AT SCOTLAND YARD

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18619, 15 July 1930, Page 6

AT SCOTLAND YARD

BEHIND THE SCENES. MEMOIRS OF SIR WYNDHAM CHILDS. In view of Parliament’s recent decision to abolish the death penalty for certain military offences, it is interesting to learn from Sir Wyndham Childs's “Episodes and Reflections” that during the war the extreme sentence was in fact remitted in 89 per cent, of the cases where it had been imposed. In those days Sir Wyndham was D.A.A.G. at G.H.Q., but it is of course as the late head of the C.I.D, that he is more familiar to the general public, and his book will not disappoint those who anticipate some interesting peeps behind the scenes at Scotland Yard (says “John o' London’s Weekly”). Few people are aware that there never was a “Zinoviev Letter.” The document which evoked such a storm in 1924 purported to be nothing more than the English -translation of a copy in Russian of an alleged original; whether or not that original ever existed must be a matter of opinion, indeed of conjecture. Crude Forgeries. In dealing with Communist activities Sir Wyndham constantly came across the crudest forgeries. The most notorious was a collection of documents purporting to emanate from Soviet Russia. The owner attempted to sell them to every big newspaper and offered them also to the French Government. Twice this collection was sent on to Sir Wyndham by editors; the third and last occasion when it came into his r hands was on the day when the general strike broke out, a well-known man connected with a political organisation bringing it exultantly to Scotland Yard. When these documents were handed to me with some pride I recognised them at once. “Where did you get these?” I said to my friend. "Well, I am not in a position to tell you,” he said. “What did you pay for them?” I demanded. “Fifteen hundred pounds.” “Good Lord!” “T thanked him for his kindness, told him the history of the documents, and sent him away a sadder and a wiser man.” “Four Battalions of Communists.” Politicians with the “Communist Peril” b in their bonnets seem to have been ear-marked as dupes by nimblewitted adventurers. Sir Wyndham was incessantly bombarded with amazing rumours and predictions which usually led to a mare’s neSt:— “I remember on one occasion I met a well-known man in a state of considerable excitement. He said that I ought to know that four battalions of Communists were established south of the Thames, all armed with revolvers and capable of mobilisation under half an hour; that the scheme was to chloroform the guard at Buckingham Palace and blow up the bridges over the Thames. I asked how he got his information. lie told me that he had an agent who had succeeded in penetrating into the inner circle of the Communist Party. I asked him how long he had employed this agent. “Six weeks” was the answer. I replied: “Well, he has accomplished in six weeks what I have failed to do in almost as many years.” After some argument, sarcastic on Sir Wyndham’s part, indignant on the other’s:— “I asked him what was the nature of the vocation of the agent when not employed in espionage, and when he told me that he was an actor, this ’ seemed to solve the problem. If an j agent tells his employer that all is j well, his services will be dispensed j with, whereas if all is not well, he is I indispensable I told him’ I i had never heard such a lot- of ] nonsense as this story in my life.” Most readers will remember that some years ago an attempt was made I by sending chocolates through the post to poison General Horwood, the Commissioner of Police, and the Home Secretary; the general luckily consumed so excessive a dose of arsenic that it actually saved his life! A Clever Ruse. For weeks this incident remained a mystery. Then Sir Wyndham received from the G.O.C. Aldershot Command, more or less as a joke, an anonymous letter bearing the Balham postmark, complaining that the writer had been disturbed by the sounds of night-firing at Aldershot. The handwriting was immediately recognised as that of the sender of the poisoned chocolates: “I conceived the idea that the only v/ay to catch a lunatic was to behave like one. Accordingly I enlisted the i services of a member of a great even- j ing newspaper staff and let him into i the secret. My idea’ was to put an j advertisement in a local paper in ' Balham: “If there are any other res- j idents of Balham who have been | annoyed by the sounds of night firing j by artillery at Aldershot, will they communicate with the advertiser with ! a view to a joint protest?” .... A ! great evening paper was to "notice” j this advertisement and start corre- j spondence (fictitious) suggesting that it was impossible to hear Aldershot guns from Balham Everybody knows that a lunatic only regards as sane those who agree with him, and by this means I hoped that the writer of the letter would eventually come to hand.” The ruse succeeded. The lunatic replied. When the officers went to his Balham address he pulled out a sword-stick, and a violent struggle ensued. Enough arsenic was found in his garden to poison a million people. Happily, he is now at Broadmoor. Lord Haldane and the Chickens. Equally interesting are Sir Wynd- | ham’s Army reminiscences. There is a delightful portrait of Lord Haldane, thejji War Minister, travelling on the f]oor of a country cart, with his back to the horse, and his legs dangling over a lot of clucking chickens; an amusing glimpse of the chaos created after the Aisne battle by enthusiastic ladies who careered about in motorcars picking up the wounded and spiriting them away from the "front; and, most amusing of all. the tale of . an acquaintance who called at the War Office after the outbreak of war and demanded to see the Director of Military Intelligence. “He implored me to arrange an interview, as he had a great scheme to put up. This was his great notion: Let us get two suffragettes to go out and blow up the Kiel Canal. My friend was frightfully keen, and said that the ‘wild women’ were just the people to carry out this plan, which would bottle up the German fleet. I suggested that the scheme was not without difficulties, such as getting there and carrying the bombs, but he was convinced that his scheme was a very good one indeed!”