SECRET SERVICE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 15 August 1927, Page 8

SECRET SERVICE.

OPERATIONS IN GERMANY. DIKING THE' WAR, SYDNEY. July 20. Speaking to yieimlbei's of the Eegaey (Jliib, Captain J. S. Hunter gave some in.teresiti.ng details of the working of the British secret service in Germany, both xluring. the war a,ml since. He himself .lie .staid, had. oiten feigned deafness for 24 hours, and total blindness for two days, had been “married” (for official purposes only), and had been provided with “brothers” and “sisters,” in the pursuance of this work. During the waif over a thousand men and a hundred women were engaged in carrying information across the border (generally through Holland); the- salaries bill each week exceeded £'78.000, and other expenses reached £75,000. Until 1917 Hoi lan i d was the easiest route to and from Germany. but in that year the regulations for transit were made so severe that travellers were even subjected to acid baths in order to ensure that they'd id not carry cypher messages written in invisible ink about their persons. The Berlin beer-gardens had always been a favorite place for gaining infonnation. Any scraps that might ibe picked nip in conversation there were quickly memorised and conveyed to “headqualters” at Potsdam, right in the thick of the enemy’s organisation. Secret service agents hlad also to travel many thousands of miles by railway. The value of pieces o.f information gleaned in tills way could Ik* exannpled by the fact that one of the first hints of an impending shortage of glycerine came from a notice in a Gerinlan railway carriage, requesting asset igers to leave the .stones and pips of any fruit they ate at a .station, so that they might, he treated bv a chemical nrocCsis and glycerine extracted from them. The Germans made no secret during the war of the extent to which they used the factories of Switzerland. Trains used to run; across the (border lahellled. quite openly, “To Switzerland ; goods to. be converted into war material.” .and run hack labelled. “War material!, from Switzerland.”