“WHEN I WAS SPY”

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1929, Page 9

“WHEN I WAS SPY”

BADEN-POWELL'S EXPLOITS. A tribute was recently paid to the secret service work of Sir Robert Baden-Powell by Mr. Winifred Ludecke, a German, in his book, “Behind the Scenes of Espionage,” and aroused grpat interest in Sir Robert’s exploits as a

spy“Once I had. to learn something about tho fortifications of .the Dardanelles,” said Sir Robert in the course of an interview with the Daily Mail. “I took passage in a British coasting vessel. As we neared a fort the vessel anchored, and I put off in a small boat ostensibly to fish, but actually to take soundings and angles. “The Turks kept ordering the captain —who was in my confidence'—to move his ship, as it was in prohibited waters, but he declared that that was impossible, as his engines had broken down. He called the Turks to listen to the hammering that was taking place in the engine room. We got aw’ay with the ruse, and so under their noses I learned the Turk’s secrets. “On another occasion we wanted to know something about the defence of Constantinople. There was a great deal of talk about tho secret new guns the Turks had got. I was ordered to do my best. I knew a very charming American woman in Constantinople. I went there as an American, and met my friend. She helped me all she could. She invited the Turkish officers to tea, I and was soon a great favourite. She so managed matters that she got an invitation to take tea with them and bring a ‘friend.’ 1 was the friend. We were walking about, and the American woman suddenly called attention to guns which were covered with sheets. ‘Oh, do let me look at them,’ she said. ‘I can’t do that,’ replied a Turkish officer. ‘They are our secret guns.’ ‘Well, I’m going to look under the sheet,’ said the American woman. ‘Very well, if you must you must,’ said the Turk, ‘but you will see nothing—they are the same old guns we have had for twenty years. We have just covered them over to make people believe that they are new ones.’ “I was really only a hanger-on of the intelligence service, and was sent to countries in which the regular ..gents were too well known to do any good. I was captured once in Russia, but managed to escape. The Russians had developed a remarkable new searchlight of which we had to know. I was in the guise of a tourist, and in my innocence blundered right across the place where night after night they were carrying on their experiments. “The Russians, however, were not cpiito so simple. * They arrested me. Fortunately they d/d not put me in prison, but took me to St. Petersburg and put me in an hotel in charge of a detective. I managed to give him the slip and make my way to an English ship, where by passing as one of the crew I got clear away.”