FOREIGN SPIES IN ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2310, 9 June 1898, Page 49

FOREIGN SPIES IN ENGLAND.

It has probably struck nearly every Britisher at some time or other as being remarkable that, while Great Britain 1 is the envy of the world, isolated, hated, and dreaded by nearly, every other nation, nothing is ever heard of attempts of foreign Governments to procure military and naval secrets by the employment of spies, as we know has been the case in connection with other nation more or less frequently oj: late. To those to whom the thought has occurred, it may come as a surprising bit of news that foreign espionage exists in Great Britain m a greater scale than in any other country in the world. Stories of attempts to steal important State secrets do not often leak out, because those who know of them realise the possible results of a sudden upheaval of public opinion, and the facts seldom get past the doors of the Admiralty or ' War Office. But more than one daring and ingenious attempt has been made in the lasb few years by foreign agents here to get hold of valuable State information, the loss of which would deprive us of no small portion of our power should we enter into a conflict with the nation possessed of the betrayed secret. Not very long ago the Admiralty was thrown into a state of considerable anxiety by the suspicion, which grew deeper as inquiries were prosecuted, that two or three minor clerks were in secret communication with a foreign power, who had purchased for a sum unknown some details of an Improvement in torpedo-destroyers we were at the time making. How the fact leaked out we are not in a position to say, but, without being accused oi' having a reason specified to them, the sus- ; pected clerks were immediately cashiered. 1 The affaii was not of grave importance itself, tffife ijjj serves to; (shave; thajt we are nofe ec-

tirely free of men wlio are willing to set " their birthright for a mess of pottage "— the nation's honour and supremacy foi foreign gold. The Navy being, as. all the world Jjnow9i the strong right hand of the British iiation, the main endeavours of foreign Powers tc obtain our valuable secrets are devoted tc the Admiralty and its vast work. There are I many foreigners in London who, posing as British inventors, send plans up to r ht Admiralty, not in the hope that they will ever be accepted, of which they stand nc possible chance, but in the hope that accepted Government plans may by accidsnt I be returned in their stead. I ' The idea seems a highly improbable one, . and the plan hopelessly barren. Nevertke- | jess, (-hose foreign spies persist in thsii ' eiuKssy arrexapU, and no sooner have one set " oi plans been retxirned to them than they , send others with the same hoped-for object. ' As it happens, the majority of these estimable gentlemen are well known at the Admiralty, and special precautions are taken to prevent any possibility of even the, smallest detail of a Government plan being returned with or in mistake for any of their decoy ducks. Consequently the profession must be 1 rather doleful. ' On one occasion, however, owing to a mistake made by a minor official, accepted Government plans were returned in the place c t the impossible plans of one of these men of bad intentions. The accepted plans -were, as it happened, of the highest value, and the foreign spy would have had every reason' to congratulate himself and his Government employers had he become possessed of 'them. Happily, however, the error was discovered . almost immediately after the dispatch of the ' plans, and a messenger was sent post hasfce to St. Martin's-le-Grand to stop th© letter, j which, with the ready assistance of the post office officials, he was successful in doing, i What would have been the result had he failed, we can only guess at. Probably the , spy would ahve been arrested before he could ; part with or copy the plans. Even if he hal been so fortunate as to be able to do that, we should as likely as not have been thrown into war with the foreign nation who had set the robbery or? foot. A high official of the Government assured the present writer in a recent interview that, injnany cases where foreigners take clerkships in Great Britain at salaries Britishers would scorn, they are able to do so for the simple reason that they are in direct pay cf their respective Governments, Avho employ them to learn all they can, by fair means cr .foul, concerning those things it i in the interest of foreign countries to know about us, and which are carefully guarded secrets here. It is because of this elaborate system of espionage that big army and navy contractors are very loth to engage foreign clerks in their offices, and are willing to pay double salaries to Britishers rather than risk the chances of employing a spy. , . The seriousness of this statement is per-. ; feetly obvious, when w© consider th© eiunv mous number 'of foreign clerks "employed in great manufactories, and a lurid, light is thus thrown upon the hitherto mysterious problem of th& foreign clerks undercutting Britishers. We need not say that only. a. small percentage of the former can have "been carrying on espionage here, but to know even that is so is a startling awakening from the ' general fallacy that we are free from foreign spies. The same authority told me, in illustrating his statement, that a certain celebrated firm of shipbuilders at on© time employed a ( number of German draughtsmen, who gave every possible satisfaction. But it chanced one day that certain important papers, relating to a valuable improvement In men-of-war engines, were missing, and the most ex> } haustive' search failed to throw a light upon their disappearance. Some few days later, the papers were discovered just as though they had never been lost ; and certain circumstances aroused grave suspicion, which was attached to one of the German draughtsmen. Secret inquiries showed that th© plans had been taken from the office and traced, after which the* were returned to their pigeon hoi©. What became of the tracings of the plaas | can easily be gathered from the fact that i three months later the German Government I began making engines on this approved plan, | which has, ■however, since become obsolete ' in our navy in 'consequence of imich more ■ valuable and important fmprovements. But from that day to this, every man in that shipbuilding yard and. office haa, been a Britisher born and bred.— -Tit Bits.