KAISER'S SECRET SPEECH.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144778, 7 September 1915, Page 5

KAISER'S SECRET SPEECH.

GERMANY’S SPY ARMY, REMARKABLE DISCLOSURES. Mr. W. le Queux, who has made so great a study of espionage in France, and, as he admits, ‘‘has done a bit of it on his own,” lectured at Bath in June on the spy peril. In the course of his opening remarks, Mr. le Queux read a telegram from Lord Charles Bcresford, who said:—“l wish tou every success in’ your lecture. The German spy peril is very serious, and in my opinion tb© authorities are not taking adequate steps to meet it.” In his lecture, Mr. lo Queux explained that he had spent half his life travelling in order to collect information, and to reproduce it in the form which he hoped might have been interesting fiction. For a number of years he had made a special study of the secret service system of the Powers in Europe. Ho thought he could with modesty claim he was the first person in Great Britain to discover the hostile intention of the Kaiser, It came about briefly in, this way. Early in 1907 he was in Berlin studying the gay night life of that city for the purpose of writing a book, and in the course of many evenings spent in those gay surroundings he made the acquaintance of a young German actress, to whom he was able to be of some little service. She revealed to him that her brother, a Prussian officer, had been sent to England as a spy. At first h© took the statement with the proverbial grain of salt, but on his return to England, what he \it his business to discover showed the statement was true. He found that in 1907 a perfect network of spies was being spread over the face of Great Britain. '"With that knowledge ho went to the "War Office, where a very affable gentleman told him there was nothing in it. THE ADVICE OF LORD ROBERTS. He then saw Lord Roberts, who realised the gravity of the and urged him to continue his inquiries. He did so, discovered much more evidence, and three months later returned to the War Office, where was at once formed a special department to foil the German espionage. In that department ho (Mr. le Queux) became a voluntary assistant, and from that day to the present had remained so. (Applause.) Although he had been m practically every corner of Europe, ho had never asked one penny as recompense. and he had paid the whole of his travelling expenses. Everything he stated oould bo substantiated by reports in the archives of the War. Office. On June 20, 190 S, he returned from Berlin with a document which the German. Government would have given many thousand pounds to get from him. It was an accurate verbatim report of the secret speech delivered by the Kaiser at a Council held at Potsdam Palace oil June 2, 1908, to Ministers, admirals, generals, and chiefs of the . Federal States. KAISER’S SECRET SPEECH. The speech took ovor three hours to deliver, and for five hours afterwards was discussed. The report he brought home was placed before the next meeting of the British Cabinet, and discussed. At first some little suspicion was cast upon it—had the speech ever been delivered? So further inquiry was made, and there was no doubt it was perfectly genuine. The gentleman who handed it to him (the lecturer) was a high official, very near to the Kaiser’s person, an official to whom we should all be very deeply grateful, for he had furnished us with important information. He was friendly disposed towards England, and had no sympathy with the present war. If his name were revealed Jie would be arrested, and probably shot. In the course of the speech the Kaiser said: “iVo shall strike as soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins at my disposal. I have given orders for the hurried , construction of more airships of the improved Zeppelin type. “When these are ready we shall destroy England’s North Sea, Channel, and Atlantic fleets, after which nothing on earth can greyent the landing of our army on ritish soil and its triumphant march to London.” ' He went on to say: “You will desire to know how the out-: break of hostilities will be brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall not have to go far to find a cause for war. My army of spies scattered over Great Br>ain and France, as it is over North and South America, as well as all the other parts of the world, will take good care of that. I have issued already secret orders that ■yvill at the proper moment accomplish what w© desire.” The concluding sentence was: “With Great •Britain and France in the dust, with Russia and the United States at my mercy, I shall set a new course to the destinies of the world, a course that will ensure to Germany, for all time to come the leading Power among nations of the globe.” While the Cabinet knew that the Kaiser had decided to make war, still the British public read daily the idea of disarmament. Three days after reading that speech. Lord resigned from the Army Council and devoted the rest of his life to his universal service scheme. (Cheers.) He (the lecturer) considered it his duty to place the whole matter before the public, to expose what was intended. With that object he made a copy of the speech, and wrote the first two chapters of a book warning the public. He took them to his publisher.

A MYSTERIOUS THEFT AND AN INSPIRED COMMAND. In his presence Mr. Nash locked them away, but three days later they were stolen. Two davs after that three friends of his in Berlin, officers, received domiciliary visits from the police, who ransacked their houses from top to bottom, searching for correspondence from him. Happily nothing was found. On the following day he received an urgent message to go to the 'War Office, where Colonel Macdopa, Director of the Secret Service, said: “I have been instructed by a very high personage to request you to say nothing about that secret speech of the Kaiser’s, and not to publish that book concerning it.” He did not know who the high personage was, but having received such orders he could not disobey him. By Lord Roberts’s advice he wrote “The Invasion of England.” But it did not wake the public, and the then Prime Minister, Mr. Campbell Bannerraan, denounced him as a scaremonger. According to The Hague Convention, a “spy” could only exist in a war area, as Great Britain was not in that area, teohnir-atk*.

speaTring, there could be no ‘ ’spies” here. The German system was the most marvellous ever conceived. Wore ho permitted to reveal-one quarter of the knowledge he possessed concerning, it he was sure it would create a sensation in that room. But if he did so it would reveal to the enemy what must not bo given away, because we are at war. There were two centres in Germany where spies are trained, for a spy to be successful must be clever; expert in photography, in observation, and in the urawing up of reports. Most of these people became naturalised. The head of the system for the last live years had spent £750,000 a year in Great Britain alone. Our secret service cost us ouiy £50,000, and he thought we must believe it had done marvellously on such a small sum. CURIOUS POINT NEEDING EXPLANATION. There, was a very curious fact that needed explanation. Tho question would probably bo asked, though to-day was not the time to ask it, -why was. Colonel Macdona the head of the department, at the outbreak of the war, relieved of his post? He made no comment. But that was tho officer who knew everything about the service, who bad worked everything; yet. the moment his presence was wanted he was sent to the front! In tho course of tho lecturer’s investigations ho had made many interesting discoveries. The first district in England to which he turned was tho south-eastern, corner. He found that in a certain area there lived and was still living a man of the Dresden Army Reserve, and in that same district' they were all Dresden men; in the next' district they were all Leipsic men; in the next, including Newhayen, all men of Hanover; and so on right through the country. And tho sectional officers were from the same parts of Germany as the spies, who were mostly little tradesmen —barbers, clock makers, or hotel managers. They became good churchgoers, apparently quiet, well-disposed folk, subscribing to local charities, and worming themselves into the good graces of their neighbours. They were visited periodically -by Germans, who were ostensibly commercial travellers, but who in reality were sectional officers who collected the reports and paid tho spies. They were not paid very well. Small men in tho villages got £1 a week or 305., others £3, sectional officers about £5 a week; they knew people who got £IOOO a year, even £3OOO. What the financial spies got they did not know. GERMANS TOO CLEVER, Mentioning cases in which their espionage had achieved no advantages, Air. lo Quoux said the Gormans, were very anxious to secure a certain naval code book, and also the mobilisation scheme for East Anglia.' In eacli case a traitor was conveniently found, and tho documents reached Berlin. But in neither case was it the right information. (Laughter). AVo should never believe it was only the man who speaks with a German, accent who is a spy. There was tho case of Frederick Adolphus Gould, a John Bull to tho very core, but Who received six years’ penal servitude for supplying tho Germans with secrets from Chatham. THE NIGHT-SIGNALLING SYSTEM. Recently, within the last few weeks, he had been investigating night signalling in the South of England, in tho counties of Sussex, Surrey,' and Kent. Accompanied by two officers, of tho naval air section he. spent, eighteen consecutive nights on the hill tops in those countries. They saw signalling; it was in code, hut they wore able to understand the messages, and they replied to them. (Applause.) One evening in the message the letter “H” and the figure “5” repeatedly occurred. It puzzled them very much, but the next morning it was perfectly clear. At tho hour they received that signal there had been five hostile aeroplanes over Dunkirk. Those messages had come from the sea, probably from a submarine, had been picked up on the coast, and sent right through England, because the sosne signals that were Seen in the county of. Surrey were sent, and read by watchers on the look-out, as far north as Berwiok-on-Tweed. They discovered, too, that these very signals within a few minutes were known in tho obscure cafes in Loudon where Germans congregated. All this signalling had something to do with hostile aircraft, and he was quite certain that one day tho signal would be given of a complete Zeppelin fleet over London, 1 and at this moment, if we were not very careful to intern them all, the aliens, 19,000 or so, in London would create a tremendous panic and disaster.

A CLEVER SCHEME. Haring given instances to support his opinion that the female spy is far more dangerous than the male spy, Mr. le Queus came to the question, How can spies communicate with Germany? They did it, ho said, by many ways, but he was not permitted to reveal very much. For a long time past there had been a mystery about advertisements in cipher inserted in the most obscure newspapers in Great Britain ; the key was at last supplied through the French Secret Service. The words “love,” “bricks,” and “Maud” frequently occurred in these advertisements, but these words meant sometiling very different. When the door to Holland was closed—it was kept open far too long, as the lecturer demonstrated —another mystery started. In the mails going to Holland two or three days a week there was found a new pair of lady’s gloves. They were closely examined and tested, but nothing was discovered—except that every pair of these gloves was perfumed differently. They now knew what the, perfumes meant. Rose meant “Look in such-a paper,” lilac “Look in another,” and so on. Of course large numbers of papers went to Holland, in the ordinary wrappers, and it was impossible to censor every newspaper. They would all agree that this was a very interesting means of communication.

INTERN THEM ALL. In conclusion, the lecturer suggested to the authorities two or three things. One was that a strict search should be made in the religious institutions in England for concealed ammunition and armaments. We should never finish this spy peril until every alien was interned, naturalised, or nnnaturalised, rich or poor. (Cheers.) It was useless to tinker with-the question any longer. We should do exactly what the Tsar did. The Tsar saw that the Germans had spread over the land a network of spies. When war began, by one stroke of the pen he sent ail women and children back to Germany, he interned everybody, naturalised and unnaturalised, and he' ordered the property of all enemy aliens to he sold by public auction. The consequence was that today you could buy in Russia a big factory m thorough going order, and its machinery, for the price of the bricks and mortar. - He would not suggest anything- unjust against honest naturalised Germans. There were many Germans amongst us who had brought

lip their children as Englishmen, and it would be a grave injustice to intern them; but ho would intern them, and then allow these good Germans to come, not before tho Horae Secretary (happily, wo had a new one now), bnt appeal before a British jury, who would not do them any injustice.