THE SPY SYSTEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 April 1935, Page 2

THE SPY SYSTEM.

GLOVES AND LINGERIE. PEACE AND WAR STORIES. During the twelve months between October, 1932, and October, 1933, 188 people were convicted of spying in European countries alone. Although caught in times of peace, 33 of them suffered the death penalty. In Central Europe today some 10,000 men and women are engaged on secret service work. Outside Europe, too, spies are active. Japan is spending more than £BOO,OOO upon its secret service organisations in the budget year of 1934-35. So spying seems to have become a major industry—if we are to believe Mr. Richard W. Rowan.

Great Britain, it seems, is playing the -spy game as keenly as any of her neighbours. According to Mr. Rowan, the combined espionage and counter-espionage organisations of the Empire are, as a unit, presumably the best of modern times. The British Secret Service costs between £200,000 and £300,000 annually, and has a reputation for seeing all and knowing all. Britain knows how to spend money where it will count most. Considering the importance of Britain and her Empire, Mr. Rowan does not consider that a peacetime expenditure of £3,000,000 would be excessive. During the final years of the war, we are told, we were spending more than £1,500,000 a month on intelligence work. The Germans were spending far more, and so were the French. We are asked to believe that, with defeat storing them in the face, German agents were preparing some dirty work in the last days of the war.

Only the sudden collapse of the Germanic allies in 1910 and the merest chance disclosure prevented secret agents from spreading a deadly epidemic through France and Italy. Anarchist elements had already been engaged to carry bacteria cultures, such as cholera bacteria, from Switzerland into the belligerent countries. The dropping out of Turkey, Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary, the request for an Armistice coming from German General Headquarters, frustrated this diabolical attack just as it was about to begin. At the same time, says Mr. Rowan, there was an alleged attempt to send cholera culture to Russia in fountain pens, LONG AND SHORT STITCHES. But spies are up to all kinds of shady tricks. The women have to be watched with special care. Long and short stitches on gloves and gowns, and even on the embroidered “clocks” on silk stockings, might form a message in dot-and-dash code. The daintily-sewn lingerie of one attractive woman agent transmitted hundreds of words in this manner. She was caught when a woman operative, searching her, chanced to notice that the material of her under garments was not of fine enough texture to warrant such delicate workmanship. In much the same way an ingenious spy, who posed as a window cleaner in order to photograph official papers, was caught because he forgot to apply for the regular window cleaner’s wages. Even socks —they sound so much more innocent than stockings—are suspect. A captured spy’s socks we learn were found to contain a very few milligrams of silver salt, yet enough for a spy’s purpose. One sock soaked in a glass of water would provide a quantity of rare chemical ink, one of the most difficult to develop and detect. Eggs, too, may not be the harmless things they look. Some bright person discovered that if you boiled them hard and wrote on the surface with a solution of vinegar and alum they would be outwardly unmarked. But crack the shell and upon the solid albumen dark brown lettering will be found. SENTENCED TO DEATH.

Spies, says Mr. Rowan, either perish miserably or retire to write their reminiscences. Mr. Nicholas Snowden belongs to the latter class. His real name seems to be Soltesz, and during the war he operated on the Eastern fronts for the Austro-Hungarian armies. He was a youth of 18 in 1914. Instead of joining the army he was sent to a school to learn spying, as other people learn Latin.

Mr. Snowden must be one of the few people alive to-day who have been sentenced to death and lived to tell the tale. After the war, when the Versailles Treaty made his part of Hungary into Czechoslovakian territory, he worked against the Hungarians. He was caught and tried.

“As I entered the room, al! who were present rose and stood while Captain Szilassy read the verdict. His announcement was that the jury found me guil.ty of spying upon the military secrets of the Hungarian Army and that under the Austro-Hungarian Penal Code, section 321, chapter 1, I was therefore sentenced to degradation from the rank of lieutenant and to the withdrawal of all my war citations (each was named separately), and to death by hanging.” At his appeal before the Supreme Military Court the death sentence was confirmed. Later, however, he was reprieved and exchanged in a batch of political prisoners. Now, from the safety, of South America, he looks back on his hectic past—and makes it into an exciting book. Why people become spies is a bit of a mystery. They cannot hope for much gain or fame. But they certainly have their uses; their exploits make good reading, and future wars, says the pessimistic Mr. Rowan, are going to be won or lost on the “mental front”—the province of the spy and saboteur.—Webster Evans, in “John o’ London’s Weekly.”