SPIES IN ENGLAND.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 19 March 1919, Page 2

SPIES IN ENGLAND.

SECRET SERVICE WORK

MEN WHO WERE "DEALT WITH."

Since the day early in the war when the press was enjoined not to report, except by official instruction, anything of any proceedings taken against spies, or of the fate of certain cunning persons who fell into the hands of the police, little or nothing has been written of the methods of the British Secret Service, whose duty it was to combat the machinations of German spies and their agents. Some interesting details are, however, now becoming known.

The authorities at one time were puzzled by the fact that Morse signals were flashed out from the seafront of Pavensey. Special watch was kept on a cottage. No lights were ever shown, but the authorities discovered that after dusk people appeared at an upper window and manipulated what appeared to be the dial of an ordinary clock. At last the cottage was raided, and it was discovered that the dial was fitted with a dark prism, which could be focussed on the headlight of a fishing smack anchored off shore. The flashes thus produced were invisible to anyone standing on the beach, but out in the Channel could be easily read by men ori a submarine or other craft. After this incident boats at anchor were forbidden to 'carry headlights.

About Christmas, 1914, a foreign diplomat in London received an anonymous gift of pate de foie gras. Suspicion was aroused, and analysis revealed the presence of deadly poison. The author of this outrage was Delieved to be one of three aliens who were then under surveillance, and to each of these a tin of foie gras, exactly similar in appearance to the poisoned package, was despatched without any indication as to its origin. One of the trio became alarmed by what he concluded to be the discovery of his^ villainy, and in order to divert suspicion he awakened his landlady in the middle of the night, declaring that he had been poisoned. Medical aid was promptly summoned, and the police were called in, with I;he< result that .the scoundrel was arrested. The tin he had received contained nothing poisonous. His betrayal was entirely due to his own guilty- conscience.

The whole coastline from Harwich to Hampshire was infested with, nests of spies. That little seaside resort, Seaford, had been visited for years by a foreigner who rented a large furnished house during the months of August and September. His arrival usually excited no suspicion, but in 1914 people began to wonder why a lonely stranger rented an entire house commanding an uninterrupted view of Newhaven harbor, and why he spent so much time at Birling Gap, which is a point on the coast between Seaford and Eastbourne where the telegraph cables enter the sea. 7 Ultimately, though he managed to avoid arrest at Seaford, he was afterwards captured at Folkestone—and dealt with. -.Between the coast and Tunbridge V\ ells, which was the headquarters of a British army corps, a party of gipsies were continually "wandering round the villages unchallenged, until an officer made the interesting discovery that these people could not converse m Romany, which is the language of the nomad. Investigation proved conclusively that by pretending to trade with the, country folk and tell fortunes, information had been secured as to the movements of troops in the Southern Command. Prompt and dras-, tic action followed these revelations During the war twelve spies were shot at the Tower of London; another Ikupferle, hanged himself at Brixton prison in the concluding stages of his trial; while others have been sentenced to death and afterwards reprieved or sentenced to terms of penal servitude By means of information supplied by members of the public the authorities nave sometimes been put on the track ol those whom it has been deemed expedient to watch or remove; but in the majority of cases the necessary clues have been secured by the efforts of Secret Service agents, and almost as frequently through some trifling slip or blunder of the culprits themselves